Michael Minkler - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Michael Minkler is a Motion Picture Sound Re-Recording Mixer. His Oscars are for the work done on Dreamgirls, Chicago and Black Hawk Down, but Minkler has a varied career that includes films like Inglourious Basterds, JFK and Star Wars, as well television programs like The Pacific and John Adams. Minkler works at Todd-AO

Todd-AO

Todd-AO is a post-production company founded in 1953, providing sound-related services to the motion picture and television industries. The company operates three facilities in the Los Angeles area.-History:...

Hollywood.

Early career

Minkler started working as a recordist when he was just 17 years old and started mixing in 1974 when he was 22. Early projects included commercials, television shows and industrial films. His first major film came in 1976, when he was hired for a temporary assignment to work on the music and effects tracks for the foreign release of All the President’s Men. He worked with re-recording mixers Arthur Piantadosi and Les Fresholtz at Warner Bros. Stage 5 on that project. Minkler continued to work along side them for another 35 films and considered them his mentors.

Family history

Born and raised in Los Angeles, California, Minkler was born into a family of sound-for-film professionals.

Darrell Minkler, his grandfather, worked at Chicago Labs in 1928, developing disc recorders. He came to Hollywood to work on the Vitaphone

Vitaphone

Vitaphone was a sound film process used on feature films and nearly 1,000 short subjects produced by Warner Bros. and its sister studio First National from 1926 to 1930. Vitaphone was the last, but most successful, of the sound-on-disc processes...

project at Warner Bros. Studios. Darrell Minkler also built a company then called Radio Recorders for music recording with such pop classic performers as Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and Tommy Dorsey. That studio later became a part of The Record Plant.

Don Minkler, his father, began his sound career in the late 1940s and founded Producers Sound Service in 1964. Don Minkler's re-recording career includes such films as Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces,The Last Picture Show" and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.

His uncle, sound re-recording mixer Bob Minkler began working in the sound department back in the 1960s and won an Oscar in 1978 for his work on Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope. Other Bob Minkler credits include 10, Hair and Bull Durham and Saturday Night Fever".
His other uncle, Lee, also a mixer, shares the distinction of being on the Oscar Nominated Sound Mixing team for "Tron" with Michael and Bob. That is the only time that three members of a single family were nominated for an Oscar for the same film.

Minkler's son Christian is also a re-recording mixer, who has worked on both television and feature film projects since 1990. Christian's most recent credits include Repo Man, The Proposal and Role Models.

Professional experience

After a four year stint at Warner Bros. Studios, he took the job as the chief mixer and managing director of facilities, at Robert Altman’s Lion’s Gate Films in 1980. In 1984, Minkler struck out as an independent, working at a number of facilities, until 1990 when he helped design and staff Skywalker Sound’s Lantana facility in Santa Monica. He continued to mix there after the facility was acquired by Todd-AO

Todd-AO

. While at re-named Todd-AO West, Minkler won a pair of Academy Awards, first for Black Hawk Down in 2001 and then Dreamgirls in 2006. In 2009, he moved to the Todd-AO Hollywood facility and quickly earned an Academy Award nomination for 'Inglorious Basterds".

Technical Advisor

In addition to his mixing credits, Minkler has been a sought after technical advisor for companies like Euphonix

Euphonix

Euphonix was a professional audio company located in Mountain View, California, United States. Euphonix produced the first successful line of large digitally controlled analog audio mixing consoles in the late 1980s and has since moved on to all-digital systems....

where he helped with the development of digital audio mixing technology, which is now an industry standard.

Minkler has always been considered an innovator of technology and technique.
On Inglorious Basterds, Minkler utilized a new technology developed by Penteo Surround

Penteo

Penteo is a digital audio, stereo-to-5.1 surround conversion process based on a mashup of Avery Lee's open source Center Cut algorithm from VirtualDub combined with Hans Van Zutphen's freeware Tape Restore Live azimuth corrector...

that enables stereo music mixes to be converted and spread across a 5.1 surround sound field.

Appears on

While Minkler is regularly profiled in trades magazines like Variety, Mix and Post, he’s also appeared on DVD featurettes discussing the sound of a particular film. The Sound of Miracle appears as an extra on the DVD release of the 2004 film Miracle.

Awards and nominations

Michael Minkler has been nominated for 11 Academy Awards

Academy Awards

An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...

(three wins), six BAFTA Awards (three wins), eight Cinema Audio Society Awards

Cinema Audio Society Awards

Cinema Audio Society Awards or The C.A.S. Awards is an annual awards ceremony honoring Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing. The awards are presented by the Cinema Audio Society and began in 1994.It hands out awards for three categories:*Feature films...

(two wins), one Motion Picture Sound Editors Awards (one win), two Emmy Award

Emmy Award

An Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...

and three Satellite Awards

Satellite Awards

The Satellite Awards are an annual award given by the International Press Academy. The awards were originally known as the Golden Satellite Awards.- Film :*Best Actor – Drama*Best Actor – Musical or Comedy*Best Actress – Drama...

(two wins).

In 2006, Minkler received the Cinema Audio Society’s Career Achievement Award at the 42nd annual CAS Awards Banquet. The event took place at the Millennium-Biltmore in Los Angeles. He was the president of the Cinema Audio Society in 1981.

Academy Awards

Academy Awards

2010: Inglorious Basterds (Best Sound Mixing) – Nominated
2007: Dreamgirls
Dreamgirls (film)
Dreamgirls is a 2006 musical drama film, directed by Bill Condon and jointly produced and released by DreamWorks and Paramount Pictures. The film debuted in three special road show engagements beginning December 15, 2006 before its nationwide release on December 25, 2006...

(Best Sound Mixing) – Won

2003: Chicago
Chicago (2002 film)
Chicago is a 2002 musical film adapted from the satirical stage musical of the same name, exploring the themes of celebrity, scandal, and corruption in Jazz-age Chicago....

(Best Sound Mixing) – Won
2002: Black Hawk Down (Best Sound Mixing) – Won

1994: Cliffhanger
Cliffhanger (film)
Cliffhanger is a 1993 American action film directed by Renny Harlin and starring Sylvester Stallone and John Lithgow. Stallone plays a mountain climber, who becomes embroiled in a failed heist set in a U.S. Treasury plane flying through the Rocky Mountains...

(Best Sound) – Nominated

1992: JFK
JFK (film)
JFK is a 1991 American film directed by Oliver Stone. It examines the events leading to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and alleged subsequent cover-up, through the eyes of former New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison .Garrison filed charges against New Orleans businessman Clay...

(Best Sound) – Nominated

1990: Born on the Fourth of July
Born on the Fourth of July (film)
Born on the Fourth of July is a 1989 American film adaptation of the best selling autobiography of the same name by Vietnam War veteran Ron Kovic. Tom Cruise plays Kovic, in a performance that earned him his first Academy Award nomination. Oliver Stone co-wrote the screenplay with Kovic, and also...

(Best Sound) – Nominated

1986: A Chorus Line
A Chorus Line (film)
A Chorus Line is a 1985 musical film directed by Richard Attenborough, starring Michael Douglas. The screenplay by Arnold Schulman is based on the Tony Award-winning book of the 1975 stage production of the same name by James Kirkwood, Jr. and Nicholas Dante...

(Best Sound) – Nominated

1983: Tron
Tron
-Film:*Tron , a franchise that began in 1982 with the Walt Disney Pictures film Tron** Tron , a 1982 science fiction film by Disney, starring Jeff Bridges, Bruce Boxleitner, Cindy Morgan, Dan Shor and David Warner...

(Best Sound) – Nominated

1980: Altered States
Altered States
Altered States is a 1980 American science fiction-horror film adaptation of a novel by the same name by playwright and screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky. It was the only novel that Chayefsky ever wrote, as well as his final film. Both the novel and the film are based on John C...

(Best Sound) – Nominated

1980: The Electric Horseman
The Electric Horseman
The Electric Horseman is a 1979 adventure and romance feature film starring Robert Redford and Jane Fonda and directed by Sydney Pollack. It was the third time Redford and Fonda starred together in a feature film, having previously teamed on The Chase and Barefoot in the Park .-Plot:Sonny Steele ...

(Best Sound) – Nominated

BAFTA Awards

2005: Collateral (Best Sound) – Nominated

2004: Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (Best Sound) – Nominated

2003: Chicago (Best Sound) – Won
2002: Black Hawk Down (Best Sound) – Nominated
1993: JFK (Best Sound) – Won

1979: Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (Best Sound) – Won

Cinema Audio Society Awards

2009: John Adams (Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing for Television Movies and Mini-Series for episode Join or Die) – Won

2009: John Adams (Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing for Television Movies and Mini-Series for episode Independence) – Nominated

2008: Into the Wild (Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing for Motion Pictures) – Nominated

2007: Dreamgirls (Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing for Motion Pictures) – Won
2003: Chicago (Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing for Motion Pictures) – Nominated
2002: Black Hawk Down (Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing for Motion Pictures) – Nominated
1995: True Lies (Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing for Motion Pictures) – Nominated
1994: Cliffhanger (Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing for a Feature Film) – Nominated

Emmy Awards

2010: The Pacific (Outstanding Sound Mixing for a Miniseries or a Movie for the episode Part Two) - Won

2008: John Adams (Outstanding Sound Mixing for a Miniseries or a Movie for the episode Join or Die) – Nominated

Motion Picture Sound Editors - Golden Reel Award
Motion Picture Sound Editors
Founded in 1953, Motion Picture Sound Editors is an honorary society of motion picture sound editors. The society's goals are to educate others about and increase the recognition of the sound editors, show the artistic merit of the soundtracks, and improve the professional relationship of its...

1990: Born on the Fourth of July (Best Sound Editing - Sound Effects) – Won (Tied with The Abyss)

Satellite Awards

2006: Dreamgirls (Best Sound, Editing & Mixing) – Won

2005: Collateral (Best Sound, Editing & Mixing) – Won
2004: Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (Best Sound) – Nominated

External links

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