Ryan Cormier

The News Journal

Please forgive Delaware native David Acord if it’s all still a little too much. This past month has been a whirlwind.

First, the San Francisco-based sound editor watched as his most recent film, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” smashed box office records around the world.

Then, the stormtrooper he voiced became a worldwide internet meme for his fight scene with “traitor” stormtrooper Finn.

To top it all off, Acord’s biggest moment came last week when the University of Delaware and Salesianum School graduate earned his first Academy Award nomination for sound editing alongside fellow "Star Wars" editor Matthew Wood.

“On the morning of the nomination, my wife and I went to breakfast and there was just a lot of stunned silence,” says Acord, 44. “I’m still floored by it to be honest.”

It wasn’t until recently that Acord discovered all the online love for his stormtrooper, officially known as FN-2199, but nicknamed TR-8R by fans due to his call of “traitor” in the film.

Across social media, gifs of the stormtrooper began springing up with funny captions with fans calling him the surprise breakout star of the film.

Not only does Acord’s stormtrooper have a truly bad-ass weapon in the spinning, lightsaber-resistant Z6 baton, but his fight with Finn ends with help from Han Solo himself, played by the returning Harrison Ford.

He didn't know "that stormtrooper" was a thing until LucasFilm creative executive/in-house “Star Wars” geek Pablo Hidalgo called, he says.

“I have to admit, I still don’t quite understand it,” Acord says of the viral meme. “But it's the first time Luke’s lightsaber is ignited, it’s basically the first swordfight in the movie and it’s a fight with stormtroopers, which is unusual.

“Stormtroopers in the movies end up being a lot of cannon fodder, so having a stormtrooper who is actually kicking ass might make people go, ‘Whoa, who’s that guy?’ That’s the only thing I can figure because otherwise it’s a little strange.”

In fact, Acord voices two characters in the film. In addition to the enraged stormtrooper, he voiced Tito, the small creature on the armored elephant-like luggabeast who tried to steal the BB-8 droid with a net before Rey steps in.

When he was asked to do the voice last year, Acord had been trying to learn a little Thai ahead of a trip to Thailand and decided to use it.

“I took one syllable from this word and paired it with a syllable from another, free-styling it,” says Acord, who will begin work soon on “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” the first Walt Disney Studios-helmed “Star Wars” feature spin-off set in the same universe.

While recording lines for Tito, Acord’s Delaware roots rushed to the forefront.

As a big Philadelphia Eagles fan, he began to throw in names of Eagles players. If you listen closely, he says you can hear him say “Celek” as in Eagles tight end Brent Celek and “Fletcher” in a nod to Eagles defensive end Fletcher Cox.

“I just started throwing those Eagles players in there and it made it. It stuck,” says Acord, originally from Glasgow, who remembers seeing the original “Star Wars” at the Elkton, Maryland, drive-in theater from the backseat of his parent’s car as a young boy.

Long before he was sneaking the names of Eagles players into iconic films, Acord got his start in movies in 1995 after studying film theory, photography and English at UD.

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He fondly remembers English and film professor Tom Leitch as being particularly helpful -- someone he could talk film with after class and someone who bluntly warned him about the realities of the film world.

“He was a wealth of knowledge and when I told him I wanted to get into the film business, he was very honest about the odds of that happening,” Acord says.

When Acord left UD, he began “shot-gunning” his resume to film companies all over the world and eventually got his first job with a film company based in Philadelphia working as an intern in the art department. At the time, director Terry Gilliam was in town filming the Bruce Willis movie “Twelve Monkeys” and that became Acord’s first credit.

He stayed on with the company, eventually joining its sound crew. By 1997, he had met his future wife Barbara and moved to California, landing a gig at LucasFilm’s Skywalker Sound in 2001 – a job that has led to him editing sound for plenty of “Star Wars” products, including "Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones,” “Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith” and scores of episodes of spin-off television series like “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” and “Star Wars Rebels.” He also remastered sound on the first three “Star Wars” films for its DVD re-release.

After applying, Acord was interviewed at Skywalker Sound by Matthew Wood, who he is now nominated for an Oscar with. When Wood was announced as the supervising sound editor for “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” he turned to Acord to be his partner since Acord was very familiar with the sounds of “Star Wars."

“It all amounted to a ‘Star Wars’ sound school in a way,” he says. “You can say I’ve cut my fair share of lightsaber duels.”

And, no, showing up to work at Skywalker Sound at LucasFilm’s Skywalker Ranch never gets old, he happily reports.

“It’s really idyllic up here. There’s a whole pastoral thing going on and it has its own working farm, fire house and inn,” he says. “The building where I work has mixing stages and edit rooms, but they’re all sort of tucked away so it looks almost like a ski lodge on the inside. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen at anyone else’s workplace. I feel so lucky to be here.”

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Even though he’s been based in California for years, Acord still comes back to Delaware regularly to visit his parents Jerry and Marianne, who now live in Millsboro. In fact he was here only days after the latest “Star Wars” was released to spend Christmas with his family, including his brother who lives in Newark.

“Seeing scrapple on the menu really warms my heart,” he jokes about his Delaware visits.

It is there in Millsboro where you will find Acord’s biggest two fans in the world. No matter the film, if Acord did the sound and it’s playing at Rehoboth Beach’s Movies at the Midway, Jerry and Marianne Acord will be there to see it.

And there have been plenty. Acord has worked on sound for TV and film for nearly 20 years, lending his talents to everything from “Guardians of the Galaxy” and “Star Trek into Darkness” to “Avengers: Age of Ultron” and “Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith."

“We see them all. And we are inevitably the last people in the theater outside of the guy sweeping the floor,” says Jerry Acord, who moved to Millsboro from the Glasgow area after retiring from General Motors a dozen years ago. “We always wait until we see his name in the credits and cheer before we leave.”

Acord’s Academy Award nomination for Best Sound Editing accounts for one of the film’s five Oscar nominations -- all of which are for music or sound.

So with Acord’s category as part of the televised broadcast in front of millions of viewers, is it possible that Delaware could get an Academy Award shout-out?

Acord isn’t making any promises just yet: “We’ll see how much time we have. I don’t know how that works. If we win, there are two of us speaking, so we’ll see. We might have to do a coin toss to see who gets to talk.”

Contact Ryan Cormier of The News Journal at rcormier@delawareonline.com or (302) 324-2863. Follow him on Facebook (@ryancormier), Twitter (@ryancormier) and Instagram (@ryancormier).