George Watters II

George Watters II is a two-time Academy Award-winning and six-time Academy Award-nominated sound editor who worked at Paramount Pictures from 1977 through 1992. He worked on under Richard L. Anderson and later supervised the sound editing on, , and. He and fellow Supervising Sound Editor F. Hudson Miller were nominated for an Academy Award for their work on Star Trek VI.

Watters began working as a sound editor for Paramount in 1977. His first project was the 1978 romantic comedy film The One and Only, which starred Kim Darby. This was followed by the 1978 biographical film American Hot Wax and the cult 1979 action/thriller film The Warriors. Watters was then hired to help edit the sound effects for Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

The first Star Trek film began a nearly thirteen-year collaboration between Watters and fellow sound editor Cecelia Hall. They subsequently worked together on such films as Joseph Sargent's Coast to Coast (1980), Mommie Dearest (1981), Airplane II: The Sequel (1982, starring William Shatner), Flashdance (1983, starring Michael Nouri), Terms of Endearment (1983, featuring art direction by Harold Michelson), and Firstborn (1984, starring Teri Garr and Peter Weller).

Watters supervised Hall on Star Trek II, after which they both supervised the sound editing on Star Trek III. They later supervised the sound effects editing for hit Paramount films such as Beverly Hills Cop (1984, starring Eddie Murphy, Jonathan Banks, Steven Berkoff, Michael Champion, and Ronny Cox), Top Gun (1986), and The Hunt for Red October (1990, featuring Timothy Carhart, Daniel Davis, Boris Lee Krutonog, Ned Vaughn, and Star Trek: The Next Generation's Gates McFadden). Their work on the latter two films earned Watters and Hall nominations from the Academy Awards; they won for The Hunt for Red October.

Watters left Paramount in 1992, after working with Hall on one last film, the action thriller Patriot Games. From there, he joined Buena Vista Sound as Supervising Sound Editor. He has worked on over 30 films as part of Buena Vista, receiving Academy Award nominations for Crimson Tide (1995, featuring Earl Billings and Scott Grimes), Armageddon (1998, co-written by J.J. Abrams), and the first two Pirates of the Caribbean films, The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) and Dead Man's Chest (2006). He won an Academy Award (his second) for his work on the 2001 film Pearl Harbor.

He has worked on several films from director Tony Scott: Deja Vu (2006, starring Bruce Greenwood), Domino (2005, featuring Stanley Kamel), Man on Fire (2004), Spy Game (2001), Enemy of the State (1998), and the aforementioned Crimson Tide. He has also frequently worked with director Michael Bay; in addition to the aforementioned Armageddon and Pearl Harbor, Watters and Bay have collaborated on The Rock (1996, featuring Tony Todd) and Bad Boys II (2003).

Watters' other film credits with Buena Vista have included Broken Arrow (1996, starring Christian Slater, Bob Gunton, and Casey Biggs), Con Air (1997, starring Colm Meaney), The Thomas Crown Affair (1999, featuring Fritz Weaver), The Santa Clause 2 (2002, featuring Michael Dorn), National Treasure (2004, featuring Ron Canada, Don McManus, and Christopher Plummer), The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005), and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007).