Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1057439
C A S Q U A R T E R L Y F A L L 2 0 1 8 29 Following a two-year stint managing an equipment rental house's sound department, native New Yorker Lee Orloff, newly graduated from NYU Film School, set out with his employee-discounted recording gear to begin a decade of work primarily in documentaries. In 1984, he mixed his first feature, Joel and Ethan Coen's crime thriller debut, Blood Simple. By the late '80s, he'd moved to Hollywood on the heels of an Oscar nomination for James Cameron's underwater drama The Abyss, the first of three collaborations, including Terminator 2: Judgment Day and True Lies. Following the design/build of communication systems necessitated for The Abyss production, he received an opportunity to work with Jim Henson's Creature Shop, which was undertaking a live-action version of the hit animated series Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Orloff was one of the earliest proponents of the now universally accepted higher resolution, multitrack digital recording, utilizing it on the 1993 film Last Action Hero. During the past 35 years, Orloff has participated on more than 75 feature films, enjoying successful working relationships with many of Hollywood's most notable directors. In some cases, their collaborations have spanned 20 years, such as with Michael Mann and Walter Hill. Gore Verbinski has relied on his expertise on eight of his films, two of which, in the Pirates of the Caribbean series, resulted in Oscar nominations for Orloff and his team, and on Rango, which won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film in 2012. Filmmakers have counted on Orloff and his team's versatility to deliver needed results on a diverse range of projects ranging from three films in the Pitch Perfect musical series, HBO's Westworld Season 1, to Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and Ant-Man and the Wasp for Marvel Studios. Some of these filmmakers include Elizabeth Banks, James Cameron, J.C. Chandor, Martha Coolidge, Roland Emmerich, James Gunn, Walter Hill, James Mangold, Jonathan Nolan, Dean Parisot, Todd Phillips, Peyton Reed, Ridley Scott, Wim Wenders, Rupert Wyatt, and Gore Verbinski. Orloff has been nominated six times for the CAS Award for True Lies (1994), Heat (1995), The Patriot (2000), Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006), and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011). An Oscar winner for Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Orloff has received six Academy Award ® nominations for The Abyss (1989), Geronimo: An American Legend (1993), The Insider (1999), The Patriot (2000), Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006). Rango (2012)