Sound designer and film editor Walter Murch will present the Hollywood Post Alliance Charles S. Swartz Award for Creativity and Innovation in the Field of Post Production to his colleague and joint visionary Ray Dolby. Dolby renowned inventor engineer and founder of Dolby Laboratories accompanied by his family will be honored during the 7th Annual HPA Awards ceremony on November 1 at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles. Murch has been editing and mixing sound for feature films since starting on Francis Ford Coppola’s film The Rain People in 1969. He edited sound and was lead re-recording mixer on THX-1138 American Graffiti and the Godfather: Part II won his first Academy Award nomination for The Conversation won his first Oscar for Apocalypse Now and won an unprecedented double Oscar for sound and film editing for his work on The English Patient. He has been nominated another six times for film editing and sound Oscars including his first Emmy this year. Murch was along with Lucas and Coppola a founding member of Northern California Cinema. For his work on the film Apocalypse Now he coined the term Sound Designer was instrumental in the development of the 5.1 format and along with colleagues such as Ben Burtt (2009 HPA Charles S. Swartz Award winner) helped to elevate the art and impact of film sound to a new level. In addition Murch has been nominated for and won numerous BAFTA ACE CAS and film festival awards including career achievement awards from the CAS and the MPSE. He is also known as a technology visionary introducing editing platforms and innovating ways of working creatively with new and emerging engineering. His book In the Blink of an Eye is a standard text at film schools throughout the world.
