Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2009 10:47 am
For what it's worth (which in the end doesn't really shed any new light), I found this comment posted on the Rope of Silicon Oscar site:
"As I sit here with my Oscar ballot - yes, you read that right (I am a Sound Branch member who’s been nominated once himself) - I am faced with a conundrum: Ben’s work in WALL-E is absolutely brilliant, and is so crucial to the making the whole thing work that the movie would probably not be so affecting without the genius in his vocals for Wall-E… but the work of the other nominees is masterful as well. And Ben already has four Oscars.
The supervising sound editor of TDK has one for MASTER & COMMANDER. The other sound editing nominees have none. The re-recording mixers of WANTED have a load of past nominations, and one has two Oscars. One of the re-recording mixers of BUTTON has two wins also, but his mix partner who handled the sound effects, and who also supervised the entire brilliant sound job, has none, and he’s widely admired in the sound community for the inventiveness of his body of work, all for David Fincher. The TDK mixers have never won, and that was a very challenging mix. The SLUMDOG folks are all new to the Oscar party.
I guess you can tell I take prior wins into account when facing my ballot. I like to see the grace of Oscar spread around. Will I reveal here how I decide to vote? Sorry, Academy rules are strict about that - I really can’t.
BTW - Brad’s explanation of what the Sound Editing and Sound Mixing categories are about is basically correct. Suffice it to say that the editors are responsible for providing everything that you end up hearing in the mix; this can run to literally hundreds of tracks and often requires a huge amount of fresh recording of sound effects, then redesigning them to fit what we see on screen. But, if the material isn’t high quality and well organized, the mix will suffer badly; if the editors provide crap, the mix can’t be anything better than that. The Mixing category covers both the work of the mixer on the set and the work of the re-recording mixers months later. The work the editors provide in the way of sound effects is sort of obvious, but there is also a tremendous amount of work that goes into preparing the dialogue for mixing, especially with an action film where much of the dialogue must be redone later in a quiet studio."
"As I sit here with my Oscar ballot - yes, you read that right (I am a Sound Branch member who’s been nominated once himself) - I am faced with a conundrum: Ben’s work in WALL-E is absolutely brilliant, and is so crucial to the making the whole thing work that the movie would probably not be so affecting without the genius in his vocals for Wall-E… but the work of the other nominees is masterful as well. And Ben already has four Oscars.
The supervising sound editor of TDK has one for MASTER & COMMANDER. The other sound editing nominees have none. The re-recording mixers of WANTED have a load of past nominations, and one has two Oscars. One of the re-recording mixers of BUTTON has two wins also, but his mix partner who handled the sound effects, and who also supervised the entire brilliant sound job, has none, and he’s widely admired in the sound community for the inventiveness of his body of work, all for David Fincher. The TDK mixers have never won, and that was a very challenging mix. The SLUMDOG folks are all new to the Oscar party.
I guess you can tell I take prior wins into account when facing my ballot. I like to see the grace of Oscar spread around. Will I reveal here how I decide to vote? Sorry, Academy rules are strict about that - I really can’t.
BTW - Brad’s explanation of what the Sound Editing and Sound Mixing categories are about is basically correct. Suffice it to say that the editors are responsible for providing everything that you end up hearing in the mix; this can run to literally hundreds of tracks and often requires a huge amount of fresh recording of sound effects, then redesigning them to fit what we see on screen. But, if the material isn’t high quality and well organized, the mix will suffer badly; if the editors provide crap, the mix can’t be anything better than that. The Mixing category covers both the work of the mixer on the set and the work of the re-recording mixers months later. The work the editors provide in the way of sound effects is sort of obvious, but there is also a tremendous amount of work that goes into preparing the dialogue for mixing, especially with an action film where much of the dialogue must be redone later in a quiet studio."