FINAL 2019 Oscar Predictions: SOUND EDITING and SOUND MIXING

Erik Anderson February 20, 2019

Black Panther, left, and Bohemian Rhapsody are poised to hit the right notes

A few months ago we all could have easily called Sound Mixing for A Star Is Born and called it a day. But that was when some pundits had it pegged as the Best Picture frontrunner and before the arrival of the box office behemoth and 5-time nominee Bohemian Rhapsody, which has the the Cinema Audio Society (CAS) award and BAFTA for Sound. But this category has done some strange things recently. It was only two years ago that La La Land lost this category to Hacksaw Ridge in a huge shock (not as big as the one that would happen later, but still).

While I think that the Queen biopic will triumph in Sound Mixing, that LLL loss gives me some pause that a ‘loud’ movie like First Man and Black Panther might be the spoiler.

Sound Editing is another animal. Yes, BoRhap won two awards from the Motion Picture Sound Editors (MPSE) guild but they were for ADR/Dialogue and one in the ‘Musical’ category. The main MPSE award for Effects/Foley went to A Quiet Place, which is nominated here. As the film’s only nomination, that makes AQP as a winner a longshot. An even bigger longshot though is Bohemian Rhapsody. Since the creation of this category, over 50 Oscars, a musical or music-driven film has never, ever won. This is a category that has been won solely by action/sci-fi/war and ‘genre’ films exclusively. Could BR break that? Possibly. Especially in a year as weird as this. But I’m not counting on it.

I’m going outside a bit and looking to Black Panther winning. It’s a Best Picture nominee and nodded in both Sound categories. But I won’t be surprised by A Quiet Place or First Man, which are also traditional winners in this category.

SOUND EDITING

1. BLACK PANTHER – Benjamin A. Burtt, Steve Boeddeker

2. A QUIET PLACE – Ethan Van der Ryn, Erik Aadahl (MPSE)

3. BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY – John Warhurst (MPSE x 2)

4. FIRST MAN – Ai-Ling Lee, Mildred Iatrou Morgan

5. ROMA – Sergio Diaz, Skip Lievsay (MPSE)

MPSE – Motion Picture Sound Editors

SOUND MIXING

1. BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY – Paul Massey, Tim Cavagin and John Casali (BAFTA, CAS)

2. FIRST MAN – Jon Taylor, Frank A. Montaño, Ai-Ling Lee and Mary H. Ellis

3. BLACK PANTHER – Steve Boeddeker, Brandon Proctor and Peter Devlin

4. ROMA – Skip Lievsay, Craig Henighan and José Antonio García

5. A STAR IS BORN – Tom Ozanich, Dean Zupancic, Jason Ruder and Steve Morrow

BAFTA – British Film Academy Awards (Sound only)

CAS – Cinema Audio Society

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.