In Contention

Tag: Craig Berkey

  • 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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  • OSCAR GUIDE: Best Sound Editing

    A few years back the sound branch did away with the bake-off process of determining its nominees for Best Sound Editing and the field was expanded to five. The visual effects branch followed suit this year and, maybe some day, the makeup branch will do the same.

    The sound branch is unique in that it nominates in two discipline-specific fields. Often there is a considerable cross-over between Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing as a result. The unfortunate thing is that the Academy at large doesn’t understand what quality editorial and mixing is when it comes to these aural areas. Typically they just pick their favorite film and move on to the next category.

    The nominees are:

    “Inception” (Richard King)
    “Toy Story 3” (Tom Myers and Michael Silvers)
    “TRON Legacy” (Gwendolyn Yates Whittle and Addison Teague)
    “True Grit” (Skip Lievsay and Craig Berkey)
    “Unstoppable” (Mark P. Stoeckinger)

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Best Sound Mixing — Volume I

    Last week, while discussing the sound editing category, I explained the difference between that art form and sound mixing.  The Oscar for the latter is shared between two (or more) persons who construct the soundtrack of a movie.  The re-recording mixers bring together everything – dialogue, sound effects, music – into what we hear in the theater.  The production sound mixer is also awarded for capturing the sounds during shooting, an undoubtedly arduous task.

    Many of the films nominated here are also nominated for Best Sound Editing.  In fact, rarely is there more than one film showcased for only one field.  Both categories like loud films, blockbusters and, as always, being a Best Picture contender certainly helps.

    That said, some trends are noticeable between the two categories.  Firstly, the branch has a love of musicals when it comes to sound mixing.  That makes sense, of course, because a musical is fully made by its mix.  Meanwhile, animated films consistently fare better in the sound editing category, which also makes sense given that so much of the sound scape is created separately from production.

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