With eight nominations, the Canadian film “Arrival” finally won best sound editing at the last Oscar ceremony. This is an amazing award for the whole film team, including Tom Randaxhe, from Herve (Wallonia), who was in charge of the special effects.
Sylvain Bellemaere, from Quebec, received the Oscar statuette on stage at the ceremony on February 26th, as the movie was awarded for its excellent sound editing quality. The whole team is rewarded through this award of course. “Our movie was nominated for 8 categories; this is the most important thing to remember. It shows that it’s one of the top 5 movies shot in the world in 2016”, explains Tom Randaxhe.
Tom Randaxhe graduated from the Inraci school in Brussels in 2011 and then quickly worked for the Belgian national broadcaster RTBF as a freelance editor, before working on several movie productions that enabled him to discover Belgian post-production, including at Dame-Blanche in Genval, Studio l’Equipe in Brussels and Mikros Image in Liège.
After a co-production Belgium-Québec, he decided to make an old dream come true and to go and live in Canada. After a year working freelance as an assistant-editor in Montréal, he was asked to collaborate on the visual effects for Denis Villeneuve’s movie “Arrival”. “I was hired to work on the special effects”, explains Tom Randaxhe. “They are very important as they represent 20 % of the budget”.
This job took him a year: three months working on the set and the rest in post-production. Today, Tom Randaxhe has just finished a contract as first assistant on a US TV series directed by Jean-Marc Vallée, called “Big Little Lies”, that has been on air on HBO for a few weeks.
That’s a career to keep an eye on!