Wylie Stateman

Last updated

Wylie Stateman
Born (1957-11-20) November 20, 1957 (age 66)
Long Island, New York, USA
Occupation(s)Sound Director
Supervising Sound Editor
Sound Designer
Post Production Executive
Entrepreneur
Years active1980–present

Wylie Stateman (born November 20, 1957) is an American sound director, supervising sound editor, sound designer, and post production media entrepreneur. Stateman has supervised over 150 sound projects, resulting in 9 Academy Award nominations, 6 BAFTA Awards, 3 Primetime Emmy Awards, and over 30 Motion Picture Sound Editor Awards. He also received a Science Technology award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1994 for Audio Track’s Advanced Data Encoding (ADE) System. In 2021 he won an Emmy Award for his sound design in Netflix’s original series The Queen's Gambit .

Contents

His creative sound work has included multiple collaborations with Oliver Stone, John Hughes, Quentin Tarantino, Wolfgang Petersen, Herbert Ross, Cameron Crowe, Scott Frank, and Rob Marshall.

Stateman was a co-founder of the post production sound services company Soundelux [1] where he served in a senior executive management capacity involved in the overall operations. Stateman also served as Chairman of the Board for the Soundelux Entertainment Group, a holding company that oversaw 11 entities including The Hollywood Edge (sound effect libraries), Modern Music (music editorial for feature films and television), DMG (computer game design), Mind’s Eye/Jabberwocky (books on tape), and Soundelux Florida (editorial), as well as Soundelux Systems (location-based entertainment systems integrator and installer), and Showorks (original content creator), among others.

Stateman went on to establish 247SND (twenty four seven sound), centered around a Dolby Atmos design studio in Topanga, CA.

Early career influences

1977-78: Professor Mort Rosenfelt was a University of Utah Film School professor who taught Stateman at the very beginning of his career in Park City, UT. When Rosenfelt took a sabbatical from Sunn Classic Pictures, the largest independent producer of content outside of Hollywood during its time, to set up Sunn Classic's post production department and mentored 20 young filmmakers on in-house post production systems. He taught Stateman post production theory and a rapid prototyping approach to problem-solving, whereby students were forced to completely rethink different angles to solve the same problem.[ citation needed ]

In 1979, Lon Bender met Stateman at Warren Sound West in Hollywood, an early post production sound facility and recording studio. They worked together as young sound editors on a series of films including Coal Miner's Daughter , Wolfin, and Southern Comfort , while incubating their original idea for Soundelux . Their collaboration resulted in the successful development of many companies (identified below).

1982: Craig Harris was an early expert of the Synclavier manufactured by New England Digital Corporation. It was the very first digital synthesizer piano keyboard that performed computer digital audio sequencing. Harris introduced Stateman to the idea of doing digital sound design with music design tools.

1982: Harry Harris was a US importer who introduced to Hollywood the AMS (Advanced Music Systems) Audiofile, one of the first 16-bit hard disk based recording systems dedicated to post production. This tool was the first to move entire editorial works into the digital world. It enabled Stateman to apply his rapid prototyping curiosity and quickly transition from film-based analog creative to digital-based creative workflows on computer hard disks - an avant-garde concept at the time when the largest hard disk available was 180MB and had to be registered with the US government.[ citation needed ]

1982: Scott Gershin met Stateman during the post production period of Tron . Gershin introduced Stateman to a digital audio workstation called "ADAP", which ran on an Atari computer, a precursor to the personal computer. This exposure encouraged Stateman to further embrace digital audio as a means for creative audio exploration and solidified in his mind the mass market potential of these tools in reaching next generation PCs.[ citation needed ]

Noteworthy collaborators

Stateman has had multiple collaborations with some of the most prolific writer/directors in the motion picture and television industry including:

Oliver Stone — Snowden , Savages , The Untold History of the United States , Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps , W. , World Trade Center , Alexander , Any Given Sunday , Nixon , Natural Born Killers , Heaven & Earth , JFK , The Doors , Born on the Fourth of July , and Talk Radio .

John Hughes — Dennis the Menace, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, Curly Sue, Dutch, Only the Lonely, Home Alone, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, Uncle Buck, She’s Having a Baby, Planes, Trains and Automobiles , and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off .

Quentin Tarantino — Once Upon a Time in Hollywood , The Hateful 8 , Django Unchained , Inglourious Basterds , Grindhouse: Death Proof , Kill Bill: Vol. 1 , and Kill Bill: Vol. 2 .

Wolfgang Petersen — Das Boot (American Director's Cut) , The Perfect Storm , Air Force One , Outbreak , In the Line of Fire , Shattered , Troy , and Poseidon .

Herbert Ross — Steel Magnolias , Footloose , Protocol , Secret of My Success , and Dancers .

Cameron Crowe — Almost Famous and Jerry Maguire .

Scott Frank — A Walk Among the Tombstones and Godless .

Rob Marshall — Nine and Memoirs of a Geisha .

Awards and nominations

Wylie Stateman has been nominated for 9 Academy Awards, 6 BAFTA Awards (1 win), more than 30 Motion Picture Sound Editors Awards (4 wins), 2 Emmy Awards, and two Satellite Awards.

Academy Awards

BAFTA Awards

Motion Picture Sound Editors - Golden Reel Award

The Association of Motion Picture Sound (AMPS)

Emmy Awards

Satellite Awards

Entrepreneur

In addition to his creative work, Stateman has been an active entrepreneur in sound-related businesses having founded, purchased, merged and/or managed over 30 corporate entities spanning post production services; sound effects libraries publishing; music post production services; video game post production; cinema facilities design, production and distribution; entertainment park design and production; software development for digital delivery systems; and more. Many of his endeavors were co-founded with his long-time partner, Lon Bender, as well as managed and/or developed alongside a team of executives who continue to serve as leaders of major Hollywood studios and post production facilities today.

Related Research Articles

A film crew is a group of people, hired by a production company, for the purpose of producing a film or motion picture. The crew is distinguished from the cast, as the cast are understood to be the actors who appear in front of the camera or provide voices for characters in the film. The crew is also separate from the producers, as the producers are the ones who own a portion of either the film studio or the film's intellectual property rights. A film crew is divided into different departments, each of which specializes in a specific aspect of the production. Film crew positions have evolved over the years, spurred by technological change, but many traditional jobs date from the early 20th century and are common across jurisdictions and filmmaking cultures.

A sound editor is a creative professional responsible for selecting and assembling sound recordings in preparation for the final sound mixing or mastering of a television program, motion picture, video game, or any production involving recorded or synthetic sound. The sound editor works with the supervising sound editor. The supervising sound editor often assigns scenes and reels the sound editor based on the editor's strengths and area of expertise. Sound editing developed out of the need to fix the incomplete, undramatic, or technically inferior sound recordings of early talkies, and over the decades has become a respected filmmaking craft, with sound editors implementing the aesthetic goals of motion picture sound design.

Sound design is the art and practice of creating soundtracks for a variety of needs. It involves specifying, acquiring or creating auditory elements using audio production techniques and tools. It is employed in a variety of disciplines including filmmaking, television production, video game development, theatre, sound recording and reproduction, live performance, sound art, post-production, radio, new media and musical instrument development. Sound design commonly involves performing and editing of previously composed or recorded audio, such as sound effects and dialogue for the purposes of the medium, but it can also involve creating sounds from scratch through synthesizers. A sound designer is one who practices sound design.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Todd-AO</span> American post-production company

Todd-AO is an American post-production company founded in 1953 by Mike Todd and Robert Naify, providing sound-related services to the motion picture and television industries. The company retains one facility, in the Los Angeles area.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Motion Picture Sound Editors</span> American honorary society of motion picture sound editors

Motion Picture Sound Editors (MPSE) is an American professional society of motion picture sound editors founded in 1953. The society's goals are to educate others about and increase the recognition of the sound and music editors, show the artistic merit of the soundtracks, and improve the professional relationship of its members. The society is not to be confused with an industry union, such as the I.A.T.S.E. The current president is David Barber. The names of active members of the MPSE will generally appear in film credits with the post-nominal letters "MPSE".

Ascent Capital Group, Inc. was a publicly traded holding company whose primary subsidiary was Monitronics. Ascent Media was a wholly owned subsidiary of the Discovery Holding Company (DHC). DHC spun off Ascent Media as an independent, public company on September 17, 2008.

Audio post-production is all stages of audio production relating to sound produced and synchronized with moving picture. It involves sound design, sound effects, Foley, ADR, sound editing, audio mixing, mastering, etc.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sounddogs</span>

Sounddogs.com, Inc. is a commercial online library of sound effects based in Marina Del Rey, California, with offices in Canada, Argentina, and Uruguay. It is the first and largest online sound effects and production music library on the internet launched in May 1997. As of 2016, 708,636 sound effects and production music tracks are available for immediate download or on hard drive or CD. Downloads are available in AIFF, WAV, and MP3 formats. Sounddogs started as a sound design and editorial company in 1990 and has contributed to more than 150 feature films and earned multiple awards and nominations from the BAFTA Award, Primetime Emmy Award and Golden Reel Awards. As of 2022, there are over 1 million sound files of sound effects and production music.

Kevin O'Connell is a sound re-recording mixer. He held the record for most Academy Award nominations without a win at 20, until he finally won his first Academy Award for Hacksaw Ridge (2016) at the 89th Academy Awards in 2017.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Foley (filmmaking)</span> Addition of sound effects to visual media

In filmmaking, Foley is the reproduction of everyday sound effects that are added to films, videos, and other media in post-production to enhance audio quality. Foley is named after sound-effects artist Jack Foley. Foley sounds are used to enhance the auditory experience of a movie. They can be anything from the swishing of clothing and footsteps to squeaky doors and breaking glass. Foley can also be used to cover up unwanted sounds captured on the set of a movie during filming, such as overflying airplanes or passing traffic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kantana Group</span> Thai production company

Kantana Group is a production company established in Bangkok, Thailand in 1951 by Pradit and Somsook Kaljaruek. Kantana took its first step from radio dramas to films, television dramas, variety programs, and eventually moved on to become an integrated entertainment company.

Robert Naify was an American businessman and motion picture and media tycoon known for his ownership of the movie theaters chain United Artists Theatres, the largest and most geographically diverse theatre circuit in the United States, today part of Regal Cinemas. He also founded the cable company United Artists Communications Inc and post-production and sound mixing firm Todd-AO. He lived in San Francisco, California until his death on April 7, 2016 at the age of 94.

Soundelux is an American audio post production company based in California, a previous member of the Todd Soundelux group of sound companies. The Soundelux library and trademark was bought in 2014 by Sounddogs. In 2021, original founders Bender and Stateman came together to launch the new Soundelux, which restarted in sound editing production with episodes of HBO's Euphoria.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sound Ideas</span>

Sound Ideas is a Canadian audio company and the archive of one of the largest commercially available sound effects libraries in the world. It has accumulated the sound effects, which it releases in collections by download or on CD and hard drive, through acquisition, exclusive arrangement with movie studios, and in-house production.

Michael Minkler is a motion picture sound re-recording mixer. He has received Academy Awards for his work on Dreamgirls, Chicago and Black Hawk Down. His varied career has also included films like Inglourious Basterds, JFK and Star Wars, as well as television programs like The Pacific and John Adams. Minkler works at Todd-AO Hollywood. He is also the Managing Director of Moving Pictures Media Group, a company that specializes in film development, packaging projects for production funding acquisition.

Todd Soundelux is an American creative entertainment services company.

Flashpoint Chicago was a campus of Columbia College Hollywood, a private liberal arts college with a focus on communication, media arts, and contemporary storytelling. Flashpoint Chicago was located in downtown Chicago, Illinois. It closed at the end of the 2021–2022 academic year.

Lon Ethan Bender is an American supervising sound editor, business executive and inventor. Bender won the Academy Award for Best Sound Effects Editing for his work on Braveheart (1995). He has been recognized for numerous other industry awards as well, including Oscar nominations for The Revenant (2015), Drive (2011) and Blood Diamond (2006). Bender is the co-founder of post production sound services company Soundelux.

SoundStorm was an independent audio post-production and sound editorial company based in Burbank, California. It provided post-production sound design, sound editing and ADR in Hollywood. The editors recorded their sound effect library from 1984 to 2004, worked on more than eighty feature films, and earned a number of awards and nominations from the Academy Awards, Emmy Awards, British Academy Film Awards and Golden Reel Awards. In 2004, the company was dissolved and sold its assets; Soundogs.com Inc. acquired the trademark and complete archive of the SoundStorm sound effects library.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rachael Tate</span> British sound editor

Rachael Tate is a British sound editor in the film industry. She was nominated for an Academy Award and won a BAFTA Award for Best Sound for her work on the 2019 film 1917.

References

  1. ↑ At the Movies; This Summer, Noise Matters The New York Times, 31 July 1998
  2. ↑ "The 62nd Academy Awards (1990) Nominees and Winners". oscars.org. Retrieved 17 October 2011.
  3. ↑ MPSE Announces Winners of 2010 Golden Reel Awards, Staff Report, Mix Magazine, 22 February 2010
  4. ↑ West L.A. Music Delivers 104 Pro Tools Systems to Liberty Livewire, 18 September 2001
  5. ↑ Liberty over Independence, Mix Online, 1 September 2000
  6. ↑ The Origins of Post-Production Audio on the West Coast, Soundworks Collection, 4 December 2012
  7. ↑ Vine Street Studios, Mix Online, 1 September 2000
  8. ↑ MTS website Wayback Machine, 7 April 2000
  9. ↑ Liberty Livewire Corporation - Company Profile, Reference for Business, 2000
  10. ↑ Liberty Livewire Corporation - Company Profile, Reference for Business, 2000
  11. ↑ Liberty Livewire renamed Ascent Media Group, Mix Online, 18 November 2002
  12. ↑ VocalStream Aims to Bring the Internet to Life, Business Wire, 23 April 2007
  13. ↑ Audio Post Houses Establish CSS Studios, Prosound Network, 1 October 2008
  14. ↑ Discovery Sells CSS Studios to Empire Investment Holdings, studiodaily.com, 24 September 2012
  15. ↑ Sound One, Elite NYC Audio Post Facility, Goes Silent, Sonicscoop, 8 October 2012
  16. ↑ CSS Studios Renamed Todd Soundelux, The Hollywood Reporter, 13 February 2013
  17. ↑ Todd-Soundelux Files for Chapter 11, Mix Online, 22 May 2014
  18. ↑ Post House Todd Soundelux Closes Its Doors, Variety, 11 July 2014
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.