FYC: The Conjuring for Best Sound Editing

We're looking at our favorite fringe awards contenders just to widen the conversation. Here's Tim Brayton on the year's biggest horror hit.

Since as far back as the thudding echo of footsteps that stalked Jane Randolph in 1942's Cat People, savvy horror directors have understood that one of the surest ways to wring the audience into a terrified frenzy isn't to wage a frontal assault on our sense of taste with gallons of stage blood and pig organs, but to instead mount a side attack on our ears. Some of the scariest movies of all time have gotten that way above all because of their skillful use of sound effects, and the sound editing in director James Wan's terrific The Conjuring - led by supervisor Joe Dzuban - is so hugely important that it was even foregrounded in the film's outstanding teaser trailer. Anybody can show a ghost jump out of the darkness to give you a quick, cheap freak out. It takes genius to get the same jolt from of the well-applied use of harsh, distant clapping.

And if that's the only thing that The Conjuring had to recommend its audio landscape, we could stop right there - a terrific setpiece is fine, but not the stuff that year-end recognition is made of. But while the Clapping from Hell is easily the *showiest* aspect of the film's soundtrack, it's not at all the most important. For that, we might sooner listen to the frequent near-silence that penetrates the story's central haunted hause: to create the idea of a place that hums with danger and malevolence, the sound team literally built in humming, a deep vibration in the bass that frequently crops up just to mess with our perception. And then, there's the hard flatness of the "normal" sounds, which land on the ears with a sort of shrill hollowness. The sound contributes significantly to the feeling that this house where so much of the film's terror occurs is a dead, suffocating place.

In all great horror, the effect on the viewer isn't just created by the big gestures, but by a backdrop which permits those gestures to hit with the most impact. That describes the distorted sound of The Conjuring to a T: unrealistic and vivid and deeply unsettling. This horror hit is not dignified enough to attract trophies, but the craft, and the glorious way it knocks the viewer around, is as impressive and effective as anything with more overt artistic aspirations.

previous FYCs
Actor Tye Sheridan | Editing Stories We Tell | Screenplay In a World... | Supporting Actor Keith Stanfield | Song The Great Gatsby | Score Nebraska | Costume Design Lawrence Anyways | Foreign Film Neighboring Sounds | Supporting Actress Cameron Diaz | Picture The Spectacular Now | Make-Up Warm Bodies | Sound Mixing World War Z | Director Edgar Wright | Production Design The Conjuring | Supporting Actor Ulysses the Cat

Team FYC: The Conjuring for Best Production Design

In this FYC series series, our contributors are highlighting their favorite fringe contenders this awards season. Here's Dancin' Dan on The Conjuring...

Let's face it: The Academy doesn't, as a rule, like horror films. Even when they're done well. But James Wan's The Conjuring is one we hope they'll honor, especially in the below-the-line categories. The technical elements are all exceptionally well-done, but the production design in particular is damn near flawless. For starters, take a look at that Annabelle doll. Creepy, right? But also totally believable as a toy that a girl might have loved as a child in the 40s or 50s and kept with her as a young adult in the 60s.

The whole film is stuffed with smart design like that. Production Designer Julie Berghoff, Art Director Geoffrey S. Grimsman, and Set Decorator Sophie Neufdorfer built the Perron house used in the film from the ground up and filled it with period-appropriate appliances, photos, and toys that felt used and loved - and, perhaps most importantly, that don't look "scary".

The smartest thing The Conjuring does is to not look like a modern horror movie - all dark and tinted blue or gray, with every set and prop looking like it's on the verge of decay. The Perron house looks old because, simply, it's an old house, and the Perrons bought it knowing it was a bit of a fixer-upper. The items in the basement look old and rotting because they've been blocked off for decades. The family's personal items look new, or at least new-ish, as would fit a middle-class family in 1971. The attention to period detail is all over the movie, and it gives the movie a homespun quality that always works in its favor.

There are a lot of reasons why The Conjuring works as well as it does: strong, surprisingly nuanced performances from Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, and Lili Taylor; the genuinely unsettling score; the almost old-fashioned cinematography - but for me the MVP is all the little details around the edges of the frame, constantly lending a sense of reality to the film. The art direction of The Conjuring is effectively scary when it needs to be (the spiral mirror reflecting on Vera Farmiga's face, that monstrous wardrobe, the Warrens' room of occult objects), but mostly it serves to remind you that these were real people this happened to - a family that could have had a normal life if things had just worked out a little differently. And that's where the true horror lies.

These Tweets Touched Me In Places That Made Me Feel Uncomfortable

These two tweets were next to each other on Twitter as I scrolled through my feed....

unretouched from my twitter feed. no cropping!

I find this juxtaposition totally uncalled for and HIGHLY upsetting. I will never be able to look at Superman's crotch again without seeing Annabelle *shudder*. Can I sue Warner Blu-Ray for emotional distress? 

Linksium

Photogenesis has brief promotional clip of Guardians of the Galaxy
IndieWire a catalogue of old movie magazines now available online
Empire the Fading Gigolo trailer - Woody Allen & John Turturro do their own version of Hung
Glenn Dunks on The Conjuring as all haunting movies. All of 'em!
i09 What is wrong and right about Elysium's mixed bag

CHUD First look at Channing Tatum (with poiny ears!) in Jupiter Rising
Cinema Blend Wagner Moura (Elysium) and John Leguizamo competing for a Pablo Escobar biopic
Gawker Christina Bianco does it again - 19 divas singing "Total Eclipse of the Heart" 
Advocate with two new Hercules films coming, The Advocate outs the demi-gods gay side 
Variety annoyingness: Her gets moved into the December glut... as if November isn't good enough to make an Oscar run. Wrong! 

the 80s are inescapable
Variety 'we'll never escape the 80s' alert: Pope of Greenwich Village co-stars Eric Roberts, Mickey Rourke and Daryl Hannah are all reuniting for a hitman movie called Skin Traffix. (*sniffle* no Geraldine Page this time.)
Towleroad Lady Gaga's new song "Applause"... which sounds suspiciously like Missing Persons to me. Or maybe that's just Gaga's voice.
Best Shot The Color Purple is coming (tonight! watch it in the next 24 hours and post somethin!). Next Wednesday The Bad and the Beautiful!

tv lolz
i09 wonders what the hell is going on with True Blood -- who knows anymore. Who cares? Such a hot mess.
Gayest of All Time This "dramatic retelling" of a recent Project Runway in pictures made me LMAO 
Vulture quotable Christina Hendricks wants to be on Game of Thrones post Mad Men 

Beauty Break: It's Vera Farmiga. Fan Yourself!

I met Vera once for an interview, and I can verify that she is a vision in person... the startling eyes. the skin. the hotness. the shoes! (she was rocking a pair of heels she'd literally JUST bought before the interview) so today on her 40th birthday let's wish her all the happiness.

And does anybody look better in fanned collars or gowns? Witness!

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