In Contention

Tag: Best Sound Mixing

  • Surrounded

    I would love to have attended last week’s Dolby seminar “Surrounded: 7.1 Cinema and Beyond.” I’ve been eager to read more about it, but unfortunately it seems the press that did attend haven’t bothered covering it in any real fashion (unless I’m missing something). Leave it to the folks at SoundWorks Collection to cut out the middle man and give us a direct hook-up.

    As more and more movies begin to use 7.1 mixing, the conversation is worth amping up (no pun intended). This year’s “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” is the sterling recent example of the dynamic possibilities at hand. While everyone is obsessed with 3D and candy for the eyes, there is a lot of candy for the ears with stuff like this.

    I haven’t been able to set aside an hour to watch the panel myself yet, but I will as soon as I can. For now, I’ll offer it up for you here. Again, thanks to the SoundWorks Collection for great legwork, as usual. Check it out for yourself after the jump.

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  • On the sound of ‘Transformers: Dark of the Moon’

    I think “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” will be back for the full trio of Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing and Best Visual Effects at the Oscars this year, after the franchise’s second installment managed only one of those. The sound work in particular is once again top notch, one of the most carefully sculpted and edited aural experiences I’ve heard in a theater.

    Erik Aadahl, Peter Devlin, Jeff Haboush, Greg P. Russell, Gary Summers and Ethan Van der Ryn, among others, were all back to their respective duties creating the soundscape of the film, and as always, the Soundworks Collection has done a wonderful job bringing that task to light.

    In an accompanying interview of the featurette (which you can check out after the jump), Russell says, “It’s the most ambitious sound film I know, without question, I’ve ever been a part of,” and that’s a pretty bold statement for a guy with his resume.

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  • Another barrier broken?

    Amid the barrage of critical brickbats tossed at Sunday night’s Oscar show — plus the widespread dissatisfaction with certain winners — I didn’t see much mention made of this particular milestone, but it strikes me as worthy of note, particularly a year after Kathryn Bigelow’s history-making Best Director win.

    I’m happy to say that one other category is no longer an all-boys’ club: as part of the technically robust “Inception” team, Lora Hirschberg became the first woman (to my knowledge) to win an Academy Award for Best Sound Mixing.

    Hirschberg shared the award with colleagues Gary Rizzo and Ed Novick, with whom she also scored her first nod two years ago for “The Dark Knight.” (The Cinema Audio Society has been more generous to her over years: dating back to “The Horse Whisperer” in 1998, she has amassed six nominations, if no wins, from that group.)

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  • TECH SUPPORT: ‘Inception’ dominates below the line

    So, the morning after a terrible prediction record at this year’s Oscars, I’ll try to make some sense of what the Academy told us, and what it means for the crafts artists we got to know along the circuit this year.

    As the evening went on, many people began to wonder if “The Social Network” would triumph in Best Picture. While Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall managed to take Best Film Editing (on their second nomination), the very deserved win for Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross in Best Original Score was somewhat surprising. The work trumped Alexandre Desplat for “The King’s Speech,” despite the latter film’s wins in the major categories. Desplat, with four nominations under his belt, could now be considered due, I think.  (Alas, Tom Hooper’s later win for Best Director removed doubts about the Best Picture winner.)

    The Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing and Best Visual Effects categories unsurprisingly went to “Inception,” making Oscar winners of Nolan’s usual crew of Lora Hirschberg, Gary Rizzo, Ed Novick, Richard Kind, Paul Franklin, Chris Corbould, and company. I congratulate them and wish them the best for “The Dark Knight Rises.”

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  • How ‘Salt’ could surprise and win Best Sound Mixing

    I stopped researching somewhere in the 1970s, but as far as I can tell going back that far, the Best Sound Mixing (formerly Best Sound) category has never included more than three Best Picture nominees. In a number of cases there were two, a great many years saw one and often enough, there were none.

    So there’s a theory worth addressing. But before I get to that, first and foremost, the safe money in the category is on “Inception.” However, there should be a bit of pause because the film did not resonate with the Academy enough to land two key nominations (Best Director and Best Film Editing) and it flew over many heads. But it’s the loud blockbuster of the bunch and ought to be considered the frontrunner.

    That having been said, when you think of the reality of the Oscars, the winner ballots are largely filled out in blocks of support, sometimes even mandated from on high (no joke). So there are six Best Picture nominees that aren’t represented in the Best Sound Mixing category, and the last thing in-house supporters of those films will want to do is check off a box for a competitor and add to another film’s momentum. The only vote that wouldn’t put wind in anybody else’s sails? “Salt.”

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  • ‘True Grit’ wins CAS

    The second industry organization of the night has announced, and as a tip of the hat to the SoundWorks Collection (which reported the news via Twitter), I figured I’d offer up their custom profile of the film. I knew there was some complaining about the “Inception” mix in the sound community, but I don’t know that it’ll stretch to the Academy at large, which will still likely go the route of the big blockbuster. But it’s very much between these two films.

    Our Oscar Guide on this year’s Best Sound Mixing category can be found here.

  • Predict the weekend in societies

    Anne and I will be briefly previewing the American Cinema Editors and Cinema Audio Society awards in tomorrow’s Oscar Talk, and maybe a little Motion Picture Sound Editors thrown in to boot.  All three will be announcing winners this weekend, while members of the Costume Designers Guild will put a bow on the guild season Tuesday night when they present their awards.

    So, let’s start with the editors.  It’s one of the oldest industry organizations, going all the way back to 1961, and this year marks its 50th anniversary.  In that 50 year existence, the Society has awarded the eventual Oscar winner for Best Film Editing 35 times.

    Additionally, 20 times their choice was also reflected in the Academy’s selection of Best Picture of the year (including four instances where the Society awarded a film that did not win Best Film Editing at the Oscars but still won Best Picture).

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  • On the sound of ‘The King’s Speech’

    In today’s Oscar Guide, I addressed one of the biggest surprises of this year’s slate of below-the-line Oscar nominees: “The King’s Speech” being recognized for Best Sound Mixing. It’s easily attributable to sweeping love for the film, but I tried to give some context for why sound is actually integral to the experience of the film in some way.

    Today, the good folks at SoundWorks Collection, in lieu of one of their custom profiles on the sonic construction of the film, have offered up a dense interview with production sound mixer John Midgley. Midgley has worked on films such as “Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace,” “Hotel Rwanda” and “Children of Men,” and in the interview, he actually touches on some of the points I made in the piece.

    Head on over to SoundWorks Collection to check out the full interview — a hefty 30 minutes’ worth — or watch the embed after the jump. It provides a lot of insight into a process that, even if it doesn’t appear award-worthy to the layman, deserves a great deal of respect nevertheless.

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  • OSCAR GUIDE: Best Sound Mixing

    I feel like we’ve done a pretty decent job of educating some of our readership on the difference between Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing over the last five years here at In Contention. It struck me that we haven’t really covered it in a focused way this season, and the Oscar Guide seems as good a place as any to recap.

    Sound editing, which we covered Friday, concerns the manifestation of artificial sound effects and the overall manipulation of the sonic identity of a film. Sound mixing concerns the balance of those various elements, in addition to music and dialogue, as well as the on-the-set maintenance of production audio. This year’s slate was an eyebrow-raising one to say the least.

    The nominees are:

    “Inception” (Lora Hirschberg, Gary A. Rizzo and Ed Novick)
    “The King’s Speech” (Paul Hamblin, Martin Jensen and John Midgley)
    “Salt” (Jeffrey J. Haboush, Greg P. Russell, Scott Millan and William Sarokin)
    “The Social Network” (Ren Klyce, David Parker, Michael Semanick and Mark Weingarten)
    “True Grit” (Skip Lievsay, Craig Berkey, Greg Orloff and Peter F. Kurland)

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  • 2/11 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Franco couldn’t care less, love letter to Annette Bening, Hammond polls voters

    • James Franco: “If it’s the worst show in the history of the Oscars, who cares?”  I love this guy. [Screening Room]

    • David Poland on how the Academy is missing a golden opportunity by essentially banning Banksy from the ceremony.  Not that Banksy would even humor his suggestions, but still. [The Hot Blog]

    • Nick Davis writes a big ole’ love letter to Annette Bening.  (More on her in today’s Oscar Talk.) [Nick’s Flick Picks]

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  • TECH SUPPORT INTERVIEW: ‘Salt’ sound re-recording mixer Greg P. Russell and ‘Unstoppable’ supervising sound editor Mark P. Stoeckinger

    When Oscar voters spoke up last Tuesday, two intriguing craft category nominations stuck out, both coming from the same branch: Mark P. Stoeckinger’s third bid to date for the sound editing of “Unstoppable” and Greg P. Russell’s fourteenth — yes, fourteenth — for the sound mixing of “Salt.”

    The Academy’s sound branch consists of 405 members, enough to be the fourth-largest voting block of the organization.  Including Best Picture, they have three opportunities on a nominations ballot to make their voices heard, as opposed to the usual two for other disciplines.

    It seemed a good idea to sit down with these two lone representatives of their films, given that they were ushered into the race by the same community (and hey, they share a middle initial).  Both are also coming off of nominations last year.

    After one of the most intricate jobs of his career on “Star Trek” in 2009, Stoeckinger was fortunate to work with both Ridley Scott (“Robin Hood”) and his brother Tony (“Unstoppable”) for the first time this year.  “They’re similar in that sound is an important tool for their film-going experience, for sure,” he says.  “And they’re amazingly creative guys.”

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Analyzing the nominees

    So the 83rd Annual Academy Award nominations were finally announced this week, and I did fairly well in handicapping the nominees. Outside of Best Sound Mixing, I never missed more than one nominee in a category. Unfortunately, there were no categories where I scored 100% (apart from Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay). Oh well.

    The massive overall tally for “The King’s Speech” resulted from a plethora of nominations in the crafts fields. “True Grit” and “Inception” got all but one plausible tech nomination (with one very notable exception for each, discussed below). “TRON Legacy”’s tally, on the other hand, has got to be considered a disappointment as must, to a lesser extent, those of “Black Swan” and “127 Hours.” The complete shut-out for “Shutter Island” was also somewhat of a surprise, but other branches saw fit to make Oscar nominees of some unlikely titles.

    Regardless, it was nice to see many deserving crafts artists get their due. With the throat-clearing out of the way, I’ll now give short reactions to – and previews of – each below-the-line field.

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Final analysis, part one

    It seems hard to believe that it’s been more than six months since I wrote this year’s introductory Tech Support column ( a dissection of the art direction race). Much has changed since then, naturally, as we are less than a week away from the big day when we find out the nominees for the Oscars this year. Today, I take a final look at the music categories, sound categories and the two categories that have been narrowed down to seven finalists – Best Visual Effects and Best Makeup.

    BEST MAKEUP

    In this utterly bizarre category, virtually any combination of the seven finalists would fail to surprise me as the final three. That said, I’ve had the same top two predicted all year and see no reason to change now: “Alice in Wonderland” and “The Wolfman.” The former had massive box office and very noticeable makeup, whereas the latter is exactly the sort of movie that tends to score here and nowhere else.

    Logic may put “True Grit” or “The Fighter” next in line due to their Best Picture contender status. But as much as these films are loved, they don’t have as showy makeup as the other finalists, and this is a category that often doesn’t care how films are received overall.

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  • FIRST-HALF FYC: Below-the-line standouts

    For the penultimate installment in our reflection on the most Oscar-worthy achievements from the largely forgotten first half of 2010’s release calendar, I’m backtracking away from the major categories to the place I should perhaps have started: the technical sphere.

    Had I thought to start this column 20-odd weeks in advance of nomination day, I could have given each craft category the attention it deserves — though if I’m being honest, picking five outstanding Best Sound Editing contenders from the year’s first six months wouldn’t be the easiest of tasks.

    As it stands, I’ve arrived at an admittedly drastic compromise: singling out five individual technical contributions, across the range of categories, that made a particularly strong impression. With such a doubly curtailed brief, the list of painfully excised honorable mentions inevitably runs very long indeed, so I’ll jump straight in with a few of them.

    As much as “Shutter Island” didn’t work for me as a whole, it delivered considerable rewards as a craft showcase: I was particularly tempted to include Dante Ferretti’s art direction, which will likely find its way to Oscar recognition without my help.

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  • ‘Shutter Island,’ ‘Social Network’ surprise with Cinema Audio Society, ‘TRON’ snubbed

    The immediately striking thing about this year’s slate of nominees from the Cinema Audio Society (which honors sound mixing) is the appearance of “Shutter Island.” This is the film’s second below-the-line guild citation in as many days (following an Art Directors Guild nomination yesterday).

    If it had managed a PGA nomination earlier this week, I’d be saying, “Watch out.”  But the crafts are what were going to help this film along, if anything.  Just remember, there’s a 10th Best Picture slot somewhat up for grabs and there is always the “steak eaters” theory (however overstressed) to consider.  People in the industry do like the film, though maybe for its parts more than their sum.

    The second thing that’s striking is “The Social Network” making it in.  Though that shouldn’t be too unexpected.  It’s an amazing mix from veteran craftsmen.  But could this be the “Finding Neverland” or “Babel” of this year’s slate?  It’s possible.  (Check back later this morning for more on that as today’s Tech Support interview includes sound mixers Ren Klyce and Michael Semanick.)

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  • On the sound of ‘Black Swan’

    One of the most under-appreciated (I think) aspects of Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan” this year is the sound design. It’s a film that evokes not just an atmosphere but an overall experience, and a lot of that has to do with booming Tchaikovsky as well as suggestive aural effects.

    So, leave it to the wonderful folks at SoundWorks Collection to illuminate these aspects of the film for us all. Sound designer and supervising sound editor Craig Henighan is interviewed in the clip, explaining the process of developing the overall sonic identity of the film.

    I really hope the film can get some respect for these elements because I think a lot of that has plenty to do with what is effective in the film and what you take away once left entirely breathless by it. Have a look at SC’s profile on the film (perhaps my favorite one yet) after the jump.

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  • On the sound of ‘TRON Legacy’

    For me, “TRON Legacy” is all about what you hear, and how you hear it.  The team at Skywalker Sound did a hell of a job creating a dynamic and unique aural environment.  In my opinion, it’s tops in both sound categories for the year.

    So, naturally, I delighted in the SoundWorks Collection’s recent piece built around the principals on the crew, led by the likes of 13-time Oscar nominated sound re-recording mixer Christopher Boyes and supervising sound editor Gwendolyn Yates Whittle, herself a nominee last year for “Avatar.”

    I’m holding out hope that the Academy at large can recognize this achievement over “Inception,” because it’s frankly a more involved and distinctive piece of work.  Check out the SoundWorks Collection’s focus on the work, featuring interviews with Whittle, sound designer Steve Boeddeker and re-recording mixer Gary Rizzo, after the jump.  (And yeah, there’s some Daft Punk talk.)

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  • WEEKLY WRAP: Holiday cheer and seasonal grousing

    • Calmed by the holiday spirit, this week’s Off the Carpet column took stock of the season, and gave thanks where appropriate.

    • The Long Shot looked at the number of one-time rebel auteurs in this year’s Oscar race, and wondered if awards glory comes at the expense of creative edge.

    • Life Without Oscar highlighted a pair of mid-90s majors, one from a filmmaker who wouldn’t go unacknowledged by the Academy for long.

    • We interviewed Jeremy Renner, still basking in the glow of his first Oscar nod, and shooting for a second with “The Town.”

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