Oscars 2020: Best Sound Mixing

The 2020 version of The Oscars is just around the corner, and since sound mixing continues to get more complex over time, often emphasizing the sheer array of benefits of Dolby Atmos, next year’s contenders will probably include films such as Netflix’s ‘The Irishman’, Tarantino’s ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’, ‘Rocketman’ and ‘Ford v.s. Ferrari’; however, the list goes on.

But what’s sound mixing? And how is it different from sound editing? The big thing to think about what’s sound editing and sound mixing is that Sound editing refers to the recording of all audio except for music. And what’s audio without music? Dialogues between characters, the sound picked up in whatever scenario a scene was recorded at, and, also, sound recorded in the studio, for example, ADR, extra lines of dialogue, all those crazy sound created to mimic animals, vehicles, environmental noises, the foley, etc.

Sound mixing, on the other hand, is balancing all the sounds in the film or the movie. Imagine taking all of the music, all of the audio, all of the dialogue lines, all the sound effects, the sounds going around, etc., and combining them together so they are perceived as balanced and beautiful tracks.

This year we’ve seen plausible contenders, led of course by James Mangold’s thrill ‘Ford v.s. Ferrari’, Sam Mendes’s experimental war drama ‘1917’ and Tarantino’s ninth film ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’. 

In ‘Ford v.s. Ferrari’, Matt Damon, who plays the role of famous car designer Carroll Shelby, teams up with Christian Bale, in charge of giving life to Ken Miles, to build and race the avant-garde Ford GT40 Mark I with one single purpose in mind: to win the arduous 24 hours of Le Mans in 1966. 

Fully intact vintage sports automobiles are hard to come by for the sake of shooting a racing movie; however, sound editor Don Sylvester was lucky enough to find a guy in Ohio who had built a Ford GT entirely from scratch using original and vintage parts. He let the sound crew place microphones in the car and drive it around a track. The hero Ford GT had been born. Then he found a ‘59 Ferrari in Atlanta, whose owner was kind enough to let them take the car to Florida (because of noise limitations in Atlanta) and run it through its paces. After that, the hero Ferrari joined the Ford GT. But the real challenge was yet to come.

Mixing was as challenging as finding the cars. The cars, given their age, were extremely noisy, so all the sound from cars to dialogue for the much louder scenes were unusable. This forced the sound team to rebuild and recreate essentially all the production sounds at a later stage during post-production. On top of that, the engine sounds had to be paced and contained with what Bale’s character was experiencing. For the sake of keeping the storytelling element intact, if you watched the movie, you probably found yourself following where he was in the races at all times, paying special attention to his state of mind.

Just being able to get the most out of those engines for the sake of being loud would not cut it. Silence is also a powerful sonic tool as well. And as for the music, the mixing team came up with some particularly clever: they integrated Marco Beltrami’s score by using the engines as the low notes.

‘1917’ is the story of two young British soldiers who must deliver a message that warns of an imminent ambush in northern France. This ticking clock narrative, putting the audience in the trenches of northern France alongside soldiers offers an immersive mixing challenge very different from what we experienced with Christopher Nolan’s ‘Dunkirk’ or ‘Interstellar’.

Whilst sound, sonic elements, and music always play a pivotal role in every Tarantino movie, his ninth film, which has also been referred to as Tarantino’s most personal project, contains a more complex soundscape involving the recreation of vintage TV shows, the well-known rock hits from radio stations, the sound of classic cars, a martial arts fight with Bruce Lee and the utterly violent confrontation with the Manson family at the very end (which also included a flamethrower). Balancing all those elements is quite an achievement in its own way.

A more epic mix was designed for Martin Scorsese’s ‘The Irishman’, which takes place rapidly in the second half of the 20th century. This era was a time of business and political catastrophes, and the sound mix instrumentally manages to keep track of the agitated activity throughout the decades in rapid succession, ranging from the sounds of violence to the pulsating beat of the origins of rock’n’roll. It’s a really solid contender for next year’s Oscars gala.

Meanwhile, Elton John’s rollercoaster ride to superstardom ‘Rocketman’ is an astonishing depiction of how a capable mixing team can fuse reality and fantasy in a truly unique way. Taron Egerto’s singing was pre-recorded and custom reverbs were then integrated and then layered on top of the music and the sound effects.

The list of plausible contenders also includes the amazing and eerie sounds of Todd Phillips’ ‘Joker’, ‘Parasite’, ‘The Lighthouse’, ‘Avengers: Endgame’ and ‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’. 

*The images used on this post are taken from Pexels.com