Gary Rydstrom
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Gary Roger Rydstrom (born 1959) is an award winning sound designer who began his career at Skywalker Sound, Northern California in 1983. Offered the job by a college professor, Gary received the opportunity to work with his mentor, Star Wars sound designer Ben Burtt.
After gaining invaluable experience as a sound technician in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, he went on to do sound design for the smash hit comedy Spaceballs before knocking audiences right out of their seats with his breakthrough sound work on Backdraft. The sound design, prepared from scratch, would become the precursor for his hyper-reality sound for Terminator 2: Judgment Day. The completely original sound effects from Backdraft are constantly referenced and have been used for numerous other films including the The Lord of the Rings film trilogy and Shrek.
Gary Rydstrom’s work on Terminator 2: Judgment Day is arguably his career crowning achievement where he pioneered original techniques still used to this day for creating testosterone injected hyper realistic sound effects. He went on to win an Academy Award for his breakthrough work on the film. Even to this day Terminator 2 is considered the benchmark for high-end motion picture sound design and Gary went on to win an Academy Award for his groundbreaking achievement.
Gary’s sound work on Jurassic Park was a milestone in terms of innovation as he and his team set out to create dinosaur sounds by mixing together numerous different animal vocalizations to make the audience feel as though giant bellowing prehistoric beasts surrounded them. The Oscar-winning film took a giant leap in being the very first motion picture to be presented in DTS.
He subsequently went on to work on sound for numerous successful films including Titanic, Saving Private Ryan (for which he won his third Academy Award), Minority Report and Finding Nemo. He won a MSPE lifetime achievement award for his stunning career and regularly speaks at various sound design forums sharing his extensive knowledge and enthusiasm with aspiring sound design artists.
He has recently made his directorial debut with the Pixar animated short, Lifted, for which he received his fourteenth Academy Award nomination. He is currently directing his first animated feature for Pixar, the title of which has not yet been announced.[1]
