If there's anything that pleased me more (apart from Moonlight winning Best Picture) as I watched the 89th Academy Awards was seeing Hacksaw Ridge win Best Sound Mixing. Last year, I wrote about the technicalities of Mad Max: Fury Road, which won both awards in the Sound category of the Oscars . Going back, I realized that I never offered critical commentary or wrote about my own personal opinion--about how I, as a sound editor and designer thought of such work. That being said, I would like to do something different and guide you through my personal experience with the film. I remember going to the movie theater last November, meticulously choosing my seat to study the sound mix in the best possible way I could. There was something about this war film set in the 1940s that really made me curious about the sound team's approach given the fact that you can't actually recreate such sounds, and only the wonders of magic are able to preserve clean production d...
Nicole A. Watlington is a sound editor and designer based in New York City. She holds a B.S. in Recording Arts and a B.A. in Screen Studies.