Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1500189
M OT I O N P I CTU R E S O U N D E D I TO R S 23 home, there were three messages on the machine. The first two were offers for picture assisting jobs in Los Angeles and the third one was to work as a sound assistant on Willow at Skywalker Sound. I liked it here so I accepted the San Francisco offer. Had I been home, I absolutely would have taken the first one offered which was in LA. It was definitely a 'sliding doors' moment. I've been here for 30 years now! Gwen's career at Skywalker spans over three decades. She has more than 120 film credits, including Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, Minority Report, Munich, Iron Man, Cloverfield, Jurassic World, and Fight Club. Her two previous Academy Award nominations came from James Cameron's original Avatar and Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski's Tron: Legacy. On Avatar: The Way of Water, along with co-supervising sound editors Dick Bernstein and Christopher Boyes, Gwen is only one of a handful of women supervising sound editors nominated for an Oscar. Since 1985, when my mother, Kay Rose, became the first woman sound editor to win an Oscar for The River, there have been only nine women nominated for Best Sound Editing and only five who have won Oscars. All of the winners and nominees had shared credit, except for Kay Rose, who received the Special Achievement Oscar in Sound Editing. We honor and acknowledge these women's contributions to our craft, but we still have a long ways to go. As Gwen says, "There are a lot of fantastic female sound editors out there. And we should be a bigger club." Here are the women who have won Oscars. After Kay Rose in 1985, Cece Hall was nominated for Top Gun and won for The Hunt for Red October (with George Watters II); Gloria Borders, nominated for Forrest Gump and won for Terminator 2: Judgment Day (with Gary Rydstrom); Karen Baker Landers won for The Bourne Ultimatum (with Per Hallberg). They also won an Oscar for their work on Skyfall; Nina Hartstone won an Oscar for her work on Bohemian Rhapsody (with John Warhurst). Among the Oscar-nominated women sound editors are Becky Sullivan for Unbroken (with Andrew DeCristofaro); Renee Tondelli for Deepwater Horizon (with Wylie Stateman); and the women team of Ai-Ling Lee and Mildred Iatrou Morgan who were nominated for La La Land and First Man. Rachael Tate and Oliver Tarney were nominated for their work on 1917. Gwendolyn Yates Whittle has been nominated for Avatar (with Christopher Boyes) and Tron: Legacy (with Addison Teague) and of course, her recent nomination for Avatar: The Way of Water shared with Dick Bernstein and Christopher Boyes. The Oscar for this year's Best Sound went to Top Gun: Maverick editors and mixers Mark Weingarten, James H. Mather, Al Nelson, Chris Burdon, and Mark Taylor. Gwen was also nominated for this year's BAFTAs (British Academy Film and Television Arts) and the MPSE Golden Reel Awards for Avatar: The Way of Water. (All Quiet on the Western Front won the BAFTA this year for editors/mixers Lars Ginzel, Frank Kruse, Viktor Prášil, and Markus Stemler. Top Gun: Maverick won the MPSE Best Sound Golden Reel Award.) It's been quite the whirlwind season for Gwen as she was also honored by the Motion Picture Sound Editors with the Career Achievement Award at the 70th Golden Reel Awards held at the historic Wilshire Ebell Theatre on February 26, 2023. She has won six Golden Reel Awards and has had 20 nominations over her career spanning 1998-2022. Gwen also received an Emmy nomination for WandaVision in 2022. Talking about her Career Achievement Award from the MPSE, Gwen said: "This award reminds me of how lucky and grateful I am to have had the opportunities I've had. I have 70th Annual MPSE Golden Reel Awards, February 26, 2023. L-R: Al Nelson (presenter), Mark Lanza - MPSE President, Gwendolyn Yates Whittle - MPSE Career Achievement Award winner, and Lora Hirschberg (presenter). Dress by Nazlicouture (Nazli Eslami). Photo by Chris Schmidtt Photography.