the best sounding movie of 2009

We were among the many who didn't see The Hurt Locker until after the Academy Awards. We got it on DVD and started watching it. About 30 seconds in to the movie, Kathleen turned to me and asked "this won Best Sound, right?" To both our ears, the movie made a very good impression right from the first shot. It was that good.

We both delight in telling people "if we did our jobs well, you didn't notice it," so saying a movie caught our ears as having great sound may be an oxymoron, but I don't think so in this case. For one thing, I don't know if it did stand out to everyone the same way it did to us. (If anything stood out to you, please do comment and let me know what you noticed and whether you liked it.) For another, what stood out to me was the lack of distractions. Most movies, even very good sounding movies, have some sound which distracts from the action. The truth is, reality is full of sounds which distract from the action of the moment, so--enigmatically enough--some of these distractions are more real than none. Somehow, Paul N.J. Ottosson and his crew managed to keep the reality of the movie intact with a surprising lack of these distractions.

Every sound in that movie seemed to be perfectly crafted to fit the moment--sometimes spot-on naturalism (which isn't as easy as you might think) and sometimes surrealistic sound design to underline the heightened reality the characters were experiencing. It was a great dialog mix. What makes a great dialog mix could be the subject of it's own post--and already is the topic of several books and endless discussions--but the short story is the important words can be heard and they sound as though they were spoken in a space which matches what's visible on screen. But I digress, the bottom line is the dialog mix is the foundation to the rest of the mix--if the dialog is weak, there's less a mixer can do with the rest of the sounds.

What really impressed me most throughout the movie was the perfect balance in the mix. The hard effects and Foley always seemed to fit the action perfectly. Score and sound design meshed together seamlessly. Nothing ever seemed to compete with the dialog, and yet everything could be heard. What impressed me most was how the mix was both sparse and lush. Advertising art directors call it white space, and I have a habit of using the same term. Call it what you will, the upshot is every sound had it's own space in the mix and didn't have to compete to be heard. When Sergeant James was cutting the key wire to diffuse a bomb, there were other sounds playing but nothing competed with that crisp report of the wire cutters. When a bomb did blow up, the music stayed out of the way and let the violence of the explosion play out.

It's worth noting there are two Oscars for sound, and The Hurt Locker won them both.

1. Best Achievement in Sound Editing goes to the Supervising Sound Editor. Innovative selection and crafting of sound effects is what tends to win this award. In this case, I would point to the sparsity of the sounds as well as the use of naturalism and surrealism to complement the action. I also point to the dialog mix--it's very difficult, if not impossible, to achieve such a smooth dialog mix unless the dialog has been very carefully and proficiently edited.
2. Best Achievement in Sound goes to the Re-recording Mixer and the Production Mixer. The dialog mix couldn't be this good without very good dialog recording. I'm a Re-recording Mixer, though, so I have a tendency to point to the perfect balance of different elements in the mix.

Paul N.J. Ottosson was both Supervising Sound Editor and Re-recording Mixer, so he won both awards, sharing the Best Sound award with Production Mixer Ray Beckett. Of course, the whole sound crew, whether credited or not, deserve kudos for their hard work. This certainly includes the composers and music department. Furthermore, the picture department deserves a lot of credit--and received an Oscar of their own for Best Achievement in Editing--and, of course, Kathryn Bigelow, Mark Boal and all of the producers deserve credit and were also well rewarded by the Academy. I'm not saying this to kiss up or to imitate an acceptance speech cliché, but it was clear in watching this movie that the movie couldn't have sounded as good as it did without the good choices made before the post sound department even got the edited film.