February 4, 2002
Jon Silberg, Sheigh Crabtree
Hollywood reporter

The Academy lends sound editors an ear at the annual pre-Oscar nomination bake-off tomorrow night.

Seven contenders will take part in a pre-Oscar showdown at the Academy's annual Sound Editing bake-off tomorrow night. Don Hall, Academy governor and event chair, promises a unique group of contenders who will each present a 10-minute demo reel before the 190 members of the Sound Editing Awards Committee.

This year, Hall points to the first-time inclusions of an animated film and foreign film, "Monsters, Inc." and "Amelie," respectively. Add to this the stunning sonics on "A.I.: Artificial Intelligence," "Blackhawk Down," "The Fast and the Furious," "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" and "Pearl Harbor," and, Hall surmises, "the outcome of this year's bake-off is difficult to predict."

Gary Rydstrom, the supervising sound editor (with Richard Hymns) on "A.I.", points to the challanges of creating an invented future for the film. Though live action, he says, the movie is filled with unrealistic sounds. "The audio was designed to feel fablelike," Rydstrom says. "The film feels like pages from a storybook. The idea with the Manhattan sequences had nothing to do with 'reality.' These skyscrapers (which are submerged in water) make creaks and groans that sound almost musical. Those sounds had nothing to do with what you'd hear if you were actually there."

French fable "Amelie," his work had to tackle two fanciful schemes. The first was to create a poetic atmosphere for Paris; the second, which was the job of Laurent Kossayan, was to heighten the film's visual effects. One of the most significant challenges was that much of the film was made up of brief vignettes. "The first reel," says Hardy, "tells the story of Amelie's childhood in scenes that are maybe five or 10 seconds long. We wanted to give personality to each, so we had to find solutions simple enough that the audience could grasp it quickly."

Per Hallberg contended with the issues associated with creating intense battles in "Black Hawk Down." "After reading the book it's based on," he says, "the question was, 'How are we going to do this and not wear the audience out?' We couldn't play it too hot all the time. We had to give it a shape and textures."

Although the film concerns a single mission, it rapidly shifts from one perspective to another. In order to help the audience orient itself, Hallberg and his team created unique sonic signatures for the different Blackhawk helicopters. "We started with the real sound of a Blackhawk," he says, "but then we made the surveillance helicopters sound wispy and calm, while the ones closer to the ground had a more edgy sound."

The challenge on "The Fast and the Furious" for sound designer-supervisor Bruce Stambler "was recording 130 hours of import race cars. They sound different from any other car recordings that exist."

These recordings were then melded with animal sounds and big low-end, booming effects to enhance the powerful feel of the cars. Adds co-designer-supervisor Jay Nierenberg: "Even though we used different types of sounds for the cars, the way they were integrated meant nothing sounded fake or manipulated."

For supervising sound editor Michael Hopkins, the challenge in building the tracks for "The Lord of the Rings" was creating a world that sounds believable but unlike the one we live in. "Middle Earth," he says, "is like our world and then not at all. We couldn't use normal birds and natural sounds in the backgrounds. We had to create a special ambiance."

Another team, led by David Farmer, was tasked with creating creature sounds without them being identifiably associated with a real animal. Finally, for supervising sound editor-co-designer Ethan Van der Ryn, the ring itself required the most experimentation to get its sound right. "It's a low throb -- almost like a beating heart," Van der Ryn says, "so it would focus your attention on a subliminal level."

Rydstrom was also supervising sound editor on "Monsters, Inc." (with Michael Silvers). He notes that there is no such thing as natural "room tone" in the world of CGI. However, using sound to suggest reality was vital, and "there are some moments that we treated like we would any live-action blockbuster. Of course, other times you have a character like Celia, who has snakes for hair. There you can have some fun with what that would sound like."

"Pearl Harbor" sound designer Christopher Boyes points out that even when wild sound is recordable, if you're set amidst frantic battle, the track "could easily become inarticulate." If one were to set up a microphone and actually record such activity, Boyes explains, "It wouldn't feel real at all. It's ironic, but to depict something like that and have it feel real, you have to actually be stylized in your approach."

Boyes and George Watters II, with whom he shares the sound designer credit, recorded many real explosions and the genuine sounds of vintage aircraft for the epic film but mixed in unusual audio for the final effect.

At one point in this process, Boyes noticed bees swarming around his unattended cup of tea with honey. "I said, 'We've got to record this!'" he recalls. "We ended up processing the bee sounds in such a way that it sounded like 60 planes. That's the kind of thing I love about this work."

Bake-off 101
The sound editing bake-off is presided over by Sound Editing Award Rules Committee chair and Academy governor Don Hall. The Sound Editing Committee includes sound editors, postproduction mixers and the sound branch executive committee. Ten-minute clip reels from each of the seven contending films will be screened tomorrow for 190 qualified Academy members. The members will then vote on these films for Oscar consideration. If finalists are selected, they will be announced along with nominations in 23 other categories on Feb. 12.

Oscar Watch cheat cheet: sound editing