In my first Tech Support column 15 months ago, I opened by discussing Randy Thom’s acceptance speech of the 2004 sound editing award for “The Incredibles.” Thom remarked how awards like Best Sound Editing are often deemed by the media to be “technical awards” when, in fact, they are awarded for artistic decisions. Bringing to light this articulation has hopefully proven itself to be the purpose of the “Tech Support” column here at In Contention. (And on that note, I sometimes wonder whether this is the best name for the column.)

Last week, I had the chance to speak to Thom and another Hollywood sound editor, Ethan Van der Ryn, about the projects they have in play this season.

A giant in the world of Hollywood sound, Randy Thom won his first Oscar in 1983 for Philip Kaufman’s “The Right Stuff. He has racked up a career nomination total of twelve, and this year, he lends his talents to Brad Bird’s latest film, “Ratatouille,” as well as Robert Zemeckis’ “Beowulf.”

Ethan Van der Ryn is a two-time Oscar winner for “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” and “King Kong,” both from director Peter Jackson. This year, he served as supervising sound editor on Michael Bay’s “Transformers.”

Both craftsmen spoke to their discipline’s somewhat unfortunate “technical” label in the eyes of the public and the media.

“We don’t get hired because we know how to use a computer,” Thom says. “In the process of finding and processing sound, we literally have to make thousands of creative decisions before even putting something in front of a director.”

He suggests that this difference in perception arises from the fact that people think they know what actors and writers do but haven’t the slightest idea about the day-to-day work of other film artists, and because technology is used in certain categories more than others, it is easy to label the crafts categories together as “technical” categories. Yet he ultimately laments that of all the disciplines which the Academy awards, sound is probably the most vulnerable to be labeled as such.

Van der Ryn finds a similar situation, considering the “technical” label to be somewhat bothersome and indicative of a misunderstanding of the art.

“I honestly don’t see how what we do is any more technical than screenwriting,” he says. “There certainly are technical aspects, but I think of what we do as creative as opposed to technical.”

Regardless of semantics, both artists have been busy this year and are likely to find themselves in the hunt for Oscar yet again. Both artists recalled the creative process in which they were engaged on these films.

It is worth noting that, in addition to the aforementioned “Ratatouille” and “Beowulf,” Thom also worked on “The Simpsons Movie,” “Enchanted” and “The Great Debaters” this year. Having just finished 18 months of work on “Beowulf,” the film is still fresh in his mind. He particularly remembers the character of Grendel, which he describes as “the most grotesque humanoid creature you’ve ever seen,” and for which Crispin Glover was the stop-motion actor.

Grendel has a warped mouth, and Thom explains that Glover communicated with screams, growls and other sounds, occasionally blurting out a word in Old English. To capture the audio the sound team ultimately wanted, Thom played with sounds ranging from horses drinking to noises he made with his own mouth.

“Some of that is in the film,” he explains, “but it was one of the cases where we realized that the more we played with it, the more we took away from the wonderful performance that Crispin generated…so we brought him back and pinched his mouth in weird shapes!”

Thom used the dragons in “Beowulf” as an opportunity to expand on synthesis in his work, noting that so little work has been done in that field compared to the visual domain, where companies like Pixar and visual effects houses have made considerable advances.

“We are nowhere near able to do that in sound,” he says. “It is possible to get pretty close to a believable sound, but no one is able to synthesize a human voice in a way that will fool people. It’s much easier to start with real sounds and manipulate them than to start with sign waves.”

Thom predicts that the morphing of creature sounds will be the next real advancement in the field and states that the dragons in “Beowulf” are just an extension of the sound morphing direction he’s been going in.

“You can take a real vocalization of a human voice – say, a scream – and another of a big cat or a horse and run them through a program and have the molding of two sounds into a third sound,” he explains. “It can be pretty random what comes out, but a lot of it is luck and persistence. However, we were able to come up with some sounds for the dragon which I was very proud of.”

Ethan Van der Ryn, meanwhile, fondly remembers some of the more creative sound sources which came to be in “Transformers.” He recalls watching a CNN clip of a pogo stick, for instance, and thinking it looked like fun. So he bought one and later ended up using it as a sound source on the film’s soundtrack. He also managed to use his own defective iPod, which would reconfigure notes into a random mesh-up, such as alien talk. Meanwhile, one of his colleagues accidentally stepped on his garden hose walking home one night – the weird gurgling sound was also used in the movie.

Van der Ryn has worked with director Michael Bay now for the third time (following collaborations on “Armageddon” and “Pearl Harbor”). He says he and Bay “mesh pretty well” and that he was “welcomed into a filmmaking family” on the “Transformers” experience. He says Bay has a great ear for the process, showing an affinity for variety; over 90 percent of the sounds on “Transformers” were freshly recorded, rather than being pulled from sound libraries.

Thom, meanwhile, has worked with Robert Zemeckis since “Forrest Gump” and is very pleased with their continual, working relationship. Finding himself in both the Zemeckis and Pixar workshops in the very same year for the second time, he says that doing the sound for Pixar films is “remarkably similar” to working on sound for modern, computer graphics-heavy projects. He also expresses the need to remain sharp and refreshed as one of the reasons he enjoys working as both a sound editor and a sound mixer.

“That you’re not sitting at the same piece of equipment every day for 25 years keeps your creativity up,” he says. “This approach was fostered by Lucas and Coppola and Walter Murch and Ben Burtt. Doing things as fast as possible can be very helpful but it’s not the principal reason someone hires you.”

Van der Ryn, too, spoke of the real collaboration that exists between sound mixer and sound editor, feeling that, having worked on the sound for months and having an idea of what it should sound like, it is important to stay open to the “whole fresh perspective of possibilities” which the mixers bring to the table.

Ultimately, these audio engineers have more than shown their artistry this year and their commitment to working with their colleagues in the sound and filmmaking industries. Here’s hoping they will be acknowledged for what they are – artists. I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of their films as the awards process in the sound categories continues throughout the Fall.