GLORIA BORDERS

Borders is currently working on the production of Titanic, Contact, Hercules, and The Lost World: Jurassic Park.

Vice-president/general manager of Skywalker Sound is a high-profile job with immense challenges. But it's not as if Gloria's unprepared. She has supervised some of the biggest films of the past decade, including Forrest Gump and Terminator 2, for which she won an Oscar.

Borders grew up in New Jersey, about an hour outside of Manhattan and rather typically was introduced to audio through going to every rock'n'roll show possible. "One foot away from the speakers at Alice Cooper," she laughs. She did play piano for five years, and clarinet for two, and then in her junior year of high school began taking documentary film-making classes. Rock concerts gave way to trips to New York with a Super 8 camera and a cassette deck. "I used to love to go into the city and just tape all types of city sounds - the homeless in the Bowery, or the colorful characters on 42nd Street," she says. "A little girl with a tape deck. That was probably one of the first thing that got me going on sound."

After two years of pre-law at the University of San Francisco, she switched majors and transferred to San Francisco State University to pursue a career in film-making, with dreams of becoming a picture editor. Fresh out of school Borders landed a sound editing job in Burlingame, California, at a documentary house run by Lee Mandelsohn, who also happened to make the Charles Schulz "Peanuts" animated cartoons. She credits that stint, largely, with her development as an editor, supervisor and now a general manager. "They would cut the picture, hand the sound over to me, and everybody would go on a trip to Hawaii and say, 'See you in a week on the dub stage,'" she recalls. "I would have a week to do the soundtrack all by myself. It was a great way to learn how to work with sound and how to make a soundtrack, one that I don't think you have today."

Borders's big break came when she was working on documentaries and she met a women who was Ben Burt's assistant on "Jedi." I had never worked in features before and just said, "Do you guys need an any help?" The woman invited her to come on up and she became the dialog assistant on "Jedi." "It was an incredible opportunity. It usually never happens that way." At the end of cutting some of the "Jedi" production dialog, she had some extra time on her hands. Someone said, "Well, why don't you cut the final climactic scene between Luke and Darth Vader, the final sword battle." Borders said, "Fine, let's go," and sat down and cut the last battle of effects. Everyone sort of said, "Omigosh, who is this girl?" Where did she come from?" Then it was just this great, wonderful success. "I don't know where it all came from, but it really did sound great. And I got to know Ben a little bit better. I don't think that would ever happen now; it was just a very, very lucky break."

Now, twelve years later, Gloria Borders runs the entire sound production - not bad for a little girl who began her career with her mini tape deck wandering around New York City. She oversees a five-room-mix facility, including: countless edit bays, transfer rooms, and a scoring stage that has recently hosted such artists as Journey, Ali Akbar Khan, Boz Scaggs, Pearl Jam and Phillip Glass. She says the biggest challenge is to let the world know that Skywalker Sound does not just work on George Lucas movies.

Information contained in this profile was compiled from Skywalker Sound and an interview with Gloria for Mix Magazine, September 1996 by Tom Kenny.

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