Margaret Sixel | |
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 Sixel at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival | |
| Born | |
| Nationality | Australia |
| Occupation | Film editor |
| Years active | 1984–present |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 2 |
Margaret Sixel is an Australian and South African film editor. She is best known for her work as editor on her husband George Miller's films, including Babe: Pig in the City (1998), Happy Feet (2006), and Mad Max: Fury Road (2015). For Fury Road, she won the Academy Award for Best Film Editing and the BAFTA Award for Best Editing.
Margaret Sixel was born in South Africa.[ citation needed ]
She studied film editing at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School, earning a Specialist Extension Certificate in Film Editing in 1989. [1]
In 1984, Sixel began work as an assistant editor and dubber on the Australian television mini-series, The Last Bastion (1984), where she met one of the directors of the picture, and future collaborator, George Miller. In the following five years, Sixel worked as an assistant and assembly editor on various projects such as The Great Gold Swindle (1984), Emoh Ruo (1985), The Blue Lightning (1986), A Case of Honour (1989), and Romero (1989), as well as dialogue editor for John Duigan's Flirting (1991).[ citation needed ]
In 1994, Sixel was appointed film editor for Kay Pavlou's dramatised Australian documentary, Mary (1994), about Australian saint Mary MacKillop. Three years later, Sixel edited the television documentary 40,000 Years of Dreaming (1997) for director George Miller. During the early 2000s, Sixel edited two short films under the direction of English-born Australian filmmaker Rachel Ward, The Blindman's Bluff (2000) and The Big House (2001). Sixel's remaining three feature film projects have since all been collaborations between herself and director George Miller, beginning in 1998 with Babe: Pig in the City (co-edited alongside Jay Friedkin), and followed by Happy Feet (co-edited alongside Christian Gazal) in 2006, and Mad Max: Fury Road in 2015.[ citation needed ]
Margaret Sixel has creatively contributed to the production of numerous projects throughout her career, including Babe (1995), in which George Miller credits her for turning the picture around by "declaring an early cut [of the film] too episodic and lacking in narrative tension, and suggesting the linking devices of chapter headings and singing mice." [2] She received a "Special Thanks" credit for the film, as well as a "Thanks" in the credits of Happy Feet Two for contributions to "the story structure." [3]
In regard to their creative relationship, Sixel has remarked that both Miller and herself collaboratively make up a "complete person." [4] She has stated that being his spouse only helps in that they understand each other's sensibilities better, since "98 percent of the time [they] agree on [their] choices," which is important, "because when you are not in sync, lots of people have opinions in the editing room and you can really go off in the wrong direction." [5]
In 2012, Sixel began editing Mad Max: Fury Road under the direction of George Miller. When asked why he chose his wife to edit his film, Miller observed that she had never cut an action movie before, and that if it were to be edited by "the usual kind of guys, it would look like every other action movie we see." [6]
Because the majority of the film revolves around an intense road battle, featuring dozens of vehicular stunts and hundreds of individual extras, the location team would shoot with upwards of 20 cameras on any given set up. [7] As a result, the editorial team on location processed between 10 and 20 hours of footage on a daily basis, which had to be flown back to Sydney, Australia, where Sixel and her editorial team would work on shaping the footage in conjunction with production. [7] By the time principal photography had wrapped, Sixel was given over 470 hours of footage to edit, which took three months to merely view in its entirety. [6] [7]
For two years, Sixel worked for roughly 10 hours a day, 6 days a week, for a total of over 6,000 collective hours of editing to create the film's eventual 120 minute running length. [6] The final edit of the film consisted of over 2,700 individual cuts, over twice as many as Miller's previous Mad Max installment, The Road Warrior (1981), which featured only 1,200 cuts in its 90-minute running time. [8]
In 2016, Sixel won the Academy Award for Best Editing for her work on editing Mad Max. [9] By winning this award, she became the first South African born editor to win an Academy Award. She also won the Best Editing award at the 21st Critics' Choice Awards, [10] the 2016 ACE Eddie Award for Best Edited Feature Film – Dramatic, [11] and the BAFTA Award for Best Editing. [12]
In regard to her role as a woman editor, Sixel has stated that she does not consider her gender to be relevant in the editing process. [5] In an interview, she has stated that she works "with a lot of guys in the editing room. We don't think about it. I'm really into cutting film, and while George [Miller] likes to think it's a positive, I don't feel very female about it." [5] In regard to her editorial team, Sixel has noted that 25 percent of her staff are women. [5] Throughout her career working with Miller, Jason Ballantine was her first assistant and additional editor on every feature film from Babe: Pig in the City to Mad Max: Fury Road.[ citation needed ]
In 1995, Margaret Sixel married director George Miller; they have two sons, and Sixel has a stepdaughter from Miller's previous marriage. [2] [5]
In 2011, as a response to the tenth anniversary of the Tampa affair in 2001, the Australian Centre for Policy Development published a statement urging Australia's political leaders to break the stalemate on refugees and asylum seekers, which was "still sadly characterised by human tragedy, political opportunism, policy failure and great cost." [13] Both Margaret Sixel and her husband, George Miller, supported and signed the public statement.
George Miller is an Australian filmmaker. Over the course of four decades he has received critical and popular success creating the Mad Max franchise starting in 1979 with two of the films having been hailed as two of the greatest action films of all time. He has also earned numerous accolades including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, and a Golden Globe Award.
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, commonly known as Mad Max 3, is a 1985 Australian post-apocalyptic dystopian action film directed by George Miller and George Ogilvie and written by Terry Hayes and Miller. It is the third installment in the Mad Max franchise. The film stars Mel Gibson and Tina Turner, and follows a lone roving warrior who is exiled into the desert. It was Gibson's last performance as "Mad Max" Rockatansky.
John Clement Seale ACS ASC is an Australian cinematographer. He has received numerous accolades including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, and an American Society of Cinematographers Award. Seale started his career collaborating with director Peter Weir as both a camera operator and director of photography gaining a reputation as one of Australia's leading cinematographers. He then earned international prominence working with directors such as Anthony Minghella, Wolfgang Petersen, Ron Howard, Sydney Pollack, and George Miller.
The Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS), formerly Australian Film and Television School, is Australia's national screen arts and broadcast school. The school is a Commonwealth Government statutory authority.
Mad Max is a media franchise created by George Miller and Byron Kennedy. It centers on a series of post-apocalyptic and dystopian action films. The franchise began in 1979 with Mad Max, and was followed by three sequels: Mad Max 2, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985) and Mad Max: Fury Road (2015); Miller directed or co-directed all four films. Mel Gibson portrayed the title character Max Rockatansky in the first three films, while Tom Hardy portrayed the character in Mad Max: Fury Road.
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Kennedy Miller Mitchell is an Australian film, television and video game production house in Potts Point, Sydney, that has been producing television and film since 1978. It is responsible for some of Australia's best-known and most successful films, including the four Mad Max films, the two Babe films, and the two Happy Feet films.
Mad Max: Fury Road is a 2015 Australian post-apocalyptic action film co-written, co-produced, and directed by George Miller. Miller collaborated with Brendan McCarthy and Nico Lathouris on the screenplay. The fourth instalment in the Mad Max franchise, it was produced by Village Roadshow Pictures, RatPac-Dune Entertainment and Kennedy Miller Mitchell, and distributed by Roadshow Entertainment in Australia and by Warner Bros. Pictures internationally. The film stars Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron, with Nicholas Hoult, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Riley Keough, Zoë Kravitz, Abbey Lee, and Courtney Eaton in supporting roles. Set in a post-apocalyptic desert wasteland where petrol and water are scarce commodities, Fury Road follows Max Rockatansky (Hardy), who joins forces with Imperator Furiosa (Theron) against cult leader Immortan Joe (Keays-Byrne) and his army, leading to a lengthy road battle.
Doug Mitchell is a film producer.
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The 36th Boston Society of Film Critics Awards, honoring the best in filmmaking in 2015, were given on December 11, 2015.
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Andrew Jackson is an English Australian visual effects supervisor. He has worked on various feature films, including 300 (2006), Knowing (2009), Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), Dunkirk (2017), The King (2019), Tenet (2020), and Oppenheimer (2023).
The 20th San Diego Film Critics Society Awards were announced on December 14, 2015.
The 41st Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards, given by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association (LAFCA), honored the best in film for 2015.
The 14th Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association Awards were announced on December 7, 2015.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is a 2024 Australian post-apocalyptic action adventure film directed, co-written, and co-produced by George Miller, who collaborated with Nico Lathouris on the screenplay. The fifth installment in the Mad Max franchise, Furiosa serves as both a prequel and spin-off to Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), focusing on the character Furiosa, originally portrayed by Charlize Theron in Fury Road. The film stars Anya Taylor-Joy and Alyla Browne as younger versions of Furiosa, alongside Chris Hemsworth and Tom Burke.
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