Hungarian sound designer wins Golden Reel Award, the Oscar of sound editing

Zoltán Juhász won a Golden Reel Award, the most prestigious award for sound editing given out by the society of Motion Picture Sound Editors (MPSE), index.hu writes.

Zoltán Juhász was awarded the Verna Fields Award in Sound Editing for Film Student Makers, named after American sound editor and educator Verna Fields. The work that brought him the recognition is his diploma project, an animated short film called Fishwitch, directed by Adrienne Dowling. Zoltán Juhász was the sound designer, foley artist and sound editor for the film.

“Fishwitch is a 10-minute stop motion animation which depicts the meeting of a merman and a reclusive sea witch in the middle of the sea. In the beginning, they do not get on well, but then the merman begins to uncover the witch’s painful secret which brings them closer together,” says Juhász.

Zoltán Juhász grew up in Budapest, then moved to London to study at the University of Westminster. “I got more seriously into sound design there, then, a year after graduation, I got into the National Film and Television School, which is an awesome university, I studied there for two years in the sound design master’s programme. I graduated exactly a year ago, in February, and I’ve been working as a freelance sound editor since,” says Juhász, who has worked as a sound designer for a Californian advertising agency, and he is currently working on a low-budget film with several of his former schoolmates.

The National Film and Television School is indeed one of the best schools for aspiring sound engineers. Its students have been nominated for the Golden Reel Awards 39 times since 1996, winning 13 times.

Juhász has previously won another award with Fishwitch, the Dolby Award for Best Sound in 2016.

Last year, Son of Saul, the Oscar, Golden Globe and BAFTA-winning Hungarian film was awarded at the Golden Reel Awards. Sound engineer Tamás Zányi won the award for best sound editing in a foreign language feature film. As index.hu wrote, the recognition is amazing, since in Hollywood productions, each element of the sound design is done by a different person, while in Hungary, the sound engineer is responsible for most of the work, aided by a small team. In the case of Son of Saul, this meant a team of four people.

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Source: index.hu