Food For Thought -
The Sound Editing Bake Off

by Linda Dove

"I've tried to include all the basic food groups," said Mark Mangini at the Bake-off. Only he wasn't talking about vegetables - he meant the dialog, effects, music and "syncopated Foley" in 'The Fifth Element.' The rich diet at the Motion Picture Academy's sound effects editing preliminary selection process was pure film. Even though rain made travel hazardous, a large audience of Academy Sound Branch members and other eager but non-voting listeners almost filled the Samuel Goldwyn Theater on February 3rd. Almost - no one was foolhardy enough to sit in the front rows.

"The ban on ear plugs has been lifted," assured Don Hall when he opened the evening's event. Connoisseurs of the Bakeoff know just how loud movies competing for the Best Sound Effects Oscar can be. Most sound people have come to realize that quiet moments heighten tension - but at the Bakeoff most of those quiet intervals could be measured in milliseconds - a breath, a footstep - in between the mayhem of explosions, body hits, and gunshots. The slowly cracking glass in 'Jurassic Park' and the underwater graveyard of 'Titanic' helped cure any aural dyspepsia created by the wonderful gunfight in 'L.A. Confidential' - a gunfight that made the end of 'Bonnie and Clyde' seem like the proverbial tea party.

Sound Branch Academy governor Curt Behlmer had begun the evening by describing how the theater had been upgraded to ensure perfect reproduction for the seven films being considered - speakers were swept, sub-woofers adjusted for all digital formats, amplifiers replaced - so that the bakeoff could be the benchmark for sound quality.

Each supervising sound editor of this year's seven selected films had to select just ten minutes of their movie to persuade the sound branch voters to give them the '8' or above that would ensure their film would go forward to consideration by the entire Academy. If listening to ten minutes might seem inadequate, just remember most Academy members now receive wannabe-nominated films on video. Imagine someone trying to judge any of the following films on a TV with maybe a 20" screen and built-in speakers:

'Air Force One' - supervising sound editors Wylie Stateman and Peter Michael Sullivan; 'Con Air' - George Watters II; 'L.A. Confidential' - John Leveque; 'Face/Off' - Mark P. Stoeckinger and Per Hallberg; 'Titanic' - Tom Bellfort and Christopher Boyes; 'The Lost World: Jurassic Park' - Richard Hymns and Gary Rydstrom; and 'The Fifth Element' - Mark Mangini.

And if that doesn't bring the indigestion back, consider this - 'Face/Off' had twelve weeks from the end of principal photography to print master.

For a complete explanation of the Academy's procedure for best sound effects editing, see "Bake Off" in the March/April '97 Newsletter.