Mark Berger

Mark Berger is an adjunct professor in the Department of Film and Media at the University of California, Berkeley, where he developed and has taught the undergraduate course “Film 140: The Sound of Film” since 2000. A distinguished sound engineer, he has served as sound recordist, editor, mixer, and designer on more than 175 feature films and documentaries, including Apocalypse Now, The Right Stuff, Amadeus, The English Patient, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The Godfather Part II, Burden of Dreams, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Blue Velvet, The Mosquito Coast, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Rushmore, The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Royal Tenenbaums, and Munich. Berger earned four Academy Awards for Best Sound for Apocalypse Now (1979), The Right Stuff (1983), Amadeus (1984), and The English Patient (1996), as well as a British Academy Award for Amadeus and a Saturn Award for Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Since 1990, he has rerecorded over 100 feature films at Skywalker Sound.

A UC Berkeley alumnus, Berger received his B.A. in experimental psychology in 1964, having initially intended to major in physics but shifted focus due to interests in perception and involvement in campus activities. Following graduation, he volunteered with the Peace Corps in Colombia for two and a half years and briefly pursued graduate studies in psychology at UCLA before transitioning to documentary radio and film production amid anti-war activism. His professional entry into film sound began with work at KQED on documentaries such as San Francisco Mix and The Place for No Story, which led to collaborations with Walter Murch and Francis Ford Coppola. Beyond Berkeley, Berger has taught extensively on the semantics and application of sound in cinema worldwide, including as a Fulbright Specialist in Chile and the Republic of Georgia, and in Ireland, Peru, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Spain, Israel, Iceland, and Cuba. His Berkeley course explores the psychological science of perception, technological evolution, music, and dialogue in film, providing students with analytical tools to appreciate auditory dimensions of cinema.