Soundelux co-founder Lon Bender has left that company to join aggressive upstart the Formosa Group.
Bender is an Oscar winning supervising sound editor and sound designer. He is the twelfth artist to join Formosa Group since the company was launched in 2013 and began luring talent. Among them are the team of Karen Baker Landers and Per Hallberg, who also left Soundelux for Formosa Group.
“I think the strongest draw for me to Formosa is the community of creative people, both supervisors and editors as well as support staff, said Bender. “I think they have a community of people that are all engaged together.”
Formosa Group’s roster includes Landers, who is the first woman to ever win two Oscars in the sound categories (“Skyfall,” “The Bourne Ultimatum”); Landers’ professional partner Hallberg, a three-time Oscar winner; and Odin Benitez, who is nominated for a Golden Reel Award for his work on “Frozen.” Formosa Group’s artists have a combined total of 13 Oscar nominations, 6 BAFTA nominations and 28 Golden Reel Awards.
Of his decision to leave Soundelux, Bender told Variety: “It was a long process of making a decision to leave and start a new phase in my professional life. I felt like that company that was Soundelux had built itself to a pinnacle and to its highest level, and I was very happy to be a part of that, and I wanted to do a similar thing and contribute my expertise to something new and start to build something new again.”
Bender said he is looking forward to “a much more integrated environment between editorial and mixing.”
Formosa Group recently launched a new music editorial division. It is located in The Lot Studios (the former Warner Hollywood, originally the United Artists lot) in West Hollywood.
