Mount Kisco Resident Up for an Oscar

Mount Kisco's William "Billy" Sarokin has been in film production for more than three decades. This year, he could very well add an Academy Award to his biography. He is part of a group that has been nominated for Best Achivement in Sound Mixing for the 2010 movie Salt, which stars Angelina Jolie.

"I was totally shocked when I heard about the nomination," Sarokin wrote. "I had no idea it had even been put up for consideration by the studio." He added that he felt like winning the lottery, recounting when he found out about the nomination.

"I was on set of my current film shooting at the cafe in Battery Park," he explained," "We were shooting a take when one of the producers, Donna Gigliotti sat by my sound cart with a huge grin.  As soon as the take finished she told me."

Sarokin's career has taken him to many movies and TV shows, including American Gangster, Sex and the City and Munich, according to his IMDb profile. His long resume is the product of a career that began when he finished school in 1977, with his first few years involving "gopher" work on TV commercials. He said that he also worked on documentaries, such as Simpson Street in 1979, and Housing Court in 1982. His career headed into the sound direction due to the difficulty in finding people to do it for his documentaries, he explained.

Sarokin's connection to Mount Kisco began when he moved to the area in 1991, from Greenwich Village. He said that he loves the town and before moving he was looking for a place to raise a family, which Mount Kisco won "hands down." Sarokin added that early in his career he decided to stay in the New York area instead of doing mixing in Los Angeles. He also feels that productions in New York match the character of the city.

In his work, Sarokin usually spends about two to four months, from start to finish. This includes many phases, such as "pre production, tech scouting, production and tech meetings," he explained. When asked which of his works he felt were the most rewarding, Sarokin noted American Gangster and Inside Man, due to their fast-paced shoots, as well as talented and demanding directors.

In the space of Sarokin's career, he also discussed how technology has changed.

"Some of the equipment has changed a lot and for the better," he wrote. "We have much more capability in a smaller and lighter sound cart.  But the overall skills needed have not changed and the microphones themselves have changed very little."

With a long career, Sarokin still finds himself getting star struck, noting he has had crushes on celebrities such as Angelina Jolie, Kim Cattrall and Charlize Theron. However, he finds that celebs are surrounded by people on set, "who mostly treat them like other somewhat normal hard working people."

Going forward, Sarokin is working on a movie called I Don't Know How She Does It, which he described as being about a young family "Trying to have it all." It stars Sarah Jessica Parker, Pierce Brosnan and Christina Hendricks, and is slated to open in 2012.