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| Chris Kyle, played by Bradley Cooper, calls home in American Sniper. |
Each day as we make
our way to the Academy Awards ceremony Feb. 22, Last Cinema Standing will take
an in-depth look at each of the categories, sorting out the highs, the lows,
and everything in between. Check back right here for analysis, predictions, and
gripes as we inch toward the Dolby Theater and that world-famous red carpet.
The two most important questions to answer are: What is
sound mixing, and what is sound editing? Here is the quick version. Sound
mixing is easy to understand and pretty self-explanatory if you are at all
familiar with how music or a radio broadcast or anything else is recorded.
Sound mixers take all of the sounds that go into making a movie – the dialogue,
the music, the sound effects, the ambient noise, etc. – and adjust the levels
at which they play over each other.
Fairly simple, right? The hero is returning home, so let’s
have the music get a little louder here. Suspense sequence? Well, let’s drop the
noise out so all we hear is breathing and a heartbeat. Courtroom scene? Make
sure the dialogue is crisp, clear, and loud, but remember to leave enough
ambient noise in the background so it sounds like the real world and not some
set on a soundstage. That is it. Bring it up, take it down, and try to match
the intensity or the emotion being played on screen. Yet, as simple as it may
seem, it takes a master to get it right.
What about sound editing? The award used to be called Best
Sound Effects Editing, which I feel is more explicative, but here we are. Basically,
this is the sound effects award. It goes to the person or team creating all the
little noises that must be pieced together to create the sonic environment of a
film. From the clicks, clacks, and clanks of a factory to the gunfire and
explosions on a battlefield, sound editors are the ones who make it happen.
When it comes to the Oscars, conventional wisdom will tell
you that the same film will likely win both categories. This makes a certain
amount of sense if you assume voters do not know the difference between the two
and check off a film they like for both awards, but history does not
necessarily bear this out. Six times in the last 14 years, a film has won in
both categories, so a little less than half the time. It helps to remember that
voters are professionals in the film industry. They are savvy enough to know
what sound editors and sound mixers do.
With that in mind, the Academy does have tendencies in each
category. Musicals do exceedingly well in the Sound Mixing category, as
evidenced by wins for Les Miserables,
Dreamgirls, Ray, and Chicago since
2002. No musical has ever won Best Sound Editing in the current incarnation of
the award. In Sound Editing, the winners tend to be war films, action films,
and epics, really anything with a hell of a lot of noise going on. Luckily for
voters, there is no shortage of noisy movies in the running.
Best Sound Mixing
The nominees are
Whiplash – Here is your sort-of musical in the category this
year, and just to drive my point home from above, note that it is also the only
one in this group not also nominated for Sound Editing. My best guess for why
that is and why no musical has won Sound Editing is that in a musical – or pseudo-musicals
such as this or
Ray – the music is
the star. The sound editors do not create anything there. But, just like on a
pop record, the mixing is paramount.
Production sound mixer Thomas Curley and sound re-recording
mixers Craig Mann and Ben Wilkins, all first-time nominees, do a phenomenal job
making the jazzy soundtrack pop against the more hushed and ambient tones of
the rest of the film. It is not an easy task as the music has a very staccato
vibe even when allowed to play through, let alone with all the starts and stops
of the practice sessions. Music drives this film, and the sound team seems to
have an innate feel for when to push it and when to dial it back.
American Sniper – As well as musicals often do in this
category, however, war films are right there in the thick of it always. For the
most part, I think this has to do with the modulation of sound and the building
of suspense. While Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper) spends a good deal of American Sniper embroiled in fire
fights, he spends as much time staking out his targets and patiently waiting in
silence for the his moment to strike.
Sound department heads John T. Reitz and Gregg Rudloff are
both six-time nominees who shared in the win for The Matrix, while Rudloff also earned this award for the Civil War
drama Glory. Sound mixer Walt Martin,
who died in July and earned this nomination posthumously, had been nominated
once before and worked on every one of Clint Eastwood’s films since 1999. The
team was tasked with balancing the extreme violence and noise of the war scenes
with the quieter moments back home in the states, and they do so expertly.
Birdman – The least conventional of these nominees,
Birdman is a talky showbiz satire that
moves at a mile a minute. It reminds of the late director Robert Altman’s best
work such as
M*A*S*H or
Nashville in its constantly overlapping
dialogue, hyper-witty characters, and unceasing forward momentum. Sound
re-recording mixers Jon Taylor and Frank A. Montaño are double nominees this
year for this and
Unbroken, while
production sound mixer Thomas Varga is enjoying his first nomination.
In addition to the rapid-fire dialogue, the sound mixing
team must also contend with a loopy, arrhythmic percussion score and voiceovers
that drop in and out at will. Through the work of Taylor, Montaño, and Varga,
all these disparate elements coalesce into an appropriately unsettling sonic
environment for the film.
Unbroken – This is Taylor’s first pair of nominations, but Montaño
has a total of seven nominations to his credit, and most of those came for
films more similar to Unbroken than
to Birdman such as Wanted, Under Siege, and The Fugitive.
By the way, how great is it that Under Siege
is an Oscar-nominated film? While Taylor and Montaño are looking for their first
wins in this category, their Unbroken
collaborator, David Lee, won previously for his work with Reitz and Rudloff on The Matrix.
Unbroken is a more
traditional war picture than
American
Sniper, possibly because World War II was a more conventional war than the
current conflict in the Middle East. There is some great aerial sound work amid
a dog fight and plane crash, but often, the mixing team allows the score to
intrude too much on the story in a blatant attempt to force emotion on the
audience. The mix is classic war film work, but I can think of a few other more
deserving nominees than this one. If you are looking for another action-war
flick, there is
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, or if you want to step outside the box a bit, there is the great work
done on Ruben Ӧstlund’s
Force Majeure.
Interstellar – The most controversial nominee on the list, the
sound mix of
Interstellar was
criticized heavily upon the film’s release. Some complained the score was too
loud or that the dialogue was too muddy. The problem seems to have been the
detail and micromanaging that director Christopher Nolan and team put into the
sound mix, meaning that if the cinema conditions were not set up just right,
the film could sound bad.
I viewed the film in an IMAX theater personally vetted by
the film’s composer, Hans Zimmer, and I thought the mix was fantastic. For
transitions back and forth between quiet moments of character reflection and
epic, large-scale action sequences, little can match Interstellar. The music is loud, but it is immersive, an integral
part of the landscape of the film.
Re-recording mixer Gregg Landaker is a giant in the field
and has three Oscars to his name for Raiders
of the Lost Ark, Star Wars: Episode V
- The Empire Strikes Back, and Speed.
Re-recording mixer Gary Rizzo has four nominations and a win for Inception, and sound mixer Mark
Weingarten is a three-time nominee. If you are going to give anyone the benefit
of the doubt, I would say it should be this group of craftsmen.
The final analysis
American Sniper is
a popular war picture with a solid mix that hits all the right beats and keeps
the film humming along nicely. It would by no means be an undeserving winner. Whiplash will have its fans, but the
scale of the film may be too small to compete. Previous musical winners, in
addition to simply being musicals, also had a sense of scale and grandiosity
that Whiplash lacks by design. Interstellar could be a threat for the
win simply because of the attention drawn by the controversy. All publicity is
good publicity. Still, American Sniper
is probably in the driver’s seat for this one.
Will win: American
Sniper
Should win:
Birdman
Wish it had been here:
Force Majeure
Best Sound Editing
The nominees are:
American Sniper
Birdman
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
Interstellar
Unbroken
American Sniper – If
American
Sniper is a prohibitive favorite for Sound Mixing, it is the clear
frontrunner for the Sound Editing award. Bullets, explosions, crashes, and
bangs – these are the hallmarks of a war picture and of an Oscar winner in this
category. Its candidacy is helped along by the fact that so much of the sound
drops out around Kyle taking sniper shots. What that means is that the sound
effects work that goes into each shot is crystal clear and instantly memorable.
Supervising sound editors Alan Robert Murray and Bub Asman
have shared in five nominations together and won the Oscar the last time
director Clint Eastwood brought a war picture to the big show, Letters from Iwo Jima. Murray also has
two other nominations with previous partner Robert G. Henderson. A popular Best
Picture nominee with a clearly defined sound design is like catnip to Oscar
voters, and Murray and Asman should be well on their way to collecting their
second awards.
Interstellar – If its mix is controversial, there should be no
question about the quality of the sound effects editing on Interstellar. Credited to five-time nominee and three-time Academy
Award winner Richard King, the environment of Interstellar is a perfect melding of visual effects, production
design, and sound editing. While I found the former two elements lackluster,
the sound effects work is impeccable.
The movie practically howls at the audience as the winds of
distant worlds swirl around the characters. They explode through space, slosh
through a water planet, and crunch their way across frozen tundra, endeavors
that feel real because we can hear them and experience them along with our
intrepid heroes. Just based on the number of different environments King is
asked to recreate or invent, we are unlikely ever to hear another feat of sound
editing quite like this.
Birdman – If you have never been backstage during a theater
production, I urge you to seize the opportunity, should it arise. Nothing else can
compare. While the actors play calm, cool, and collected in front of the
audience, chaos reigns behind the scenes. During rehearsals, the chaos is multiplied
10-fold as cast and crew alike shuffle about, slam doors, shift sets, and
generally run around like the sky is falling.
Sound designers Aaron Glascock and Martín Hernández capture
the environment perfectly. Together, they create the rich tapestry of production
sounds and city noise that make up the unforgettable experience of Birdman. It is a film that surrounds
you, envelopes you, and immerses you in its world until you feel like you are
part of the crew and your life depends on the success of the production.
Unbroken – It is definitely possible the craftspeople are
seeing something in
Unbroken that I
simply cannot see. After all, they are the experts in their field, and I am a
humble observer. To my eyes,
Unbroken
is a serviceable war drama that feels overly familiar in nearly every regard.
If the crafts are solid, they are let down by a sappy, melodramatic storyline
that is hard to look past.
Supervising sound editors Andrew DeCristofaro and Becky
Sullivan are sharing in their first Academy Awards nomination for their work on
the film. Sullivan notably is the only woman nominated in either sound category
this year, a depressing reflection of the realities of the industry. The pair’s
work here is fine, but it is overshadowed by a mediocre project.
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies – “Battle of the Five
Armies.” Doesn’t that just scream noisy? Sad to say, I have not seen the latest
Hobbit film. Truth be told, Peter
Jackson’s
Lord of the Rings trilogy
really did nothing for me, and thus far, the
Hobbit films have been a step down from that. Someone who has seen
the film could probably give you a more thorough analysis, but allow me to
posit a few guesses.
The film almost certainly delivers on the promise of its
title and features a tremendous climactic battle, as well as several smaller
battles before and during that, no doubt. Swords clank off one another,
structures crumble to the ground, and many fantastical creatures make barely
recognizable noises that resemble a combination of things we know from the real
world. It honestly seems like a sound editor’s dream. It probably is, but as
this is the film’s only nomination and the love for Jackson’s ventures to
Middle Earth has dwindled considerably, sound editors Brent Burge and Jason
Canovas will probably have to content themselves with the nomination.
The final analysis
I recognize that I spent the entire introduction to this
piece differentiating between the two sound categories and making the case that
the Academy can and will split these awards between two deserving movies. I
stand by that, but this year feels a lot like last year, when Gravity was head and shoulders above
rest of the field and rightly took home both awards. If American Sniper is not quite the tech juggernaut that Gravity was, it makes up for it by being
the kind of down and dirty action picture that thrills and engages all kinds of
viewers. Interstellar is a definite
threat, but at the end of the day, American
Sniper just makes sense for this award.
Will win:
American Sniper
Should win: Interstellar
Wish it had been here:
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
