Thomas Small

Thomas W. Small is an American  artist who has worked on four of the Star Trek feature films. He was an assistant sound editor on, after which he supervised the foley editing on , , and.

Small was born in Bathesda, Maryland. His career began in the late 1980s when he worked as an assistant sound editor on the action film Blind Fury (starring Terry O'Quinn and Noble Willingham, with Meg Foster and Charles Cooper). In 1989, he began working at Buena Vista Sound, where he assisted in the sound editing of such films as the box office hit Pretty Woman (featuring Jason Alexander and Dey Young).

By 1991, Small joined the sound department at Paramount Pictures. He continued serving as an assistant sound editor at first, with his early credits including The Addams Family and its 1993 sequel, Addams Family Values (both featuring Christopher Lloyd and Carel Struycken), the 1992 comedy Wayne's World, and the 1994 action thriller Clear and Present Danger (featuring Harris Yulin, Raymond Cruz, Ellen Geer, Reg E. Cathey, Vaughn Armstrong, John Putch, Michael Jace, Cameron Thor, Harley Venton, and Elizabeth Dennehy).

After Star Trek Generations, Paramount promoted Small from assistant sound editor to foley editor. In this position, he worked on such films as Tommy Boy (featuring Zach Grenier and Julie Warner), Virtuosity (featuring Louise Fletcher), Primal Fear (featuring Alfre Woodard, Terry O'Quinn, Tony Plana, Kenneth Tigar, and Christopher Carroll), and The Phantom (featuring Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Bill Smitrovich, Samantha Eggar, and Leon Russom). He was then promoted to supervising sound editor, and was first credited as such in 1996's Harriet the Spy (featuring Robert Joy).

Small has supervised the foley editing for numerous Paramount hits over the past 14 years. Among these are Mission: Impossible II (co-written by Brannon Braga and Ronald D. Moore, photographed by Jeffrey L. Kimball) and Mission: Impossible III (directed by J.J. Abrams and co-written by Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci), Four Brothers (featuring Fionnula Flanagan), The Italian Job (featuring Boris Lee Krutonog), The Sum of All Fears (starring James Cromwell and Bruce McGill), Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (executive produced by Stuart Baird and edited by Dallas Puett), Face/Off (featuring Harve Presnell and John Carroll Lynch), and the Academy Award-winning megahit Titanic (co-starring David Warner).

In 2007, Small started doing foley editing for Walt Disney films in addition to his work with Paramount. His work for Disney so far has included Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, G-Force, and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. He has also done foley work on films for other studios, such as American Wedding for Universal Pictures and Sex and the City for New Line Cinema.

Small has been nominated for eight Golden Reel Awards by his guild, Motion Picture Sound Editors. He received his first nomination, and thus far his only win, for his work on Titanic. He shared the award with fellow Star Trek foley editors Scott Curtis and Tammy Fearing. Small has since been nominated for Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow, the aforementioned Mission: Impossible II (both of which were also shared with Curtis and Fearing), Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, The Italian Job, Team America: World Police, Mission: Impossible III, and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End.