Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/637797
43 Q1 2016 / CINEMONTAGE away so it isn't "on" all the time." Iñárritu "only cares about emotion," adds Taylor. "Not so much about what the sound is but what the sound makes you feel." He adds that distortion was a huge tool in the mix. "If the wind sounded clean, with a shiny, high end, it wasn't good for the film," he says. Among his other tasks, Thom tackled the bear's sound effects. "It had to seem absolutely real, organic and natural, and be tailored in a way that told the story we wanted to tell," Thom explains. For the injured bear, he used a recording of a sick horse with labored breathing as the base of the sound design, with dog, camel and human vocalizations as other elements. He transitioned to the horse elements seamlessly by introducing them earlier in the sequence, and then bringing them to the fore when the bear is injured. All three are happy to be nominated. "It's always a thrill to be invited to the party," says Thom. For Montaño, a nomination is "a humbling experience." "I get excited for my family members, who really get a charge out of it," he admits. "For me, that's the best part of it." On the Fox lot's Howard Hawks Stage, dialogue/ music re-recording mixer Nelson and sound effects/ Foley re-recording mixer Scarabosio worked on Star Wars: The Force Awakens, directed by J.J. Abrams. Nelson and Scarabosio, who has one previous nomination for There Will Be Blood, have worked together on three other films (Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Munich, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull); their work on The Force Awakens also garnered them BAFTA and CAS nominations. "It's very exciting to be nominated," says Scarabosio. There's no small pressure to be involved in a Star Wars movie. "The first mission statement was, if you close your eyes, you have to know you're listening to a Star Wars movie," says Scarabosio. "That was the starting point." Nelson, who has worked on all of Abrams' feature films, notes the importance of the music. "John Williams did a fantastic job with the score," he says. With regard to dialogue, Nelson tried processing Kylo Ren's voice, played by Adam Driver. "The filmmakers would have liked more extreme processing, but it became hard to understand, so we had to back down on every single line Adam delivered," he explains. "Clarity, emotion and excitement were my mantra throughout the film." For sound effects and Foley, Scarabosio couldn't rely on past Star Wars films. "There is no formula for what a Star Wars movie sounds like, having worked on a few," he offers. "J.J. wanted it to be fun, but he also wanted to feel something, [without it feeling too] cluttered or fatiguing. We were trying to pick what's important in any given scene." Scarabosio notes that in the big battle sequences, careful choices ruled the day. "We had to keep things very focused, featuring maybe four or five sounds instead of 10," he says. "We'd had all these fantastic sounds, but if you lay them all at once, they lose what makes them great. We had to find the sounds that really spoke to each scene." What made the work especially notable, he adds, is that "Star Wars is 40 years of filmmaking." "It means so many things to so many people," he says. "I felt to do this justice, we had to make something fresh and exciting, because the movie is a completely fresh take. What we succeeded at making is a film with an amazing history and tradition, but one that opens up a whole new chapter to where the franchise is heading." f Chris Scarabosio. Andy Nelson. Photo by Gregory Schwartz