Captain Phillips Gravity The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug Inside Llewyn Davis Lone Survivor There are two sound awards given out each year during the Academy Awards, and the distinction between what the two categories are actually awarding is inevitably lost on the average Oscar viewer. The Academy does try to explain the distinguishing aspects of the two categories sometimes, but I have never found their definitions very helpful or clear, so I will give my shot at highlighting the differentiation. The key word to understand what Best Sound Mixing is referring to is the last word: Mixing. What the category looks at is literally the level of volume of all the different sound elements being thrown at the audience simultaneously. Between the dialogue, effects, and music, you have all these separate sonic elements that exist on their own tracks (like the different instruments of a song), and the sound mixer's job is to adjust their volumes so that the result isn't just a cacophony of noise and speech. (If you wanted to be super cynical about it, the sound mixer is basically a glorified version of a dude who turns the volume up or down on remote controls). Frankly though, in order to pick the winner in this category, you don't need to know any of that, because most likely, the majority of the members of the Academy don't understand what exactly they are rewarding either. All you need to know is how the Academy is likely to approach the category, and even the most rookie Oscar newbie may be able to deduce that when it comes to technical awards this year, Gravity is likely to win everything. Beyond this crude approach though, Gravity is truly a deserving winner, for as impressive as the film is visually, it's also a master class in the importance of sound in film, as the aural experience of Gravity is about just as vital to its success as the visual elements, and the film's mix in particular is quite the achievement. Will Win: GravityCould Win: Captain PhillipsShould Win: Gravity
A film fanatic at a very young age, starting with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movies and gradually moving up to more sophisticated fare, at around the age of ten he became inexplicably obsessed with all things Oscar. With the incredibly trivial power of being able to chronologically name every Best Picture winner from memory, his lifelong goal is to see every Oscar nominated film, in every major category, in the history of the Academy Awards.
