Mark Mangini Wiki: 5 Facts To Know About The 'Mad Max: Fury Road' Sound Technician

Mark Mangini’s impressive portfolio of well-known films and Oscar nominations has allowed him to amass a net worth of approximately $53 Million at the end of 2017. His net worth is sure to continue to increase, as he will most certainly grow as a sound director following is 2018 Oscar nomination for 'Blade Runner 2049'. He is also a member of professional groups including the Screen Actor's Guild, The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers, and the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. Mark Mangini self-admittedly dropped out of college to pursue a career that relates to his passion for music and sound rather than the foreign language degree he was attending college for. In fact, his first job was doing animated shows and films with Hanna Barbera. While many people report taking the same path, Mark Mangini is one of the examples of someone who became wildly successful in doing so.

Mark Mangini's portfolio includes sci-fi films such as 'Mad Max: Fury Road,' 'Blade Runner 2049,' and 'The Fifth Element,' dramas like 'The Rum Diary' and '500 Days of Summer,' and family movies including the Disney classics 'Aladdin and The Lion King', and 'The Flintstones: On The Rocks.' His ability to create the sound for so many different genres of films is a clear indicator of why he is so successful and sought-out by directors in Hollywood. It seems, however, that Mark Mangini's preference is for science fiction films, as those are by far the most successful and well-known films he has worked on, and they fill the majority of his career. Mark Mangini's comedy portfolio is not to be overlooked, either. It includes most recently the film 'Fist Fight', which features Ice Cube and Charlie Day in a school-yard fight. Mark Mangini was the supervising sound editor and created many of the great moments during the film.

During a keynote speech, Mark Mangini expressed that he resents being categorized merely in the technology department or labelled a sound technician, because it minimizes the creative aspect of his role and his artistry. Certainly, he is deserving of the title preference, as his 2018 Oscar nomination shows. He is passionate about improving the roles and impressions of future sound directors and conductors, as he insists that sound directing is much like being a musical artist. Mark Mangini contributes this belief to his background as a musician growing up.

He couldn't be more right in his frustrations. Many sounds that you hear in the movies are not made during filming, as cameras don't often pick up sounds as clearly as they need to be for a film to have a successful sound during certain scenes. The sound directors, supervisors, technicians and other members of the sound team are responsible for finding ways to either record or create (when necessary) the sounds that will fit in the scenes. These sounds must also create the mood the director is looking for within each particular scene. Many hours are spent coming up with ideas for sounds, designing the scenes and lining up the sounds to fit them. Once all of that is done it's finally time to record them. After all of that is finished the team still needs to edited more than once to make the sounds fit the film. These tasks are not just cut-and-paste activities, and the people performing them must have an excess of creativity and drive to make the films they're working on great! Mark Mangini is an excellent example of that.

Mark Mangini utilizes a hands-on approach when leading his sound teams, joining them in discovering and recording new sounds and playing with different tools. For' Blade Runner 2049,' he even utilized natural events by going outside in the rain to record for a scene. Normally this is not the expected behavior for a man with a $53 Million net worth, but it seems to explain how Mark Mangini became so successful in his craft. Surely Mark Mangini's efforts and leadership style are appreciated by the teams working with him on his films.

Mark Mangini has held guest lectures at various sound schools, and frequents podcasts and regularly participates in interviews. His craft is expressed throughout these different media outlets and allows him to influence future sound enthusiasts to become conductors of their own projects someday. Surely Mark Mangini is looked up to by many sound technicians as an influence in their careers. Notably, Mark Mangini appeared for the LA Sound Group discussing his career and his process. He conducted it primarily as a Q&A segment so that listeners could truly dig into the information he had to offer. The introduction he gave to his career provided a grand description of what it is that a sound designer does, and how instrumental the sound in a film is for creating the intended effects on the audiences. He also talked about interesting facts that even those pursuing these types of career may not have known about the job.