The industry awards season is coming fast upon us. While the Cannes International Advertising Festival and the AICP Show are among those that cast a large shadow, there are some smaller yet well-established specialty competitions that merit attention and have some pre-show coverage in this week’s issue: namely the Association of Independent Creative Editors (AICE) Awards, and the Association of Music Producers (AMP) Awards.
The fifth annual AICE Awards ceremony is scheduled for May 25 in Los Angeles. The competition raises awareness of the creative contributions made by editors to the art of commercialmaking.
Nominations for the AICE Awards were just announced in this week’s edition, with Chris Franklin of Big Sky Editorial, New York, topping the field with five noms. Next is Paul Martinez of bicoastal Lost Planet with four.
In the ’06 competition, there are a total of 56 finalists in 18 categories including, for the first time, eight “best of chapter” categories. The AICE chapters in New York, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Dallas, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Toronto each have “best of” nominees. These kudos help to gain recognition for the depth and scope of talent in each AICE regional chapter.
Meanwhile, after its first four years in Los Angeles, the annual AMP Awards ceremony will shift to New York in ’06. (See story in this week’s Music Series section.) The gala evening will also shift from the spring to the fall as AMP looks to broaden the scope of the awards while maintaining its core honors. The move to New York is to in part underscore the national reach of the competition, which is already firmly established on the West Coast.
The AMP Decibelle trophy for Mixer of the Year will continue to be bestowed, as will certificates for the two other finalists vying for the honor. Also returning is the Spotted Excellence Award, which enables the industry at large to log onto www.ampnow.com, watch and listen to three finalist commercials, and then decide which sounds the best.
And ’06 will also see the continuation of the annual Special Merit Award in recognition of the best newcomer to the audio mixing discipline.
AMP is considering the launch of other awards competition honors, including the best marriage of an artist or licensed piece of music with a brand.
What’s particularly refreshing about the AMP competition is that it’s not self congratulatory in nature. Instead of saluting composers and sound designers, the awards were born out of honoring audio post mixers.
In explaining the rationale for initially centering on mixers, several years ago Jan Horowitz, now AMP president, explained, “A lot of expertise goes into making a great television commercial, and the sound mix is the critical last step.”
Horowitz, who is VP/business manager at David Horowitz Music Associates, New York, continued, “Pulling all the audio elements–the music, dialogue, voiceover and sound effects–into perfect balance supports both the visual image and the advertiser’s message. That’s what the very best postproduction mixers do, and we think they deserve recognition.”
Craig Henighan Sounds Off On “Deadpool & Wolverine”
Hollywood lore has it that character actor Edmund Gwenn--while on his deathbed--quipped, “Dying is easy, comedy is hard.”
The second part of that darkly witty utterance remains all too true today as Craig Henighan--a Best Achievement in Sound Mixing Oscar nominee in 2019 for Roma--can attest in that he had to grapple with the sonic of being comic for this year’s box office hit, Deadpool & Wolverine (20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios).
The degree of inherent difficulty was ramped up even further because Deadpool & Wolverine had to seamlessly bring together high action-adventure exploits with moments and dialogue that tickled the funny bone. There’s a mesh of humorous banter--a staple of the franchise--along with major spectacle replete with explosions, fights, an impactful score and off-the-wall musical numbers.
Henighan explained that among the prime challenges for him from a sound perspective was having to make sure every joke landed within the construct of a superhero film. The tendency for a tentpole movie of this variety, he noted, is to gravitate towards big, loud audio spanning music, dialogue and sound effects. But the unique comedic element of Deadpool & Wolverine necessitated that re-recording mixer and supervising sound editor Henighan strike a delicate balance. “You need to get out of the way for the comedy,” he related. The jokes in a superhero film become “a real dance” as Henighan had to establish a rhythm that did justice to both the comedy and the action as the narrative moves back and forth between them--and sometimes the funny and the high energy, high decibel superhero dynamic unfold simultaneously in a scene or sequence. The “sonic fabric” has to... Read More