It’s the stuff of movie dreams.
At the tender age of 19, movie-obsessed Singaporean sound editor Ai-Ling Lee decamped for Hollywood, armed only with some audio engineering training and a handful of local commercial gigs, intent on breaking into the mostly male-dominated world of film sound work.
She papered the town with letters to studio brass, asking for the chance to simply sit in during post-production, all the better to learn her chosen craft from the ground up.Two decades, two Oscar nominations, and an enviable assortment of projects later, Lee’s persistence has paid off.
With her Best Sound Editing nod for her work on “La La Land,” she became the only Asian woman (so far!) to be nominated in the category.
Even sweeter: the nomination was in tandem with her frequent partner Mildred Iatrou Morgan, making the duo the only all-female team to ever snag a spot in the category.
Read full article