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Sound Standouts

Feb 1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Blair Jackson

Multiple-Oscar Winners Shine Again in 2007.

 Digital Content Producer's and Millimeter's coverage of past and present award nominees/winners

Between the Achievement in Sound Editing and Achievement in Sound Mixing categories, nearly all of those earning Oscar nods this year have either been nominated or won before — clearly, these sound teams are some of the best in the business. Millimeter caught up with the teams from nominated films Apocalypto, Blood Diamond, Dreamgirls, Flags of Our Fathers, Letters From Iwo Jima, and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest to get their take on the awards.

Not surprisingly, Christopher Boyes, a two-time Oscar winner who is nominated in both sound categories this year for Pirates of the Caribbean, says he was thrilled to get the double-nomination, which he shares with multi-Oscar winner George Waters II for sound editing, and with Paul Massey and Lee Orloff (both past winners) for sound mixing. “A film like [Pirates] is designed to be a little over the top, yet you still have to root it in a place that keeps the audience engaged and having fun and delivers all the power, but never makes the audience peel away because you're overwhelming them,” Boyes says. “It's a little like walking a tightrope, and that path of working toward that goal is very narrow.”

Pirates was filled with interesting characters and unusual set pieces, each requiring novel sonic choices. “I probably manipulated and tweaked a hundred different kinds of fruits and vegetables, all sorts of crustaceans and sea life, from crabs to whole fish and everything in between,” Boyes says of creating movement noises for the slimy crustaceans in Davey Jones' pirate army. “I went to this famous seafood market in Berkeley [Berkeley Bowl] and basically spent three or four hours, finding everything I could.”

This year marks the first nomination for sound editors/designers Sean McCormack and Kami Asgar, who helped bring visceral life to the jungle world of Mel Gibson's Apocalypto. The duo admit to being surprised at the honor. “We were not expecting it, even though we both think it's a great film,” McCormack says. They are also quick to give full credit to the three others who landed a Sound Mixing nomination for Apocalypto: re-recording mixers Kevin O'Connell and Greg Russell (who, together and separately, have amassed an incredible 17 Oscar nominations), and production mixer Fernando Camara, a first-time nominee.

McCormack and Asgar, along with their partner at 424 Post, Tim Tuchrello, had to capture an ancient world of sound, free of machines of any sort — in this case, even free of metal. Much thought went into the sound of the jungle settings and the movement of people walking and running through the jungle (a big, interesting foley job). McCormack was further challenged by cutting ADR in a makeshift Mexican studio in the ancient Yucatec Maya language.

“Mel knows what he wants from the sound,” McCormack says. “He treats the entire soundtrack like a piece of music, so it's not just, ‘We've got big sounds for the animals and we've got big sounds for the arrows flying through the air.’ Everything has to tonally fit into a melody he's got in his head, and it's not based on the music, it's everything — the dialog, the effects, the music. He's a genius, probably one of the smartest filmmakers I've worked with. If there's a part that's bothering him and he's not sure why, he dissects it. He'll say, ‘Okay, play me music. That sounds okay, play me effects; play me dialogue. He breaks it down and finds it — ‘Oh, that's what's bugging me.’ He's very systematic.”

Blood Diamond was also nominated in both categories, with Lon Bender earning the sound editing nod, and the highly regarded re-recording team of Anna Behlmer and Andy Nelson, along with production mixer Ivan Sharrock (all past winners) being honored for their mixing. Bender, who first became conversant in Digidesign Pro Tools' HD system when he designed the sound for the Broadway musical Tarzan in 2005, says the digital workstation had a huge impact on his work for Blood Diamond.

“I was able to take the material from all the different editors on the show — which was basically separated by themes, such as weapons, backgrounds, voices, hard effects, and vehicles — and load them into a huge super-session,” he says. “Then I went through and was able to manipulate all the material at once, which, as a guy who was used to working on one track at a time for most of my career, was so fabulous.

“The biggest challenge,” he adds, “was to keep the action sequences alive and vibrant. I spent a lot of energy manipulating not just levels, but frequencies, when it came to all the different impacts and vocal reactions to the weaponry. We also spent a great deal of time on the world of Sierra Leone, showing the counterpoint of the incredible beauty of the place versus the disaster of the rebels takeover of the country. Hopefully, part of the reason it was nominated wasn't just for the action sequences, but because of the treatment of these other parts, where the characters are on a quest through the countryside.”

Alan Murray and Bub Asman, who have spearheaded the sound on most of Clint Eastwood's films through the years, share the sound editing nominations for the director's twin World War II epics, Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima (both have been nominees twice previously). For mixing, only Flags was nominated, with the honors going to the team John Reitz, Dave Campbell, and Gregg Rudloff (all previous winners), and first-time nominee production mixer Walt Martin.

“Flags was larger in scope,” Rudloff says. “You're seeing the entire invasion and then, even when you're out of the battle and back on the bond tour, it's the story of the guys who were on the tour, but again, they're always in the middle of a huge chaotic atmosphere with all the crowds and everything.”

“With Letters,” Murray says, “one thing Clint wanted was to show the claustrophobic effects of what happened to the Japanese on the island — their living conditions and what it was like being under constant bombardment in the caves.” Murray achieved some of that effect by varying the sounds of the above-ground war in the underground scenes — sometimes they are muffled and far away; other times frighteningly present.

All three of the sound nominees for Dreamgirls have won Oscars for films based around music: Re-recording mixer Bob Beemer last won for Ray; mixer Michael Minkler won for Chicago; and production mixer Willie Burton earned a trophy for Bird. “It's always thrilling to be nominated,” Beemer says, “and it means a lot because I really loved working on this film.”

“Musicals, by nature, are an awful lot of work,” Minkler says, “because there's so much music and so much pre-recording, live recording, and post recording, and many different locations and environments. So it's a huge challenge, and of course, we're always trying to get the best performance you can out of the vocals while still maintaining sync — because if it doesn't look good in sync, you're going to lose the moment.”

“On this show, for me, the biggest challenge was the crowds,” Beemer adds. “There are lots and lots of performances and crowd scenes, and crowds are one of the hardest things you can do mixing-wise because there's all that shrieking and yelling, but at the same time you have to make these artificial things sound organic to what you're looking at. So that's what I did with dozens, maybe hundreds of crowd elements recorded who-knows-where.”

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