I’ve found two interesting articles with thoughts and general info from the sound nominees to the Oscars, talking about his respetive works on films such as “Avatar”, “The Hurt Locker”, “Star Trek”, “Up” and “Inglourious Basterds”.
The first one is from MPEG, with comments of some of the sound editors with best sound nomination:
Though the movies they worked on were all unconventional, the 2009 Academy Award nominees for Best Sound Editing are all veteran names with long lists of impressive credits. Only two––Star Trek’s Alan Rankin, MPSE and Avatar’s Gwendolyn Yates Whittle, MPSE––are first-time nominees. However, in a far more unique situation, a pair of Guild members are up for Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing Oscars—Paul J. Ottosson, MPSE, for The Hurt Locker, and Christopher Boyes for Avatar—two films at opposite ends of the budget spectrum. We talked to a group of nominees to get their takes on what made their projects special, how their teams worked and, well, how it feels to be invited to the party.
The second one is a nice article at The New York Times:
“The Hurt Locker” is a bomb movie that mutes its booms. It derives suspense by withholding the expected “boomala, boomala,” as an Iraqi kid puts it in the film while taunting an American bomb-squad soldier about the “cool” soundtrack of Hollywood war
“The Hurt Locker” is not cool. It’s hot and dry, a heaving desert parable with a mounting sandstorm howl at the center. The internal explosions matter more than the fireworks. Explaining the dynamics of roadside bombs in Iraq, Paul N. J. Ottosson, the film’s supervising sound editor, told Variety, “You die not from shrapnel but the expanding air that blows up your lungs.” The top notes in the soundtrack are arid metallic clicks, snips, squeaks and creaks, the chatter of wrenches and wire clippers, as bombs are defused in air so parched as to seem combustible itself. Men can hardly summon the spit or breath to speak. Much of the dialogue — which was almost all recorded on location in Jordan (and not looped in a studio) — is delivered in headsets, as soldiers hiss into one another’s helmets across desert expanses. To listen is to enter machinery, rib cages, ear canals and troubled lungs.
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