The Motion Picture Sound Editors will honor Academy Award-winning supervising sound editor Cecelia “Cece” Hall with its 2020 MPSE Career Achievement Award. A past president of the MPSE, Hall served for many years as senior vice president for post-production sound at Paramount Pictures and currently teaches sound design at UCLA. She will receive the Career Achievement Award at the 67th Annual MPSE Golden Reel Awards ceremony, January 19, 2020, in Los Angeles.
“Cece Hall is one of the pillars of the sound community,” says MPSE president Tom McCarthy. “She is an exceptionally talented sound editor who has created imaginative sound for many great films. As an executive at Paramount Pictures, she was a tireless advocate for filmmakers and sound artists and their projects. We are delighted to recognize her diverse contributions to the art of entertainment sound with our Career Achievement Award.”
After beginning her career as an independent sound editor, Hall landed at Paramount Pictures in 1978 as the first woman hired in the sound-editing department. At Paramount, she supervised sound for films including Star Trek II & III, Beverly Hills Cop I & II, Witness, Searching for Bobby Fisher and Days of Thunder. As senior vice president of post-production sound, she oversaw projects for both Paramount and its subsidiaries including The Hours, Stop-Loss, Charlotte’s Web, Black Snake Moan and Hustle & Flow.
In addition to her Academy Award in 1987 for The Hunt for Red October, Hall has won two MPSE Golden Reel Awards, among nine nominations. She was elected president of the MPSE in 1984, the first woman to hold that office.
“I am honored and humbled to be recognized by my peers in the MPSE,” says Hall. “I have a long association with the organization and am committed to its mission to promote sound editors and the craft of sound editing. I am grateful for having had an exciting career and most proud of having had the opportunity to hire so many talented women on the movies I supervised.”
