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www.postmagazine.com 25 POST MARCH 2018 OSCARS WRAP UP FILM EDITING As is often the case, the nominees for achievement in film editing mirrored the Best Picture and Best Director categories, with frontrunners Lee Smith (Dunkirk), Sidney Wolinsky (The Shape of Water) and Jon Gregory (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) all vying for the prize. But interestingly, voters also made room for two less obvious choices — Baby Driver cut by Paul Machliss and Jonathan Amos, and I, Tonya cut by Tatiana S. Riegel. Riegel was the sole woman nominee, and her masterful work dealing with the film's constantly shifting time-frames and perspectives deserved voters' attention, as did the adrenalized, precise editing of Machliss and Amos on the heist actioner Baby Driver. And the Oscar went to Lee Smith for his meticulous work juggling three separate but in- ter-connected storylines on Dunkirk. SOUND EDITING Oscar loves anything aural in the action, war and sci-fi genres, so the nominees — Blade Runner 2049's Mark Mangini and Theo Green, Dunkirk's Richard King and Alex Gibson, The Shape of Water's Nathan Robitaille and Nelson Ferreira, Star Wars: The Last Jedi's Matthew Wood and Ren Klyce, Baby Driver's Julian Slater — were no surpris- es by and large. The first four films featured large canvases and mythic and epic stories and themes as backdrops for the sound editors to work their magic. But Academy members also found the small low-budget heist movie Baby Driver, from director Edgar Wright, to be Oscar-worthy. And the Oscar went to the Dunkirk team for their masterful and intricate work on the war epic. SOUND MIXING This year the nominees exactly duplicated the sound editing category in terms of films Oscar honored for achievement in sound mixing: Blade Runner 2049's Ron Bartlett, Doug Hemphill and Mac Ruth, Dunkirk's Mark Weingarten, Gregg Landaker and Gary A. Rizzo, The Shape of Water's Christian Cooke, Brad Zoern and Glen Gauthier, Star Wars: The Last Jedi's David Parker, Michael Semanick, Ren Klyce and Stuart Wilson and Baby Driver's Julian Slater, Tim Cavagin and Mary H. Ellis. And the Oscar went to the Dunkirk team of Mark Weingarten, Gregg Landaker and Gary A Rizzo — a fairly predictable result given the huge role audio played in the film's impact on audiences. VISUAL EFFECTS When it comes to visual effects, Oscar usually votes like any fanboy, and likes to rewards awe- some VFX in some of the year's biggest hits — which in 2017 meant Star Wars: The Last Jedi and the team of Ben Morris, Mike Mulholland, Neal Scanlan and Chris Corbould, along with an army of VFX artists from ILM, Hybride and Rodeo; Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2 (Christopher Townsend, Guy Williams, Jonathan Fawkner and Dan Sudick); War for the Planet of the Apes (Joe Letteri, Daniel Barrett, Dan Lemmon and Joel Whist); Kong: Skull Island (Stephen Rosenbaum, Jeff White, Scott Benza and Mike Meinardus) and Blade Runner 2049 (John Nelson, Gerd Nefzer, Paul Lambert and Richard R. Hoover). While the latter under-performed at the box office, its stunning VFX (over 1150 shots done by a raft of companies including Weta, MPC, Buf, Framestore, Double Negative and Rodeo) helped push it into contention. Weta's fingerprints were also all over the technically ambitious War for the Planet of the Apes, the third and climactic chap- ter of the critically acclaimed blockbuster trilogy. Weta Digital's senior visual effects supervisor and four-time Oscar winner Joe Letteri (The Lord of the Rings, Avatar), Oscar winner and VFX supervisor Dan Lemmon (Dawn of the Planet of the Apes) oversaw the complex VFX and a team of hundreds of artists and technicians. In Kong: Skull Island, the legendary Kong was brought to life on a whole new scale by Industrial Light & Magic, with two-time Oscar winner Stephen Rosenbaum (Avatar, Forrest Gump) serving as visu- al effects supervisor, and VFX supervisor Jeff White running the team at ILM. It was telling that War for the Planet of the Apes won the top prize (Outstanding Visual Effects in a Photoreal Feature) and three other top awards — for effects simulation, compositing and animated character (Caesar) — at the recent Visual Effects Society Awards, especially as it beat out the same four films it was also up against in the Oscar race. But then 2011's Rise of the Planet of the Apes and 2014's Dawn of the Planet of the Apes also won the top prize at the VES Awards and were also Oscar nominated, but Rise lost the Oscar to Hugo, and Dawn lost to Interstellar. On the other hand, in six of the last 10 years, the winner of the top VES category went on to win the VFX Oscar. So would the epic finale to Matt Reeves' trilogy finally win the VFX Oscar? And, the Oscar went to Blade Runner 2049, a worthy successor to the original classic. SUMMING UP Overall, Oscar spread the wealth this year and only two of the nine best picture nominees — The Post and Lady Bird — disappointingly failed to win an award. The other seven films won at least one award each, so none of the favorites made a clean sweep. And continuing a long trend, Oscar again virtually ignored all the popular blockbusters in favor of low-budget films that performed moderately at the box office (long gone are the glory days of Titanic and Lord of the Rings). Maybe next year? (L-R) Weingarten, Landaker and Rizzo. Gibson (L) and King. Roger Deakins (L-R) Hoover, Lambert, Nefzer and Nelson.