Roger Jay Pietschmann, a long-time boom operator, sound recordist and mixer for the motion picture industry, has died. He was 71.
He died at his Los Angeles home on July 26, according to an official statement, after a six-year battle with multiple symptom atrophy.
Pietschmann was the third generation of his family employed in the motion picture industry. His career began with Martin Scorsese’s acclaimed “Taxi Driver” in 1976. He then went on to rack up credits on numerous feature films including “Batman Returns,” “Honey, I Blew up the Kid,” “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure” and “Twilight Zone: The Movie.”
Television productions such as “Nature,” “60 Minutes,” “American Masters,” “Family Law,” “The Division,” “Airline,” “Dirt,” “Sleeper Cell” and “Dexter” helped to round out his 37 credits.
In 2006, he received an Emmy nomination for outstanding single-camera sound mixing for a miniseries or a movie for “Sleeper Cell,” and was nominated for the Cinema Audio Society’s outstanding achievement in sound mixing for the same film and “Dexter.”
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Roger Pietschmann’s father, Richard J. Pietschmann Jr., is credited with helping create the milestone multi-track stereophonic sound system for Cinerama and was recordist and mixer for four of those landmark widescreen movies including “This is Cinerama.” His grandfather, Richard J. Pietschmann Sr., was employed in set lighting during the early days of the motion picture industry on both coasts.
Roger Pietschmann graduated from University High School in Los Angeles and attended Santa Monica Community College and the University of California at Long Beach.
He is survived by his wife Andrea, daughter Devin and brother Richard J. Pietschmann the third.
