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www.postmagazine.com 24 POST JAN/FEB 2019 OSCAR CONTENDERS 3D city, complete with an old town and suburbs. In the stop-motion animation tour-de-force Isle of Dogs (also receving an Animated Film nod), visual effects supervisor Tim Ledbury managed to maintain the DIY Wes Anderson sensibility and work in an innovative way with the time honored art form. Although puppets and sets were detailed and real, all the "hand-made" elements were shot in-camera against greenscreen and had to be composited together. His VFX team's previs compositions were essential, as many previs mockups allowed Anderson to make framing decisions before cameras rolled and sets and elements were built and established. With 50-plus sets and hun- dreds of set ups, they also used "mobile" greenscreens and forced perspective to minimize the need to composite shots together, and used CG with the seas, when the dogs are on the raft traveling along and the ocean backgrounds. VFX were also crucial when the motion control cameras couldn't get close enough to the puppets. A few honory mentions in the audio category are Beautiful Boy, the harrowing family drama about drug addiction and the first English language film from Belgian director Felix Van Groeningen. Editor Nico Leunen notes that the nonlinear, emotionally driven film stylistically mimics the way memory works. Sound designer/super- vising sound editor Elmo Weber should have been recognized for his beautifully realized and detailed naturalistic soundscape. Along with sound FX editor Marc Glassman, he spent days recording en- vironments, then Van Groeningen and Luenen spent many hours at Weber's home listening to and blending the various elements in a 7.1 monitoring environment. Sound also played a key role in what should have been another contender, the family drama The Hate U Give. When BAFTA-winning sound editing supervisor Don Sylvester (Walk the Line), Oscar- winning re-recording mixer Andy Nelson (Les Miserables) and Oscar nominated re-recording mixer David Giammarco (Moneyball) began collaborating with director George Tillman Jr. (Soul Food) on the film, they all set out to carefully craft a soundscape that was ultra-realis- tic, and did all the mixing on the Howard Hawks stage on the Fox lot. Mary Queen of Scots, the sweeping period drama about the tur- bulent life of Mary Stuart (Saoirse Ronan) and that of her English cousin Queen Elizabeth I (Margot Robbie), was certainly noticed for costume design and hair and makeup, but it also deserves attention for its great sound. Theater director Josie Rourke, making her feature film directorial debut, worked closely with a sound team that included sound designers Ian Wilson and Alastair Sirkett, and re-recording mixers Steve Single and Andrew Caller. The team used the new The Mix Stage at the Abbey Road Studios. Single and Wilson produced three temp mixes during the picture edit period, with Single using the Avid S6 console for dialogue and music, and Wilson using an Avid S3 for his effects. While preparing for each temp mix, the team worked in 7.1.2 Atmos Pro Tools sessions and folded down via Spanner to 5.1 in the tracks to feed the temp mixes. "This meant we were always carrying the temp mix adjustments and edit work forward towards the final mix," says Wilson. Premixes were done at Pinewood Studios, and the effects were mixed by resident Pinewood mixer Caller in the Dolby Atmos room. The final mix at Abbey Road took three weeks. Incredibles 2 Isle of Dogs Roma