On Saturday 4 February, SO | The Academy for the Less Good Idea hosted American film editor, director, writer and sound designer, Walter Murch In Conversation with founder of The Centre, William Kentridge.

Murch is best-known for his work as a film editor and sound designer for modern cinema. An Academy Award-winner, he has worked on films including Apocalypse Now, The Godfather: Part II, American Graffiti and The English Patient. More recently, he has worked as consulting editor on Kentridge’s Self Portrait as a Coffee Pot (2022), a nine-part film series chronicling the artist’s studio process.

Over the course of the conversation, which took place in Kentridge’s Maboneng studio, the two discussed how they began working together, the history of editing film, the role technology has played in the editing process, the effects of the Golden Ratio in cinema, and Murch’s personal process on films like Apocalypse Now.

Certain synchronicities between Kentridge and Murch emerged throughout the conversation. Both embrace the processes and habits that develop in the studio, for example. For Kentridge, the ambulant processes of thinking out loud and of pacing in the studio are central, while Murch will only edit while standing, and write while lying down, frequently engaging in “menial tasks and chores” to break up the editing process. Similarly, the act of negotiating with the internal voices of artist and critic, or writer and editor, are central considerations in their respective practices.

While anchored in specific themes, the conversation also organically gave way to anecdotes and asides on editing as a form of poetry, cinema influencing the dreamscape (and vice versa), and the impact of the COVID-19 lockdowns on one’s ways of working.

An audience Q&A following the In Conversation prompted Murch to share further insights around the changing nature of film and editing over the decades, his experience of film school, and the rise of formulaic editing through television and streaming platforms.

— David Mann