This past weekend, the Motion Picture Sound Editors (MPSE) and the Cinema Audio Society (CAS) gave out their awards for the best
sounding film, tv and games of 2020. These awards are normally presented at elegant soirees in Los Angeles but with the world being what it is currently, both organizations shifted their events to virtual ceremonies. There were live acceptance speeches from the winners and some interesting tech to facilitate after-party schmoozing among the digital attendees. With only a few minor technical hiccups the events ran extremely well. As I am now a member of MPSE and (just recently accepted!) CAS, I put on my best suit and took a seat in my temporarily lockdown-imposed home studio to enjoy the shows.
Golden Reel Awards (Friday April 16th, 2021)
First up was Friday night’s Golden Reels, from the MPSE. The night started with a ‘cocktail party’ where everyone was issued a floating robot avatar that resembled a vertical toilet seat with their picture on it. We entered a virtual lobby where I roamed around and took a look at lots of cool archival documents and photos from the Golden Reel Awards, dating all the way back to 1953. When the awards started, all the avatars crowded into teleports that whisked us away to the virtual theatre for the awards presentation. Given the digital nature of the ceremony, the organizers wisely pounced on the opportunity to tap far-flung international members, who would not normally be present, to hand out the awards. Sound gurus from India, Mexico, Australia, Russia and China took over various parts of the night to hand out hardware.
The big winners of the night were The Mandalorian and The Queen’s Gambit in the TV categories, while The Last of Us II dominated the Gaming Awards, sweeping both best sounding Interactive Game Play and Computer Cinematic. In the film categories things were more split, with Greyhound taking the Best SFX & Foley, The Trial of the Chicago 7 taking Best Dialog editing, Soul nabbing best Sound for Animation and Tenet taking the Best Music Editing award. Great tributes were given to George Miller who received the Filmmaker Award (given to a director with a distinguished track record for the sound of their films) and supervising sound editor Dennis Drummond, who received the Career Achievement Award.
Here is a full list of the winners! Congrats to all!
The afterparty had all our avatars head up to the “rooftop” where we were treated to a live DJ and the opportunity to catch up with colleagues. By approaching someone’s robot you could click on them and they would have the option to begin a video chat. I got to catch up with a ton of previous Tonebenders guests, and met many people that would be great to have on the show someday soon. With everything running on west coast time, I left the afterparty around 2 AM Toronto time. Lots of fun was had.
CAS Awards (Saturday April 17th, 2021)
The Cinema Audio Society event the following night was a bit easier to fit into my schedule, kicking off at 4 PM L.A. time. There was no pre-party for this ceremony, and the event started right on time. The Filmmaker Award went to George Clooney, and Randy Thom got in some good one-liners in his role as presenter. The Queen’s Gambit and The Mandalorian won big for the second night in a row, as did Soul in the Animation category. The big prize for Best Live Action Film Mix went to Sound Of Metal. I’m glad it made an impact at this ceremony since it was shut out of the Golden Reels. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel picked up Best Mixing for 1 Hour Television Series; I loved that show and was happy to see it recognized.
Here is a full list of the winners!
The afterparty was again a wild success. It featured a little more baked-in chaos, because upon entering you were “seated” at a table
with a random group. This gave me the chance to meet people I have no history with at all. Of course once settled, everyone was free to move about to other tables. I got to catch up with lots of people. It’s amazing in the context of these events to find out how many people are Tonebenders listeners.
If you want to learn more about the stories behind some of the winners, you can check out past Tonebenders episodes, linked below. Big congrats to all the people that worked so hard to pull off these events so flawlessly. It was a blast. Here’s to attending in person next year!
The big winner at the C.A.S. Awards was Sound Of Metal, as it took home the Best Mix for a Feature Film – Live Action trophy. We spoke with re-recording mixer Jaime Baksht (as well as Supervising sound editor Nicholas Becker and Foley Artist Heikki Kossi) about mixing this great film:
The Queens Gambit was one of the weekends biggest winners. Within the “Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing – Episodic Long Form” categories at the Golden Reels, Queen’s Gambit won for Best Music Editing, Best Dialog/ADR Editing and Best Effects Foley (tied with Picard). While at the C.A.S. Awards the show won Best Mix on a “NON-THEATRICAL MOTION PICTURE OR LIMITED SERIES” You can hear about their work in a pair of episodes we did wit the sound editorial/foley and Mixing teams.
Also having a dominant weekend was The Mandalorian. The show won Best Mix For 1/2 Hour Television at the C.A.S. Awards and also grabbed both the Dialog/ADR Editing and Effects/Foley trophies in the Sound Editing in Episodic Short from M.P.S.E. We talked with supervising sound editor David Acord and re-recording mixer Bonnie Wild about the amazing work they did on The Mandalorian:
The Trial Of The Chicago 7 won the Golden Reel for Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing – Feature Dialogue / ADR. We went in deep with Supervising Sound Editor Renee Tondelli about care that was put into the dialog edit on this film:
Soul was another big winner at both ceremonies. The animated feature won the “Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing – Feature Animation” trophy on Friday at the Golden Reels and then picked up the Best Mix for an Animated Motion Picture on Saturday. Supervising Sound Editor was on Tonebenders talking about his other nominated film Mank, but near the end of the episode we talked a little about Soul:
We talked with Supervising Sound Editor Richard King about all the work that was done on Tenet. The film took home the Golden Reel for Best Feature Music Editing:
Marvellous Mrs Maisel won best TV mix 1 Hour. We talked with the Production Recordist, Dialog Editor and Re-Recording Mixer about how they craft such a great sounding series:
In addition to all of the above winners, Tonebenders spoke with many of the nominees as well over the last year, Feel free to catch up with Trolls World Tour, Nomadland, WonderWoman 1984, John Pritchett from News of the World, The Foley Team from Onward, Randy Thom from Midnight Sky and many more in our archives.