In Contention

Tag: Ren Klyce

  • 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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  • TECH SUPPORT INTERVIEW: The construction of ‘The Social Network’

    One of the immediately striking things about Aaron Sorkin’s screenplay for “The Social Network” is its assemblage, the manner in which he chose to tell the story with cascading elements of the narrative. And when you bring on a meticulous craftsman like David Fincher to direct a film already detailed in its larval stage, you can bet that the attention to each moving part and how it fits into the whole will be amplified.

    So it is that the construction of “The Social Network” — and the contributions from its below-the-line crew toward those ends — could be the most defining aspect of a film dominating the precursor awards circuit to date.  I recently spoke to film editors Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter, sound mixers Ren Klyce and Michael Semanick and composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross to discuss those various moving parts, as well as their collaboration with a filmmaker who shows great respect for their art forms.

    Wall and Baxter don’t go back all that far with Fincher, believe it or not. They’re first pass on one of his films was 2007’s “Zodiac,” which was largely Wall’s film but Baxter was brought on to help out a bit. “Once I was in there I was difficult to move,” Baxter says.

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  • 11/30 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Nolan circling back, Carpetbagger returns, debating Oscarcast hosts

    • Composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross and sound mixer Ren Klyce talk “The Social Network. [SoundWorks Collection]

    • Patrick Goldstein catches up with the idea that the new Disney is pushing hard for “Toy Story 3,” deems it “crazy,” but smartly warns against chafing. [The Big Picture]

    • Christopher Nolan circles back around as “Inception” readies for home video release. [Wired]

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