Significant Rule Change

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The Original BJ
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Post by The Original BJ »

Quite frankly, I think most ACADEMY members don't have any clue what the difference between Best Sound and Best Sound Editing is.
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Post by Hollywood Z »

Hopefully, in doing so, they'd also explain to the masses that aren't quite sure what the difference between Sound and Sound Editing actually is. Outside of most of the people on this and the imdb board, even some of them as well, your average person still isn't sure why the catagory is divided. Of course, they've still tripped over the definition of Cinematography.
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Post by OscarGuy »

There are two reasons I think they expanded the category.

1) The Sound Branch was tired of holding special sessions by a select number of members each year for the bake-off and studios were also likely tired of having to submit clips.

2) There has been much grief over the past few years over the weakness of the category and the omissions that didn't seem to make any sense.

My prediction is that if the Sound Editing change works this year, we could see expansions of the two other "bake-off" categories that don't really need or warrant the process and an expansion to five nominees. Visual Effects assuredly but Makeup may go that way as well.
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Post by Nik »

Hollywood Z wrote:In regards to the previous poster, holocaust films and musicals have never been nominated for either Sound Effects or Sound Effects Editing. The only Ron Howard film to get a nomination was Backdraft as the only Bruckheimer films to be nominated were Top Gun, Pearl Harbor and The Pirates of the Caribbean.

Um, I was kind of kidding. Geeze, you guys will provide stats for EVERYTHING, lol.

My overarching point was the fact that the "bake off" aspect allowed this specific branch to at least view the potentials and vote based on their perception of merit. True there was still many "loud" nominees but the one thing we can't legislate with awards groups is taste. All we can hope is that they at least VIEW as many as they can and use some criteria other than popularity. I completely agree with you that nominees like "Monsters Inc" (which should have won) reflected how sophisticated and honest this category could be, even with only 2 nominees. Removing the "bake off" will reduce it to a popularity contest and if Holocaust and Ron Howard films didn't make it in the past, ho ho, just you wait my friend, and see how much whoring these bad boys can do in the "slum" categories. Again, this is why I cited examples in the other technical categories over the years where popular ballots were employed (were an Editor or Costume Designer forced to view a range of potentials in a "bake off" competition, it's hard to conceive of weird nominations for Ray or The Pianist in those categories respectively).

Also, limiting it to 2 or 3 nominees in my opinion INCREASED the level of competition. Look no further than the Best Song category which for years included horrid choices to fill out its 5 slots and every year we always knew there were probably only 2 songs really duking it out. This year, by limiting it to 3, the competition became fiercer, with each nominee as a viable winner and making it difficult to really predict that category. It also brings integrity to the category - instead of scrambling to find 5 above mediocre achievements in sound, here you had 2 or 3 that really stood out. (Again, look no further than the Animated Film category). This way the nomination itself has merit.

And yes I know the difference between Sound and Sound Editing but your distinction ignores the fact that "loud and obvious" nominees still make it into Sound Editing. For every "Monsters Inc" there's a (just in the past 12 years or so - see? I can quote stats too) "Jurassic Park", "The Fugitive", "Speed", "Braveheart", "Batman Forever" "Eraser" "Armaggedon", "Saving Private Ryan" "Matrix", "Star Wars Episode One", "Lord of the Rings: Two Towers", Pearl Harbor", "Minority Report", "Pirates of the Caribbean", "Spider Man 2", "King Kong" and "War of the Worlds." I'm not saying that all of these were undeserving, but the preponderence of "loud and obvious" nominees for action/war/special effects extravaganzas over more subtle work - which were probably equally if not more artistic - suggests the conflation (in most people's minds) of "Achievement in Sound" with "Sound I can hear, loud and clear." And in the case of "The Incredibles", "Finding Nemo", and "Monsters Inc," the popularity of those films probably helped more than anything else (despite the obvious merit to their subtler artistic achievements in this category).

And if this is what they could come up with using a "bake off" system, what do you think it's going to look like when Sound Editing can be checked off as easily as Film Editing and a voter thinks "Well, I didn't see all these here films but I do know that Ron Howard biopic about Lance Armstrong sounded real good in the theater. All that squeaky biking really SOUNDED like a squeaky bike. And it MAY be nominated for Best Picture, that's gotta count for something. Plus Oprah did a special on it, and I just read on Goldderby...ah heck, let's put it in there."

Oh and btw, I hope no one was insulted by my placing Holocaust films in such close proximity to Ron Howard. It was simply a tongue in cheek remark about the kinds of films a popular ballot usually yields with the Academy:"issue films" that they go for automatically (Holocaust), the sentimental shlock they jerk off to (Ron Howard films and their ilk) and um, loud obvious choices (Musicals/Jerry Bruckheimer).
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Post by The Original BJ »

Funny, I was thinking just yesterday that a category might be expanded this year to include five nominees. But, like most of you, I assumed the likely candidate would be Visual Effects, not this most peculiar of categories. (Peculiar only because it still seems like every year the press has to explain what Sound Editing actually means to most people.)

I don't think this is such a bad decision. True, the Academy may fill their slots with lousy nominees, as they are often wont to do.

But look for a moment at the films in the past decade that weren't nominated in this category: Batman Begins, The Aviator, The Return of the King, Spider-Man, The Fellowship of the Ring, Black Hawk Down, Gladiator. All of those high-profile, acclaimed (in some cases, at least relatively so) films seemed like obvious bets in this category, yet come nomination morning, they were curiously absent. In their place were still-inexplicable-to-me nominations for films like Space Cowboys and Memoirs of a Geisha.

I'm not saying the Academy is going to fill up five slots with any better choices than they did three. However, with such strong work being left out on a regular basis, the sound editors won't have to stretch THAT much to find candidates to fill those slots. (In other words, they won't resort to nominating The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Story, or whatever it's called.)

So far this year, both Cars and Superman Returns offered terrific examples of sound effects creations. That's more worthy contenders than most of the five-nominee categories can boast at this point in '06.
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Post by Hollywood Z »

Personally, I think this is a recognition that is long overdue. What most of us take for granted is the design and choice of the sound effects, which is what this catagory awards (note the inclusion of Monsters Inc as a nominee over Black Hawk Down and Fast and the Furious). The so-called "loud and obvious" factor in movies is where the sound catagory comes in, which decides the levels of each sound effect and aspect (the ADR, the foley, the sound effects, the music, the dialog, etc). Personally, I feel Sound Editing is where the true artistry in the movie's sound lies, especially when the sound designer goes out of his way to create altogether new sounds for a film (Where would Raiders of the Lost Ark be without the new sounds for Indiana Jones' punches and handgun, two synonymous sounds of the title character).

Last year would have been a prime example. Of the seven finalists, we could have seen not only the three films that were nominated (Kong, Geisha, War), but could have included Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith and The Chronicles of Narnia. If these rules applied each year they had finalists, my list would have looked like this:

2005: Batman Begins, King Kong, Memoirs of a Geisha, Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith, War of the Worlds (Batman should have been a finalist)

2004: Aviator, Collateral, The Incredibles, The Polar Express, Spider-Man 2

2003: Finding Nemo, Kill Bill: Volume 1, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, The Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

2002: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Minority Report, Road to Perdition, Spider-Man, We Were Soldiers

2001: A.I. - Artificial Intelligence, Amelie, Black Hawk Down, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Monsters Inc (I would love to see Pearl Harbor removed from that list)

2000: Cast Away, Gladiator, The Perfect Storm, Space Cowboys, U-571

1999: Fight Club, The Matrix, The Mummy, Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, Three Kings

1998: Dark City, The Mask of Zorro, Ronin, Saving Private Ryan, The X-Files: Fight the Future (okay, I deviated from the finalists, but I couldn't nominate Armageddon, Godzilla, Lethal Weapon 4 or The Thin Red Line)

1997: Air Force One, Face-Off, The Fifth Element, L.A. Confidential, Titanic

1996: Eraser, The Ghost and the Darkness Independence Day, Star Trek: First Contact, Twister

1995: Apollo 13, Batman Forever, Braveheart, Crimson Tide, Heat

In regards to the previous poster, holocaust films and musicals have never been nominated for either Sound Effects or Sound Effects Editing. The only Ron Howard film to get a nomination was Backdraft as the only Bruckheimer films to be nominated were Top Gun, Pearl Harbor and The Pirates of the Caribbean. Pixar earned their nominations because of the work of Gary Rydstrom, who is considered a pioneer in the Sound Effects worls. Not only that, but he helps to create the soundscapes for the Pixar movies when they didn't previously exist and hade to be created and manipulated on their own. He subconsiously placed children's screams throught the city of Monsters Inc's electric appliances (listen to the cars as they drive by), he designed the underwater world sounds of swimming and submerging of Finding Nemo. The only Pixar film he hasn't worked on, The Incredibles, actually won, but even that had sound guru Randy Thom creating the soundscape for that world as well.

Personally, I welcome this addition. Maybe it'll catch on and lead to five nominees for visual effects as well, since there have been more than worthy contenders for the past ten years.
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Post by Nik »

Won't this just lead to silly nominations, like cherry picking high profiled and potential Best Picture nominees. Previously, the "bake off" aspect allowed (arguably) truly deserving nominees or at least nominees that were clearly examples of achievements in Sound Editing (read: loud and obvious). Regardless of whether a film is good or bad, the technical categories should be based on those individual achievements, not on whether someone just liked the film or not, or whether EW had it in their Potential Best Picture nominees list. I know the nominees will still be determined by individual branches but that hasn't prevented the whoring of high profile nominees in technical categories in the past.

Film Editing usually has 3 or 4 Best Picture nominees (Ray, Finding Neverland, The Cider House Rules, are all inexplicable nominees for Editing even though there were probably a hundred films more deserving), American Beauty was nominated for (and won) Cinematography, The Insider and The Green Mile were nominated for Sound, The Pianist - an otherwise good film - was nominated for Costume Design (seriously, wtf?) and so on and so forth. And increasing the nominees to 5 just increases the possibility of silly nominees - like the embarrasing Animated Oscar which really should just be a special category that rewards ONE outstanding Animated Film each year (if there is one) by a plurality of votes. I'm surprised this category was increased and not - as Oscar Guy said - Visual Effects.

If this had been implemented for 2005, there might have been some odd choices like Crash (I can see voters thinking, ooh Crash. That sounds like two things colliding, that MUST have sound) and Capote (for Phillip Seymore Hoffman's whine). Instead of, you know, odd choices like Memoirs of a Geisha (but you know what I mean). And us Brokeback lovers would probably be bemoaning the fact that Ang Lee opted not to include a slapping sticky sound to indicate Heath Ledger's balls slapping against Jake Gyllenhaal's ass, which would have made the film a real contender.

Look out for every lame animated Dreamworks (and this year, Pixar's Cars), Holocaust, Musical, Jerry Bruckheimer, and Ron Howard film to fill this category!
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Post by OscarGuy »

The Sound technicians branch have submitted and the 79th rules will now include the change.

The Sound Editing category (also known as Sound Effects Editing) has been increased to 5 nominations and will no longer be a "bake-off" like the Makeup and Visual Effects categories.

I'm surprised that category of all of them was changed when Visual Effects needs that change more importantly.
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