Why Dune was the Oscar Sound Winner of 2022

A year has passed, and once again, we have had the opportunity to watch excellent films. Despite the subjectivity involved in the Academy Oscars, the truth is that, in all cases, outstanding films are usually chosen for several factors to which we should pay attention in case our professions are related in one way or another to the film industry. There is always something to learn, indeed.

In the subject that concerns us (the sound and audio production), being aware of the Oscars awards is definitely a must. In this industry, we never stop learning and it is essential to know all the trends.

We had already talked about Dune late last year. The sound of this film is so particular, and there are so many stories surrounding its production, that it is no coincidence that it received the Achievement in Sound award. In the future, the sound of this film will be, by all accounts, a legend in the world of cinema. We pointed out at the time that creating the sound for the strange world enclosed in this film involved a series of challenges that were difficult to overcome. Among other issues, the filmmakers were forced to develop whole new instruments with little or no relation to existing ones in order to recreate the unique atmosphere engulfed in the original novel. In a way, this work consisted of a translation of literary language into audiovisual language, which is rarely successful due to the difficulty it represents. Furthermore, we also pointed out that several of these pieces had to be recorded individually in different regions of the world due to travel constraints, which necessitated a tremendous degree of synchronization.

Mark Mangini, the big responsible for this wonderful result, has talked a lot about how they arrived at this and the creative decisions that had to be made in order to achieve such a purpose. Mangini has come a long way to get to this point. This American sound editor already has almost two hundred film credits to his name, has been nominated for an Oscar five times, and, four years ago, won an award for his excellent work on "Mad Max: Fury Road", in which his ingenuity, creativity, and technical ability are notorious. As for his work on 'Dune', even of things that do not exist such as helicopters flying like dragonflies or the movement of sand-like ocean waves, Mangini has assured that such an experience, although extreme, and seemingly impossible, is part of the pleasure and charm of sound design in narrative filmmaking.

Now, there were 6 films nominated for an Oscar in this category, and it was certainly not an easy decision. First, ‘Belfast’ demonstrated how creativity can transmute the pain and nostalgia of a terrible war into a deep impression. The first scene of the film is devastating in its magnitude, primarily because of the sound of an approaching train whistle and the explosion that followed. That was enough to tell, in a few seconds, the whole essence of that violent episode in Irish history.

On the other hand, ‘No Time to Die’ is another example of hard work in which a tremendous technical skill can be noticed in every single second of shooting. It took a lot of hard work from Foley, editing, and a solid crew that was pushed to the limit for five long months. A James Bond film requires a lot of cleanliness, realism, and immersion after all. Simply put, a bad sound would spoil it beyond repair, and Oliver Tarney attests to that in this interview.

‘The Power of the Dog’, in turn, is an example of how sound becomes a key element in the construction of a landscape. We are not only talking about the sounds of boots and wind traveling across the vast plains but precisely because of the long and dense silences that the film offers. How to install silence correctly? Well, here is a sample of it.

The magic of ‘Westside Story’ is evident in Tod Maitland's own words: "When we were shooting, we had 24 lavaliers and I was connecting each actor almost 100% of the time. We also put microphones all over the place for different environments”. Here, the key to success was the maniac control of all possible sounds to recreate environments in an organic but magical way.

Now, in the face of such displays of a job well done, why did Dune win? Well, the answer lies in the difficulty as a starting point. Dune has been tried before, and with very little success. In fact, it was long considered an impossible story to bring to a film. That required tremendous effort and creativity. That is its secret.

In Dune, we find an enormous amount of ingenious and secret sounds, almost all coming from real life: of the more than three thousand sounds created exclusively for the film, only four were made with electronic equipment and synthesizers. Green pointed out that many science fiction and fantasy films tend to signal futurism with sounds we've never heard before.

Let's see what sonorous surprises this year has in store for us, and what lessons we will learn!

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