22-01-2009

Czech sound engineer competes for Oscar

By Irena Zemanová
    Czech sound engineer Petr Forejt has received an Oscar nomination for sound mixing on the Hollywood box office hit Wanted.

    The action movie starring Angelina Jolie was shot in Prague in 2007. Forejt cooperated on sound mixing with Chris Jenkins and Frank Montano, who both receiving the nomination as a team with Forejt.

    It is the first Oscar nomination in the sound category for Czech Republic

    "I'm so excited, I can´t even believe it," Forejt said after the nomination announcement on January 22. "It's a such a honour for me and also for Czech sound engineering itself," he told the Czech press agency CTK.

    Shooting on Wanted, the Hollywood debut of Russian-Kazakh director Timur Bekmambetov was quite complicated according to Forejt. "While it was an action movie, we needed to concentrate on the mixing of sounds and speech carefully," Forejt explained.

    40-year old Forejt is one of the most experienced sound engineers in Czech Republic. Following the 1989 Velvet Revolution, Forejt started to cooperate with foreign film productions shooting in the Czech Republic. He mixed sound for such big-budget movies as Van Helsing by director Stephen Sommers (2004) and The Brothers Grimm by Terry Gilliam (2005).

    The Oscar ceremony (www.oscar.com) will take place in Los Angeles February 22.