Mark Mangini, Oscar-Winning Sound Designer-Episode #382

Mark Mangini is a six-time Oscar-nominated, two-time Oscar-winning Sound Designer. He won his Oscars for Dune and Mad Max Fury Road. Mark’s also well known for designing sound for numerous films, including: Blade Runner 2049, Star Treks I, IV and V, Beauty and the Beast, TheFifthElement, Space Jam, Poltergeist,Gremlins, Aladdin, and Raiders of the Lost Ark, among many more.

Mark has spent his 49-year career in Hollywood imagining and composing altered sonic realities for motion pictures. He’s a frequent lecturer, an outspoken proponent for sound as art, and a guitarist/songwriter with compositions that can be heard in sex, lies and videotape, Star Trek IV, and more.

Mark believes that all organized sound is music. He sees his work in movies as every bit a composition as those of Beethoven and the Beatles. He just happens to use dissonance, melodic content and arrhythmia to its fullest advantage. His work is no less considered, designed, created or manipulated. It just isn’t usually what we think of as hummable.

His first job in the entertainment industry was at the age of 19 in the sound department of Hanna Barbera Studios making funny noises for children’s cartoons. His ears have been keenly trained by years of language study and playing guitar, which suited him well for a career of critical listening and creating unimagined aural worlds and fabricating sonic realities for motion pictures.

Mark founded and ran the successful post-production sound company, Weddington Productions, for 25 years. Today he works at Formosa Group in Hollywood, continuing his work as a Supervising Sound Editor, Sound Designer and Re-recording mixer.