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No Oscar but still plenty of awards for Montrose native

Two out of three ain’t bad when its comes to winning prestigious filmmaking awards.

Two out of three ain’t bad when its comes to winning prestigious filmmaking awards.

Especially when one of the recipients grew up in Montrose and graduated high school in Trail.

Charlie O’Shea can forever include BAFTA winner (British equivalent to the American Oscar) for his work as a boom operator on “The Revenant” sound crew. The team took home the win on Feb. 14, and a week later, named Cinema Audio Society (CAS) winner for outstanding achievement in sound mixing for a live-action movie.

But the golden statue eluded the sound mixing team at the Oscars Sunday night, when “The Revenant” lost out to “Mad Max: Fury Road,” during the three-hour Academy Award affair.

O’Shea , a 1981 J.L. Crowe grad, was already on another movie set in Vancouver, the third film in the “Planet of the Apes” series, when he talked with the Trail Times last month.

“I’ve been hacking away at this for 30 years,” he said. “My experience helped me to get the job (“The Revenant”) and have the opportunity to be where we are right now and have these nominations.”

The Vancouver-based sound crew included Chris Duesterdiek, a production sound mixer from Salt Spring Island, and Candice Todesco, a sound assistant O’Shea has worked alongside since the science fiction disaster film, “2012.”

“Most people knew when we got on the movie that there was a high possibility there would be some type of nomination because of DiCaprio (Leonardo DiCaprio, lead actor who won his first Oscar Sunday night),” O’Shea added. “So everyone is kind of riding on the coattails of that.”

Director Alejandro G. Inarritu also won the Oscar for best director, his second consecutive win.

Though he acknowledged being on an Oscar nominated movie was a good addition to his 30-year resume, O’Shea said he didn’t think the recognition would lead to more opportunities - he already has 67 credits to date, according to IMDb (Internet Movie Database).

The lengthy list includes TV series such as “Psych” and “Da Vinci’s Inquest” as well as popular movies like “X-Men: The Last Stand,” “The A-Team,” “Tommorowland,” and “Godzilla.”

“I’ve worked with a sound mixer who was nominated for an Oscar, for the movie “Unforgiven,”” he said, clarifying he wasn’t on that particular sound crew. “You might get a job before someone else, it might get you that,” O’Shea added. “I guess I can say I’ll always be employed - but it’s been a long time invested in the business and it takes time to gain experience.”



Sheri Regnier

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