The Motion Picture Sound Editors (MPSE) will honor supervising sound editor/sound designer Dane A. Davis, MPSE with its 2024 Career Achievement Award. Davis is known for his Oscar winning work on The Matrix, and for his creative contributions to that film’s sequels and scores of other films and television shows. He will receive the award at the 71st Annual Golden Reel Awards on Sunday, March 3, 2024, at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles.
“With his work on The Matrix, Dane Davis set a new standard for how to use sound to create worlds, add impact to stories, and arouse the emotions of the audience,” said MPSE president Mark Lanza. “Since then, he has continued to innovate across features, animation, television, and other mediums. We are excited to recognize his unique accomplishments with our annual Career Achievement Award.”
The MPSE Career Achievement Award recognizes sound artists who have distinguished themselves by meritorious works as an individual and fellow contributor to the art of sound for feature film, television, and gaming, and for setting an example of excellence for others. Past winners include 2023 recipient Gwendolyn Yates Whittle, Anthony “Chic” Ciccolini, III, Dennis Drummond, Cece Hall, Stephen H. Flick, John Paul Fasal, Harry Cohen, Richard King, Skip Lievsay, Randy Thom, Larry Singer, Walter Murch, and George Watters II.
Davis has been a sound designer and sound editor for more than 40 years with over 180 film, television, and game credits. He founded and helmed Danetracks, a company that produced highly creative sound for a wide range of projects and mentored many passionate young people into careers in postproduction audio through its esteemed internship program. Along with his Oscar for The Matrix, he has won four MPSE Golden Reel Awards (with nine more nominations), alongside a BAFTA Award, and two Emmy Award nominations. A frequent collaborator of the Wachowski sisters, he has supervised sound for all the films in the Matrix series, concluding with Matrix Resurrections in 2021, as well as Speed Racer, Sense8, Bound and Jupiter Ascending. Other recent supervision credits include Reptile, Expats, Retribution, Allen v Farrow, Jupiter’s Legacy, Messiah, The Day the Earth Stood Still, 8-Mile and Ender’s Game. He also contributed sound design to 24 films including Black Adam last year. Early career highlights include Defending Your Life, Cabin in the Woods, Ghost Rider, Gotti, Drugstore Cowboy, Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, Forever Young, Romeo Is Bleeding and Boogie Nights. He is also an accomplished voiceover actor where his credits include Treasure Planet (as the character “Morph”) and The Animatrix.
