Immanuel College alumnus wins Oscar sci-tech award for dialogue software
Marc Specter among 27 recipients honoured by the Academy for lasting technical contributions to filmmaking
Jewish sound editor and Immanuel College alumnus Marc Specter has been named a winner of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Scientific and Technical Awards.
He received a Technical Achievement Award for designing the Kraken Dialogue Editors Toolkit, a software system used by dialogue editors in film and television post-production.
The Academy announced the recipients on Wednesday.
Specter is among 27 individual award winners who will be honoured at the Scientific and Technical Awards ceremony on 28 April at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles.
The Scientific and Technical Awards recognise innovations that have made a lasting contribution to filmmaking and are not tied to work released in a single year.
Explaining the software, Specter told Jewish News: “Kraken was built as a Swiss-army knife toolkit to help with a wide variety of dialogue editing tasks including assembly, editing, transcription and workflow troubleshooting.” The toolkit features an intuitive user interface and transcription-based audio asset management, enabling direct access to edit decision lists and audio session files and helping editors identify and resolve issues more efficiently.
He said the recognition carries personal significance. “I’m delighted to be recognised by the Academy for creating Kraken. The only bittersweet element is that my mum, Rochelle Selwyn (a set designer at the BBC in the 1970s and 1980s), did not live long enough to see this, having died last year.”
Specter developed Kraken independently over many years while working as a dialogue editor in film and television. His screen credits include Baghdad Central, Kill Command, and iBoy. He has also received Emmy, BAFTA and Royal Television Society awards for his work.
Other recipients this year include engineers and technologists recognised for advances in visual effects rendering, animation tools, audio restoration and production safety, including innovations developed at Industrial Light & Magic, Wētā FX, Framestore, DreamWorks Animation and Sony Pictures Imageworks.
In a joint statement, Academy chief executive Bill Kramer and Academy president Lynette Howell Taylor said this year’s recipients’ “extraordinary achievements continue to shape the art and craft of filmmaking”, adding that their innovation and technical excellence have had “a profound impact across our industry”.
Darin Grant and Rachel Rose, co-chairs of the Academy’s Scientific and Technical Awards Committee, said: “This year’s awards celebrate a global community of innovators who solve the industry’s most complex technical challenges. Whether through enhancing the safety of practical effects with lead-free bullet hits or pushing the limits of stop-motion animation and sound restoration, these technologies are now fundamental to the craft.”
The Scientific and Technical Awards have been presented by the Academy since 1931.
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