Sean O'Neil Bio
Sean O’Neil is a Cinema Audio Society (C.A.S.) award winning location sound mixer who loves working on cinéma vérité documentaries, narrative films, episodic television, commercials, sound design, podcast producing, music engineering and composition. After graduating with a degree in filmmaking from New York University he has spent a large part of his career traveling the world recording sound for the acclaimed British Broadcast Corporation’s documentary unit.
Sean was the sound mixer on the Academy Award winning documentary short “The Only Girl in the Orchestra” as well as for the Academy Award nominated feature length documentary “RBG”. He was personally nominated for a British BAFTA award for Best Sound Mixing: Factual for his sound mixing on “David Bowie: The Last Five Years” in addition to being part of the BAFTA winning sound team for “David Bowie: Five Years”. He was awarded the prestigious Cinema Audio Society’s (C.A.S.) Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing for his work on “David Bowie: Finding Fame”. He was previously nominated for another C.A.S award for Outstanding Sound Mixing For Television for his work with Sir Paul McCartney on the documentary “Wingspan” in addition to being on the sound team for the C.A.S. Award winning film “32 Sounds”. He has worked with multiple BAFTA, Emmy, Golden Globe and Sundance Award winners, and has had the privilege of mixing sound for 21 Academy Award nominated or winning filmmakers. They include the late Sydney Pollack and Mike Nichols in addition to Julie Cohen & Betsy West, Laura Poitras, Joe Berlinger, Cynthia Wade, Julie Taymor, Liz Garbus, Kirby Dick, Terri Randall, Ellen Goosenberg Kent, Sam Green, Roman Coppola, Fisher Stevens, Charles Ferguson, Christian Frei, Beth Levison, Molly O’Brien, Roger Ross Williams and Louie Psihoyos.
In addition to his work abroad with the BBC, Sean has worked on documentaries for Al Jazeera Television, Japanese (NHK), Italian (RAI), German (ZDF), Scottish (STV), Irish (RTE), French, and Canadian (CBC) television. In America he routinely works for HBO, PBS, WGBH, WNET, Bill Moyers, Frontline, American Experience, Nova, Discovery, and National Geographic programs among others.
He has engineered musical multi-track performances for Sir Paul McCartney, Bjork, Allen Toussaint, Blossom Dearie, Dr John, The Strypes, Itzhak Perlman, Helen Huang, Mose Allison, Rickie Lee Jones, Steve Earle, and the Jurassic 5.
He served as a sound design consultant for Gulliver’s Gate, a 49,000 square foot indoor interactive amusement park in New York City’s Times Square as well as designing and recording sound effects for video games.
He recorded Ambisonic and Binaural recordings for Sam Green’s immersive live musical performance film “32 Sounds” and “A Film About Listening” about avant-garde composer and sound designer Annea Lockwood.
He was a guest lecturer for Location Sound Recording at New York City’s School of Visual Arts and Hunter College.