Today, we’re discussing the awards for Sound Mixing and Sound Editing.
And the nominees are:
Sound Mixing
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
Slumdog Millionaire
WALL-E
Wanted
Sound Editing
The Dark Knight
Iron Man
Slumdog Millionaire
WALL-E
Wanted
The Lowdown:
Few people know the difference between these two. Sound Mixing is, obviously, the award for the best combination of dialogue, music, ambient sound, and effects. Sound Editing is an award for the best sound effects. The whoosh of the UFOs in Close Encounters of the Third Kind? That’s the job of the sound editor.
A misunderstood and underappreciated lot, these folks. During the 2001 Oscars, Mike Myers made some funny but ill-advised comments when presenting these awards. That didn’t go over well with the sound people. Mike got into some hot water over the remarks. And probably took a few blows to the head from the boom mic on his next shoot, I shouldn’t wonder.
At the 2005 Oscars, sound editor Randy Thom, accepting for his work on The Incredibles, made an excellent point: "These are not technical awards," he said. "They are awards for artistic decisions." We would all do well to remember that one.
There are two schools of thought on picking these categories: 1) the loudest film, the one with the most crash and bang, often takes them; 2) these awards often go to the eventual Best Picture winner, kinda swept up by default. If the Best Picture frontrunner happens to feature a lot of crash and bang–like Titanic, for example–well, that’s an easy pick.
This year, this thinking narrows down the picks to two choices: The Dark Knight (loudest film) and Slumdog Millionaire (Best Picture frontrunner). Still, one would be remiss to overlook WALL-E, especially for Sound Editing. Think about it: every single sound you hear in that film, someone had to create.
The Cinema Audio Society gave its top nod to Slumdog, but the CAS awards haven’t been good predictors of the Oscars lately. Remember that it isn’t only sound people who will pick the winners, but also actors, writers, costumers, makeup artists–in short, a lot of people who don’t know much about sound.
Whichever one you pick, just don’t call them technical awards, OK?
More Oscarology to come!
