Creating Film Sound: An Interview with Richard Beggs

Matteo Milani of U.S.O Project has published the first part of a fantastic interview with sound designer Richard Beggs. They talk about several things, including previous projects, specific sounds/scenes, and also technical/philosophical stuff.

Richard Beggs, sound designer and re-recording mixer, has worked in his career with directors like Francis Coppola, Ivan Reitman, Mel Brooks, Barry Levinson, Kathryn Bigelow, Sofia Coppola (including her latest “Somewhere” – Golden Lion for best picture at the Venice Film Festival 2010), and Alfonso Cuarón, among others.

He won an Academy Award for Best Sound for Apocalypse Now (1979) and has received many Golden Reel Award nominations as sound designer and mixer for Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005), Children of Men (2006).

Beggs teaches film sound at the California College of the Arts, he is an associate fellow of Berkeley College at Yale University, and sits on the board of directors of the San Francisco Arts Education Project.

Trained as a painter, Beggs received a B.F.A from the San Francisco Art Institute and an M.F.A. from the California College of the Arts. He exhibited at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and at Oakland Museum of California. A native San Franciscan (1942), Beggs has his sound studio at the San Francisco Film Centre in the Presidio of San Francisco.

Continue reading…

The second part hasn’t been published yet, but the first one is long and very interesting. Totally recommended.