The Last Cinema Standing Countdown to the Oscars is your guide to the Academy Awards. We will cover each of the categories in depth, talk about history and what the award truly means, and predict some winners. Check back all month as we make our way to the big show, one category (each as important as the next) at a time.
Best Sound
The nominees are:
Belfast
Dune
No Time to Die
The Power of the Dog
West Side Story
We have already talked a lot about the marginalizing of the crafts categories on the Oscars broadcast this year. For those paying close attention, though, that marginalization began last year, when the Academy combined the awards for Sound Mixing and Sound Editing into a single Best Sound award.
If you know a little about filmmaking or, perhaps, have followed the site over the years, you know how distinct those two disciplines are. For the Oscars producers and the network, it was just one fewer award they had to show. Now, the lone Sound award will not be presented on the show anyway, which begs the question: Why not go back to two separate awards?
Putting all that aside, it will be interesting to see how voters interpret this award moving forward. What part of the discipline will be given more weight: mixing (the levels of sound) or editing (the creation and placement of sound)? War films and action films have always done well across the board for the very obvious reason that they are often quite loud and feature a lot of interconnecting sounds. However, musicals will occasionally slip in and steal the win in Sound Mixing.
Take a look at these recent splits: 2002 - The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Editing) and Chicago (Mixing); 2004 - The Incredibles (Editing) and Ray (Mixing); 2006 - Letters from Iwo Jima (Editing) and Dreamgirls (Mixing); 2012 - Skyfall and Zero Dark Thirty (tie - Editing) and Les Misérables (Mixing); 2014 - American Sniper (Editing) and Whiplash (Mixing). Nine times from 2000-2019, both awards went to the same movie. Seven of the nine are either action or war films and one a musical (Hugo is the ninth and a bit of an outlier).
Given that recent history, I would anticipate the future of this award to look a lot more like Sound Editing than Sound Mixing. However, last year, the first year of the combined award, the Oscar went to the highly deserving Sound of Metal, which is neither war/action nor musical in any true sense of the word. That was likely a special case, though, since the film, itself, is so much about the ways we hear and perceive sound. My guess is that was an anomaly and this year will resemble much more closely the future of the award.
Dune – Nominated team: Mac Ruth, Mark A. Mangini, Theo Green, Doug Hemphill, Ron Bartlett
This fits in with previous recent winners such as Inception, Gravity, and Denis Villeneuve’s own Arrival. These are big, bold science-fiction concepts featuring rich soundscapes that highlight the complexities of the worlds they depict. Dune is a sound showcase with intense action, a driving score, and a host of inventive sonic ideas used to fill out the edges of a foreign planet.
Ruth, Green, and Bartlett are all multiple nominees, while sound editor Mangini is a six-time nominee and previous winner for his work on Mad Max: Fury Road. Veteran sound mixer Hemphill, meanwhile, is on his 10th nomination, having previously taken home the gold in 1992 for The Last of the Mohicans.
West Side Story – Nominated team: Tod A. Maitland, Gary Rydstrom, Brian Chumney, Andy Nelson, Shawn Murphy
Sound for a musical is a tricky business, and it often comes down to the major question: How much are the songs part of the world of the story or how much do they stand apart from it? Spielberg and his team go the traditional route, using the songs as a break from the linear narrative (as opposed to something more diegetic like Tick, Tick… BOOM!). That gives them more front-and-center placement in the mix and emphasizes the theatricality of the production, which absolutely works for a musical as venerated as this. Also note, the 1961 film won this category.
Supervising sound editor Chumney is a newbie to the awards race on his first career Oscar nomination, while sound mixer Maitland, who also worked on this year’s other big musical Tick, Tick… BOOM!, is a five-time nominee. Murphy has one win (Jurassic Park) from four nominations. Then, there are Nelson and Rydstrom, both legends in the field of sound. Nelson has 22 nominations and two wins, while Rydstrom has seven Academy Awards from 20 nominations, making him one of the most awarded individuals in Oscars history.
The Power of the Dog – Nominated team: Richard Flynn, Robert Mackenzie, Tara Webb
The Sound Branch has a long history of appreciation for westerns, going back to the 1938 Best Sound winner The Cowboy and the Lady. In modern times, films like No Country for Old Men, the 3:10 to Yuma remake, and last year’s News of the World all found footing in the sound categories. The Power of the Dog is part of that proud tradition, and it is easy to see why, with the high difficulty level involved in recreating the sonic landscape of the American West. One thing I would point out about this film, similar to No Country, is to pay attention to the silences, which are just as powerful and just as artful as the sounds.
Flynn and Webb are both on their first career nominations, while Mackenzie previously won Best Sound Mixing for Hacksaw Ridge. He also was nominated with the Sound Editing team on that film.
No Time to Die – Nominated team: Simon Hayes, Oliver Tarney, James Harrison, Paul Massey, Mark Taylor
Here, we have a big, loud shoot-’em-up. Despite a more reflective and sometimes downright gloomy tone, this is still a James Bond movie, which means action galore. Car chases, foot chases, shootouts, explosions, and everything else you can imagine figure heavily into the storytelling. Then, of course, there is that iconic score to weave in and out. This is fun, classically impressive work on both a mixing and editing level.
Massey, who won his only award for Sound Mixing on Bohemian Rhapsody, joins the 10-timers club with his nomination this year. Taylor won Sound Mixing two years ago for 1917 and has been nominated four times. Hayes has a perfect record at the Oscars, winning Sound Mixing for his only other nomination (Les Misérables), and Tarney is a five-time nominee with no wins. Harrison is the only one of the bunch on his first nomination.
Belfast – Nominated team: Denise Yarde, Simon Chase, James Mather, Niv Adiri
Belfast might be a bit of a surprise nominee in this category, especially when compared to flashier work in fellow Best Picture nominees such as Don’t Look Up and Nightmare Alley. However, what makes Belfast work overall is its seamless integration of differing styles, incorporating elements of the coming-of-age movie, war movies, and even a bit of a musical for good measure. Add to that a musical soundtrack that carries a lot of emotional weight, and the sound team is tying together a lot of seemingly unrelated threads to make this picture work.
In a rarity for this branch, which so often nominates the same people over and over (see, again, the nomination totals for a couple of the West Side Story honorees), three members of this team are first-time nominees. Those would be Yarde, Chase, and Mather. Re-recording mixer Adiri has one previous nomination and one victory for his work on Gravity. Expect to see all of these folks back in future years, since often once you’re in, you’re in.
The final analysis
If we are right and this combined sound award is going to lean more in the direction of action and war pictures, then Dune and No Time to Die are your frontrunners. West Side Story is possible, particularly if the action films cancel each other out and voters rally behind the lone nominated musical, but it would be a curveball.
Like most every other category, Best Picture nominees are heavily favored against non-Best Picture nominees, giving Dune the edge over the James Bond flick. It is interesting to note, however, that the last non-Best Picture nominee to win a sound award was a James Bond movie: Skyfall, though even that tied with Best Picture nominee Zero Dark Thirty. Before that, it was the very Bond-like The Bourne Ultimatum. I do not expect No Time to Die to pull off the same trick, but the precedent is there for an upset.
Will win: Dune
Should win: No Time to Die
Should have been here: Tick, Tick… BOOM!
Next time: Best Original Score
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