Oscars 2018 Category Breakdown: Best Sound Mixing

So what we do here each year as a warm up for the Oscars is, I break down each of the 24 categories. The idea is to both familiarize everyone with the category and its history. I look at what the major trends are throughout the past bunch of years, how the precursors tend to go, whether they matter or not, that sort of stuff. I look at how the category came to be this year, and just anything else that seems totally pertinent about it. Then I rank each of the nominees and tell you what their likelihood (at this particular moment in time) of winning is.

This is all prelude to my giant Oscar ballot that I’m gonna give you. But I figure, if you have these as the warmup, it’s not as intimidating. You’ll have seen a lot of the pertinent trends here and we’ll all be able to reference these as a sort of cheat sheet. Plus it shows you where my head is at for how I think each of the categories are gonna go, and you can see me working my way up to all the bad decisions I usually make while guessing. Pretty much, with this, you’ll have a pretty good idea of how the category is gonna turn out.

Today is Best Sound Mixing. Which is not Sound Editing. Because you can totally tell those two apart.

So to start, just so we’re all clear on this: Mixing is the full sound mix that you hear on the screen and Editing is the compilation of all the sounds that went into it. So all the sound effects and dialogue and music — that’s all Editing. And then the finished product is Mixing.

Also, you have to take both Sound categories as one when you go into it, because as I think we all know by now, my mantra is, “Don’t split the Sound categories, Mike.” Only bad things can happen when you do that. (Like, say, “Oh, Hacksaw Ridge is a war movie, that’ll win Editing, and then La La Land is a musical, so that’ll win Mixing.” And then Hacksaw Ridge wins Mixing and Arrival wins Editing and you look like an asshole. This is a completely hypothetical situation, by the way, and not at all something that happened two years ago.)

But, to start, since this is Mixing, we’ll look at the guild for that, CAS. They’ve given out awards since 1993:

• 1993 – Jurassic Park (won the Oscar)
• 1994 – Forrest Gump (lost the Oscar to Speed)
• 1995 —  Apollo 13 (won the Oscar)
• 1996 – The English Patient (won the Oscar)
• 1997 – Titanic (won the Oscar)
• 1998 – Saving Private Ryan (won the Oscar)
• 1999 – The Matrix (won the Oscar)
• 2000 – Gladiator (won the Oscar)
• 2001 – The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (lost the Oscar to Black Hawk Down)
• 2002 – Road to Perdition (lost the Oscar to Chicago)
• 2003 — Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (lost the Oscar to Return of the King)
• 2004 – The Aviator (lost the Oscar to Ray)
• 2005 – Walk the Line (lost the Oscar to King Kong)
• 2006 – Dreamgirls (won the Oscar)
• 2007 – No Country for Old Men (lost the Oscar to The Bourne Ultimatum)
• 2008 – Slumdog Millionaire (won the Oscar)
• 2009 – The Hurt Locker (won the Oscar)
• 2010 – True Grit (lost the Oscar to Inception)
• 2011 – Hugo (won the Oscar)
• 2012 – Les Misérables (won the Oscar)
• 2013 — Gravity (won the Oscar)
• 2014 — Birdman (lost the Oscar to Whiplash)
• 2015 — The Revenant (lost the Oscar to Mad Max: Fury Road)
• 2016 — La La Land (lost the Oscar to Hacksaw Ridge)
• 2017 — Dunkirk (won the Oscar)

14/25 all-time. So 56%. Better than a toss-up, but not automatic. Used to be that musicals owned Mixing and war films owned Editing, but lately I’m seeing that a big film will just take both in the right year. I thought this year was the right year, but now I’m not so sure.

We also don’t have a whole lot of help from anywhere else, since BAFTA only has a single Sound category. And BFCA tried a Sound category for like three years and then stopped. So it’s CAS, MPSE (the Sound Editors guild), BAFTA, and then common sense.

Best Sound Mixing

Black Panther

Bohemian Rhapsody

First Man

Roma

A Star Is Born

This is a year where we go back to normal. Which is to say that the Sound categories only matched 4/5. Last year they both matched 5/5, which was the first time ever that’s happened when both categories had five nominees. Now we’re back to 4/5. Not a whole lot of difference, but it does make me feel more uncomfortable about the whole thing, since they feel less likely to split, and feeling uncomfortable in the Sound categories is how you should be.

In terms of this category… no overt surprises. I suspected Roma would get at least one Sound nomination. Not sure I expected two, but also… if I expected one, why wouldn’t I expect two? Black Panther was obviously getting on both if it got on one, and you had to assume both Star Is Born and Bohemian Rhapsody for Mixing. And First Man is the big “sound” film of the year. So not overly shocking. I thought Quiet Place might manage both, since I wasn’t sure which one it was more likely to get on. But yeah, mostly as expected. No real surprises other than that they liked Roma enough to give it a double nomination in the Sound categories.

And in terms of how the category’s gonna go, it’s mostly guesswork. But we have 2/3 of the helpful places at the moment.

• CAS: Bohemian Rhapsody
• BAFTA: Bohemian Rhapsody

And MPSE announces tonight, so we’ll at least have some more help there. But I think we’ve got enough to mostly get where we need to go. (I think.)

Rankings:

5. Roma — Roma has absolutely stunning sound design. But it’s hard for me to see it as something they’re gonna take. Look at the last bunch of winners — Dunkirk (war movie), Hacksaw Ridge (war movie), Mad Max (action movie), Whiplash (music), Gravity (space), Les Mis (music), Hugo (I don’t know what you call it, but it makes sense), Inception (action), The Hurt Locker (war)… see what I’m getting at? There’s no showy bits of sound here. So I don’t see how you consider this a serious contender for the win. It doesn’t fit for them at all.

4. Black Panther — It’s definitely one of those with the “most” sound. It definitely has a lot of what they like — music, action… it’s almost the total package. But it doesn’t really fit as a winner. They typically don’t dip too low on this one. That is to say, things that win tend to feel classier, if that makes sense. That’s not to say they won’t go here, I just don’t see it as a particularly likely circumstance. It is a Best Picture nominee, and the last non-Best Picture winner in this category was The Bourne Ultimatum. So there’s that.

3. A Star Is Born — It’s music. Lots of music. BAFTA gave it their Music award, not that that really means anything, but they did. I just feel like if they’re gonna go for the movie with music, it’s not this one, because it doesn’t have as many concert montages, and this one also doesn’t blend a singer’s real voice into the mix. So I think this can happen but likely won’t. Unless somehow this wins a bunch of MPSE awards tonight, I’m not looking at it as anything more than a possible spoiler.

2. First Man — It hasn’t won anything yet. I suspect it’ll win MPSE, setting up the Editing/Mixing split, but that’s tonight. Right now, I can’t consider this anything more than a second choice. That said… easily could happen. I hate having to split the Sound categories, but with this only really having four nominations and having the possibility to not win any, hard to consider this a favorite here. I’m also not certain this even wins Editing. So we’ll see. Also, that “no non-Best Picture nominees since Bourne Ultimatum” is a telling stat. At least Editing has three of those. But yeah, precursors dictate favorites, and this currently has none.

1. Bohemian Rhapsody — It won BAFTA and it won the guild. It’s the number one choice and likely winner. I just watched the movie again yesterday. The music montages are amazing. They sound like real concerts. And then they blend a lot of the band’s music over a lot of it… it’s a great job. It’s not particularly subtle, but it’s Queen. What’s subtle about that band? So it works. This is the favorite. Might not win, but it’s gonna be considered the choice to beat.

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