With the Academy Awards just days away, we’ve started working on our Oscar pools and that got us to thinking: what is sound design, really? We know that sound is so integral to film. It creates emotion, fills empty space, and adds context and texture to the picture. The problem, of course, is that, like editing, good sound design is almost indiscernible to the uninitiated. And it’s one of those categories that yield a best-guess vote in Oscar-night polls.
So we decided to get the skinny on sound by consulting one of the field’s leading artists, Ren Klyce of Mit Out Sound. Klyce is nominated for Sound Editing and Sound Mixing Oscars for his work on Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and is one of David Fincher’s longtime collaborators. His other film credits include Fincher films The Social Network, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Fight Club, and Se7en, plus Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are and Being John Malkovich.