While the New York isn’t yet known as “the” place to edit feature motion pictures, two awards to be meted out by the Motion Picture Sound Editors (MPSE) society show that might be changing.
Supervising Sound Editor Skip Lievsay is on tap to receive the society’s 2015 MPSE Career Achievement Award, while Aronofsky gets the group’s Filmmaker Award. Both awards will come at the MPSE’s 62nd annual Golden Reel Awards in February at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles. Both creatives are based in New York.
Lievsay, who is both a Supervising Sound Editor and Re-Recording Mixer, shared the 2014 Academy Award for Best Sound Mixing with fellow editors for their work on Gravity. In the industry for more than 30 years, Lievsay has contributed to almost 150 films, and is a frequent collaborator with New York-based directors Joel and Ethan Coen, Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee, and John Sayles.
Aronofsky’s career has been notable for films that are much more a personal, surreal vision than the typical Hollywood product, with titles including Noah, Black Swan and Requiem for a Dream. He has been quoted as saying that, among other things, he was inspired to become a filmmaker because of “the exciting possibilities of experimenting with sound.” In that same Variety article by reporter Marianne Zumberge, Aronofsky said that “Sound dreams, sound emotes and, most importantly, sound is what often saves my ass.”