Twelve Days of Oscars, Day 1: Sound Mixing and Sound Editing

Welcome to the Twelve Days of Oscars! That's right, we're just twelve days away from my favorite special occasion of the year, the Academy Awards. Let's spend these last twelve days of Awards Season having a look each day at some of the nominees! This is not even close to a judgment-free space. Laissez les opinions rouler!

First, a brief check-in: how am I doing this year with my progression through the checklist of nominees? Well, as of the day the nominations were announced (another special occasion - I always take that morning off work) I had seen 9 of the feature-length films with 33 still to go, plus I had seen none of the shorts (five each for Animated, Documentary, and Live Action shorts). As of this writing today, I have now seen 25 of the feature-length films with 17 more to go. Progress! I also still have to see all the shorts, but the Live Action and Animated have only just arrived at Landmark Century Centre this week, while the Documentary Shorts come to Music Box starting this weekend, so those will be attended to over the next week or so. (Those are Chicago-specific references, and obviously peeps elsewhere will find them unhelpful. But you know. Check your local listings, eh.)

Right then. Let's begin with two categories that are related to the point of being indistinguishable for many an Oscar pool ballot-filler-outer, and which this year are EXTREMELY closely related in that they have the exact same five nominees. I refer, of course to Sound Mixing and Sound Editing.

Sound Mixing: Baby Driver, Blade Runner 2049, Dunkirk, The Shape of Water, Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Sound Editing: Baby Driver, Blade Runner 2049, Dunkirk, The Shape of Water, Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Most years, those categories have three or four of the same nominees and we can try to use the one or two different noms to help our friends understand the difference between the two categories. Not this time! But this does make it exciting to maybe place a side bet on whether the same one will win both awards with the exact same competition... 

To review, sound mixing is basically the soundscape of the film - the final mix that you hear, the levels of everything, a kind of overall masterpiece of finessing the sounds. Sound editing can be thought of kind of as sound effects - what sounds did they make and create to put into this movie? Yes, both categories do post-production work, but they're different jobs. Even though this year they are the exact same nominees.

I don't feel particularly passionate about these categories in general, even though I have done my share of audio work in the past, both in live theater and in radio jobs, but I appreciate them, plus I've seen all of the (same!) movies nominated in them, which is why I began with them today, this first of the Twelve Days of Oscars. So, let's consider.

I'm immediately eliminating Dunkirk from contention for Sound Mixing because I spent a great deal of my time watching that flick asking, "What did he say? What? Huh? I couldn't hear. I couldn't understand."  (Note: duh, I was watching it at home on DVD and would never dare to utter those or any other words out loud in a theater and neither should you, obviously.) On the other hand, Dunkirk had a lot of Sound Editing and effects that might deserve an award.

The Shape of Water has a really good chance of winning these, especially if it's going to win a bunch of other stuff, too, like Directing and Screenplay and - who knows? - maybe Best Picture. I personally find the film to be visionary and well done but so not my thang at all, but that's nothing against the Sound Mixing chances of it. Sound Editing, though? I don't think it was that special.

Blade Runner 2049 and Star Wars: The Last Jedi are interesting to consider here. They're such big, bold action flicks that are very much made of their cool effects, not just in sound and visuals but in building alternative worlds to immerse us in for two hours. Are viewers jaded because however many Star Wars films later we just expect it to be well done at this point, dismissing the Sound Editing skill in making sounds for all those spaceships, fake planets, lightsaber fights, and the like? What about the many different life forms/A.I./technology bits of Blade Runner 2049 that were rendered so realistically as they spoke to us?

Baby Driver, which is a bit of a different ride, does what I thought were stellar, emotionally magical things with the music and remixes woven throughout it both as sound effects and plot points. It definitely has an intriguing and I thought fantastically successful soundscape, and that is why I'm hoping it wins here.

So, I think  Baby Driver is my pick for Sound Mixing, and what the heck, Blade Runner 2049 for Sound Editing. If nothing else, I will defiantly keep reminding everyone these are two different awards and do my part by picking two different movies!  No, seriously though - I'm not saying it's wrong to want the same movie to win both of these. But I do have two different picks.

What do you think? What struck your ear when you watched the five films nominated in these two categories?