Nominees for the 83rd Academy Awards 2010 Best sound & sound effects editing

[JBL 4645]

Last year there were 6 nominations spread across the sound and sound effects editing category. This year or last year 2010 there are 8! Whew this is going to be hard competition this year.

Sound Editing

“Inception” Richard King

“Toy Story 3” Tom Myers and Michael Silvers

“Tron: Legacy” Gwendolyn Yates Whittle and Addison Teague

“True Grit” Skip Lievsay and Craig Berkey

“Unstoppable” Mark P. Stoeckinger


Sound Mixing

“Inception” Lora Hirschberg, Gary A. Rizzo and Ed Novick

“The King's Speech” Paul Hamblin, Martin Jensen and John Midgley

“Salt” Jeffrey J. Haboush, Greg P. Russell, Scott Millan and William Sarokin

“The Social Network” Ren Klyce, David Parker, Michael Semanick and Mark Weingarten

“True Grit” Skip Lievsay, Craig Berkey, Greg Orloff and Peter F. Kurland


I haven’t brought one of these films as of yet! I wasn’t trilled with last years or (2009) list thou some of 2010 seem tempting and are on bluray/DVD at present.

Slat (might think about this one)
The Social Network (but I’m not really interested in the subject)
Inception (might think about this one)
Toy Story 3 (might think about this one)

I can only think of two films that was recoded in Dolby digital 8channel on this list Toy Story 3 and Tron Legacy hmm, both are Disney? Now there under the sound effects edition category (I see a slim chance here only one of them can take best sound effect editing).


The last time there was new Dolby cinema invention was 1999 and Dolby-EX didn’t get STAR WARS episode1 anywhere or Fight Club.

Dolby was the word in the early 70’s a few years later mid 70’s STAR WARS picked up best sound and sound effects editing.

Richard King won for Batman The Dark Knight a few years ago he might stand a second chance for Inception. I read a lot rave reviews on its film mix in the cinema.

I can’t be asked to watch it this year, I’d just read the results the following day.

Oscars go live on February 27th, 2011

[JBL 4645]

After buying Inception (2010) last Sunday, and being thrilled to bits, time to calm down and re-listen to it.


Inception bluray dtsHD master audio

The mix levels on Inspection (2010) is real pain in the ass to listen to at straightforward level.

After re-listening there are many scenes practically over LCR as well stereo surrounds and LFE.1 that needs more than the usual calibrating balancing act to make this, sing the “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien” fluently across the LCR or impartially the Hans Zimmer score that drowns out the emotional scene between (Cillian Murphy) Robert Fischer and (Pete Postlethwaite) Maurice Fischer.

The centre carries effects Foley and soft dialogue passages that are mostly ruined downed out by Hans Zimmer!

The blame is on the mixes who won’t win for best sound and if sound effects editing is handed out, well that’s taking the piss. This is the worst Dolby film mix from Christopher Nolan, I’ve listened to far better Dolby film mixes over the years that won for best sound and sound effects editing.

It seems the mix levels was rushed in post production its mostly Hans Zimmer music NOISE!

Anyway you try and listen to chapter 13, and see if you can hear every tiny little detail over the now and rising competition of left/right front.

To resolve the issue as best as possible I’ve had to set the levels for left/right with extreme audio limiting to suppress the NOISE!

The music could have been mixed at low frequency db level and, oh, yes there was recycled sound effect used in another film during one of the shootout scenes. I get really feed up listening to sound effects used in previous films (over and over).


The audio limiting that I used managed to reduce some of the noise levels of left/right (but not far or good enough for my golden ear listening). I like to hear the film mix, not listening to some fuc%&ing drunk pissed mixes on the job who CAN’T EVEN F%()KING LISTEN THEMSLEVES NEED TO SHOW-OFF!

TURN THE MIX LEVLES DOWN!

I thought mixes like Alien and Heat was tough to listen to but Inspection takes the piss!! So don’t let you’re ears be fooled by deception thinking its dogs bollocks mix on DVD/bluray it needs an audio limiter leash around it to tame the mix so you, can sit back relax and listen rather than struggling to catch a few rare soft moments of dialogue.

Furthermore its not a creative mix dialogue as and when it can make itself clear all the way though 100% is mostly centred. It was dull and boring like one of those cheap rubbish sit-com TV shows that hardly has anything going for it on the left/right, its all coming from the centre!

If I was mixing I’d have dialogue panning moving around and lot more creative sound effects use with the stereo surrounds because most of the time it was all coming from the front.

Most of weaponry sound effects were centred rather than going with wild wide crazy panning to where the weapons and characters were placed on-screen.

[JBL 4645]

I’m thinking about buying SALT next week but by then the Oscars would have finished.

I have feeling The Social Network might win for best sound as you need to follow dialogue and it seem more like a dialogue film with (I hope well balanced left/right along with centre mix).

I think Unstoppable might take sound effects editing. If not maybe Tron Legacy?


I think for (1983) The Right Stuff had the right Dolby film mix balance from music to effects and dialogue was handcrafted so well from start to end.

Mix levels don’t get too far out of hand like today even though some films before it and after it had something complex going on within the mix that might have eluded us at the cinema if watching it in 70mm 6-track Dolby stereo.

Today the mixes are forcing us to strain our hearing while they purposely down out the centre channel!

The Todd-AO mixes didn’t seem to have this issue. Though the solo voice is spread over all 5 screen channels (does seem foggy when listening to these classics on DVD) dialogue panning was still clear and easy to understand.

[JBL 4645]

I was 99% close to buying Toy Story 3 on bluray last Sunday, but the price STANK! at over £20.00 pounds Disney can keep it! I’ll wait till the price is down to £10.00!

[JBL 4645]

I like the image quality no green smearing crap around chapter 1, 00:05:15 with a light in the background shines clearly with white and common lens flare of the anamorphic lens has shape blue. Now if this was poorly teleceined the white would have green all around it due to part of the blue colour.

I’ll still be keeping a beedy eye out for it because there’s nothing worse than poor telecined film to video.

Also glad it was photographed in Super35 I can’t stand that film format it’s a cheap poor version of scope.


Technical specifications for
Inception

Camera
Arriflex 235, Panavision Primo and G-Series Lenses
Arriflex 435 ES, Panavision Primo and G-Series Lenses
Beaumont VistaVision Camera, Panavision Primo Lenses
Panavision PFX System 65 Studio, Panavision System 65 Lenses
Panavision Panaflex Millennium XL, Panavision C-, E-, G-Series and Super High Speed Lenses
Phantom HD Camera, Panavision Primo Lenses
Photo-Sonics 4C, Panavision Primo Lenses
Photo-Sonics 4ER, Panavision Primo Lenses

Laboratory
Imagica Corporation, Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo, Japan (processing)
Laboratoires LTC, Paris, France (processing)
Technicolor, Hollywood (CA), USA (also prints)
Technicolor, London, UK (processing)

Film length (metres)
3925 m (Portugal)
4037 m (Sweden)

Film negative format (mm/video inches)
35 mm (also horizontal) (Kodak Vision3 250D 5207, Vision3 500T 5219)
65 mm (Kodak Vision3 250D 5207, Vision3 500T 5219)
Digital

Cinematographic process
Digital Intermediate (4K) (master format) (some scenes)
HDCAM SR (1080p/24) (source format) (high-speed shots)
Panavision (anamorphic) (source format)
Super Panavision 70 (source format) (some scenes)
VistaVision (source format) (aerial shots)

Printed film format
35 mm (Kodak Vision 2383)
70 mm (horizontal) (IMAX DMR blow-up) (Kodak Vision 2383)
D-Cinema (4K)

Aspect ratio
2.35 : 1
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1375666/technical

[JBL 4645]

Inception picks up Oscar for
Best Sound for Richard King
Best Sound effects editing: Lora Hirschberg, Gary A. Rizzo and Ed Novick.

[jcrobso]

I was 99% close to buying Toy Story 3 on blue ray last Sunday, but the price STANK! at over £20.00 pounds Disney can keep it! I’ll wait till the price is down to £10.00!

Even at places like COSTCO it about $29 US.