By Robert Goldrich|Road To Oscar Series, Part 14

On the strength of director Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken (Universal Pictures), two sound editors earned their first Oscar nominations, a sound mixer garnered one of his two nominations this year, another mixer tallied his seventh career nom, and a third mixer is in the running for his second Oscar, having won his first in 2000 for The Matrix.

The sound editors are Becky Sullivan and Andrew DeCristofaro. The former becomes only the sixth woman in Academy Awards history to earn a Best Sound Editing nomination.

Sound mixers Frank A. Montaño and Jon Taylor each earned two Oscar nominations this year–for Unbroken and Fox Searchlight's Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance). These are Taylor’s first career nominations while Montaño has a total of seven, the others for Under Siege in 1993, The Fugitive in 1994, Clear and Present Danger in 1995, Batman Forever in 1996, and Wanted in 2009. And sound mixer David Lee now has a pair of nominations, the first resulting in the aforementioned Oscar win for The Matrix.

Sullivan, DeCristofaro, Montaño and Taylor are all with NBCUniversal StudioPost on the Universal Studios lot. SHOOT caught up with this foursome to get their insights into Unbroken, and in the case of Montaño and Taylor some additional backstory on Birdman.

Unbroken is based on the 2010 nonfiction book by Laura Hillenbrand, "Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption." The film revolves centers on the life of USA Olympian and athlete Louis “Louie” Zamperini, portrayed by Jack O’Connell. Zamperini survived in a raft for 47 days after his bomber was downed in World War II, and then was sent to a series of Japanese prisoner of war camps before being liberated.

Unbroken is in some respects three films chronicling, respectively, the chaotic aerial battles of war, the vast emptiness of the ocean (with some moments under water), and the harsh and violent POW camps–three dramatically different environments which call for a dynamic range of sound that’s instrumental in helping to tell Zamperini’s story.

Sound editors
Sullivan has a track record with Jolie, having served as supervising sound editor on In the Land of Blood and Honey (2011), which marked Jolie’s narrative feature directorial debut. Jolie sought out Sullivan for a return engagement. The sound editor recalled getting a phone call from Jolie 18 months ago. “She asked me if I was familiar with the book 'Unbroken.' I told her that I had read it twice and that it was one of my favorite books. She said that it was going to be her next film. I immediately knew she was the right person for that material. She has a huge heart and is a great director which is what that material needs. I then called Andrew and said, ‘let’s do this together.’”

DeCristofaro observed, “It was a challenging film but also a great opportunity for a sound editor given the scope of what we were being asked to do. There are so many different dynamics sonically in the film, which is pretty unusual and fairly daunting yet exciting at the same time. What made things easier is that Angie [Jolie] knows the power of sound. When we sat down together as a team, Angie gave us an emotional roadmap for Unbroken, sharing ‘this is what I want the audience to feel from such and such a scene.’ It’s like the director telling the DP that a scene should generate a warm feeling for the audience. We do the same thing sonically. The audience should see the plane and feel the war machine. On the raft, they should feel being alone and isolated at sea. In the jungle, the chaos, and in the prison camps the coldness and harshness of the winds. As powerful and impactful as the music score was, Angie knew the power of what our sound could convey. As a director she was willing to let us go there.”

Sullivan noted, “Angie wanted the sound effects–more than the music–to be a driving force for the film. This left us no room to hide; the music wasn’t going to get in the way of what we were tasked to do.”

DeCristofaro added, “Angie said she didn’t want a Hollywood film. She wanted Unbroken to be authentic, real. We could of course use all the tools at our disposal but we couldn’t be overt design-y. The emotion had to come out of reality–and we did that, right down to every switch on that B-24 bomber.”

Towards that end, Sullivan related, “We looked for six months and finally found a working B-24 from the Collings Foundation [in Florida].” Sullivan and DeCristofaro rendezvoused with the plane in Camarillo, Calif. “We had a day with the plane, put microphones in every place we could. We sputtered the engines out, did all kinds of things to get a good library of sounds. That was a pretty emotional day for us–to be on a flying piece of history. That’s just what Angie wanted–everything to be authentic as we followed the emotional soundscape of Louie’s life from the war back to childhood to the Olympics to the raft and then the prison camps.”

As for what Sullivan’s first Oscar nomination means to her personally and professionally, she shared, “It’s extremely humbling and very exciting. For me to get a nomination for this film is very special–because of what the book has meant to me, what my relationship with Angie has meant. To take this journey with this book, this film, Angie, Andrew and our little crew–I couldn’t ever dream of anything better.”

DeCristofaro noted that Sullivan being just the sixth woman to garner a Sound Editing Oscar nomination is just part of the story. “I’m extremely proud of Becky. She was the lead on this film given her collaborative relationship with Angie. Becky is the first nominated female sound editor to have her name credited at the top of the list–as it should be. We have women–Angie and Becky–making a World War II movie. What Angie accomplished is amazing. The first time I saw the film, its scope just stood out as something special. This was not a ‘sky’s the limit’ budget but they went for it and achieved what they set out to do.”

Sullivan added, “I’ve done this for 28 years, Andrew for 20-something years. This is the film you wait for your entire career–a great story, a great director.”

Earlier career credits for Sullivan include The Fugitive and Collateral while DeCristofaro has worked on such films as Little Miss Sunshine and Crazy Heart. Sullivan and DeCristofaro have known each other for some 15 years but it wasn’t until 2013 or so that they started teaming together. “We have the same taste and we trust each other,” said Sullivan. “That trust is the key.”

As a tandem, Sullivan and DeCristofaro have also teamed on films including Melissa McCarthy comedy Tammy, and the Miguel Arteta-directed Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.

In terms of what’s next, Sullivan and DeCristofaro are slated to take on director Jolie’s next film, By the Sea. And Sullivan wrapped the just released Fifty Shades of Grey.

Mixers
SHOOT connected with two of the three Oscar-nominated sound mixers on Unbroken–Montaño and Taylor, who were also two of three mixer nominees for Birdman (the third being Thomas Varga who landed his first career Oscar nomination).

Birdman resumed Taylor’s collaborative relationship with the film’s director, Alejandro González Iñárritu. Taylor served as a mixer over the years on such Iñárritu films as Babel, Biutiful and 21 Grams. Taylor also worked with Jolie prior to Unbroken. He was a mixer on In the Land of Blood and Honey.

Taylor said he has come to value his collaborations with seven-time Oscar nominee Montaño. “Our partnership has been a great experience,” assessed Taylor. “I always considered myself a hard worker. But with Frank, I work even harder. I feel super lucky to work with him on a large studio film like Unbroken and a smaller independent film such as Birdman. To be nominated this year for both of them is amazing. The films have totally different mindsets and I couldn’t be more proud of both of them. Unbroken left no stone unturned–perfect in its authenticity all the way through. And then Birdman is very well done but raw. There’s a real rawness as the audience has the perspective of the guy holding the camera.”

Of Unbroken, Montaño observed, “Obviously the opening sequence with the air fight was a big challenge. The sound starts off big and bold in that sense, then morphs itself into an internal struggle from being stranded to then being a captive POW. To feel the emotion, to feel what he [Zamperini] was going through, the solitude, called for our sound to not draw attention to itself. It had to be transparent with an elegance to it.

By contrast, Birdman, said Taylor, “called for us to be bigger and bolder. This movie–with the feel of one continuous shot–was outside your normal sound parameters. it was sort of a satire, we could be a little gimmicky and over the top but had to keep it real at the same time. Finding that fine line and maintaining it was the challenge.”

Taylor also pointed out that “music is narration for Alejandro. It’s never just underscore. The drums are narration in Birdman–it’s key to telling the story. But when there’s dialogue, we have to hear it–still, those drums keep playing and we had to strike the right balance as mixers.”

This is the 14th in a multi-part series with future installments of The Road To Oscar slated to run in the weekly SHOOT>e.dition, The SHOOT Dailies and on SHOOTonline.com. The series will appear weekly through the Academy Awards. The Oscars will be held on Sunday, February 22, at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood and will be televised live by the ABC Television Network.

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