Just like Jason Bourne final realizing who he was, last night the little golden guy and his army of academy members realized that the sound work in The Bourne Ultimatum was their favorite of the year. As such supervisors Karen M. Baker and Per Hallberg were awarded the best sound editing Oscar and mixers David Parker,Scott Milan, and Kirk Francis the best sound mixing Oscar. Congrats to all the winners and make sure to go buy tickets to the academy's THE ART of SOUNDevent on Saturday March 8th featuring a panel discussion with these craftsmen as well as showing off clips from all the nominees!
The 55th annual Motion Picture Sound Editor's Golden Reel awards acknowledging the year's best work in the various areas of sound editing, were held last night in Los Angeles with the sound team from The Bourne Ultimatum claiming both dialog/ADR and effects and foley awards. Into the Wild rambled on with a music editing win while Hairspray danced all the way up to the stage accepting their award for best musical editorial. Best Foregin Film sound editorial went to the team from The Orphanage. The Hollywood Reporter has coverage on the rest of the awards including some quotes from the night's Filmmaker Award recipient, Michael Bay. Congrats to all the winners!
You really can't beat RED CARPET DISTRICT'S coverage of the Cinema Audio Society awards last night, in which the mixers from "No Country for Old Men" walkedaway with the award for outstanding achievement in sound in motion pictures. Info on the rest of the awards are available HERE.Congrats to all the winners!
Wow, I feel like Daniel Plainview in "There Will Be Blood": "I've abandoned my child! I've abandoned my child!" Sorry for the long gap in posts. The current gig has ruined any free time I had to do this thing, but we're almost into final mix so things here will get back on track. So I promised some coverage on last week's "Transformers" event. There is some great stuff already online (RED CARPET DISTRICT has coverage and links most of the other sites). So what do I have? Blurry video with mediocre sound! Thanks to sound editor Barbara Delpuech for providing the footage (way more forward thinking then I was about covering this event by the way) and I'll be back with regular posts soon.
UPDATE!
I was talking to sound designer Erik Aadahl after the event about the video below and how I wish more people would have got a chance to see it(shown at the MPSE sound show this summer). Now, its online...
With so many panel discussions and articles in the trades (please send anything I miss), its hard to keep up. Nevertheless, it is awesome to see so much coverage on our craft!
NO COUNTRY PANEL (01.27.08)
click HERE for the higher rez version (the panel starts after the clips)
VARIETY asks a few sound folk what their favorite work of the past year was.
THERE WILL BE BLOOD PANEL (02.02.08)
Ellen Pasternack (an attendee of the screening and Q and A last Saturday) was kind enough to kick some first hand knowledge down.
"Moderator Gary Rydstrom began the Q&A after the movie by stating that he loves the movie and very much admired the sound work. Gary had worked with Paul Thomas Anderson on Punch Drunk Love, as had Michael Semanick and Chris Scarabosio, in fact Semanick has worked with PTA since Boogie Nights. It was Matt Wood’s first time with the director and he said after working on all the Star Wars prequels, it was a huge difference to work on a movie where nearly all the recorded dialogue was used on the track with very little looping required. Chris talked a lot about all the elements that went into the sound of the town as the oil fields were developed around it. He had found a guy in southern CA who had a museum-like collection of all sorts of old pumps and related oil derrick equipment to record. They said PTA likes to try everything LOUD but that he pulled back on a lot of it and that this track had a lot of dynamic range compared to his earlier movies. Several people in the audience asked questions related to the emotional quality of the track. Two admitted being really unnerved by it, but in a way that made the movie all the more compelling. " -Ellen Pasternack.
There was another panel last night in the bay area. If anyone attended that please feel free to report in.
Thanks to the heads up from Hannes, Here's another great video from MIX MAGAZINE.
TRANSFORMERS PANEL (02.07.08)
"Transformers" is having a panel tonight at the Sony lot with Michael Bay and Shia LaBeouf moderating. They will show clips and discuss the sound and VFX work for the film. I am going to try and cover it but, with any luck paramount will flow Miramx's lead and upload a video of the panel(hint, hint).
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER explains what it takes to build them giant robots, or at least their sounds.
As the Oscar hype machine keeps rollin' I am glad to see coverage on almost all the nominees. Though its hard to keep up with all of it, so if I miss anything of note, please feel free to email me links!
On January 27th Miramax helped bring together the sound team for "No Country For Old Men" to the Harmony Gold Theater in Hollywood. After showing a few clips from the film, moderator Spike Jonze asked Skip Lievsay, Greg Orloff, Craig Berkey, and Peter F. Kurland along with The Coen's about their work. In addition to talk about the role thats score had in the film, the filmmakers reveled the shot on-set the voice-over by Tommy Lee Jones was favored in the mix over any of the looped reads. Read more HERE.
A few film critics and bloggers (though a little off the mark about how much music was actually in the film) get and A for effort discussing the sound for "No Country" in THIS PODCAST.
(click below to listen to an excerpt)
PARAMOUNT VANTAGE
On Feb 2nd seven time Oscar winning sound designer Gary Rydstrom, currently a director at Pixar Animation Studios, hosted a screening of "There Will Be Blood" with former Skywalker Sound protégés. Sadly, all I have from the screening is this picture, please send any coverage my way!
