It seems more and more studios are putting out a concerted effort to rally behind tech categories this season, as a number of films have received publicity treatment for craft nominations in the form of high profile demos and Q&A events.

The "Transformers" team got together at the end of last week for just such an event, and I kept forgetting to link to Anne's reaction piece.

Toward the end of the story, Anne gets to the subject of sound mixers Kevin O'Connell and Greg P. Russell, as well as their combined 32 Oscar nominations without a win.

I'm sure it was a splendid session (I regret that school took priority on the evening in question), but I wanted to know even more about what each specific contributor added to the film after reading Anne's piece, and even though I'm friendly with Russell and give a lot of attention to the tech categories, I still don't have all the screws tightened on this stuff (nor does, I'm sure, a large number of Academy members).  So I called him up to get a little more out of him.

This is how Russell broke down each individual contribution on what he calls the most difficult and complex sound job of his career:

•  Production mixer Peter Devlin (one of the three nominees for Best Sound Mixing) provided dialogue tracks to the sound team that were "well-recorded," Russell said, despite the challenging circumstances Devlin faced on the set.

•  Russell had the responsibility of handling all of the film's many aural effects, while sound editing nominees Ethan Van der Ryn and Erik Aadahl created a vast palette of sounds for the mixers to work with.

•  (This is where it becomes greek to many -- myself included -- but certainly reflects a rather involved process.)  Russell and company pre-dubbed sound effects for five weeks and had a total of 29 "sound effects pre-dubs" per reel, nine of which were dedicated just for the robots.

•  The biggest challenge, Russell said, was conveying a quotient of believability to the robot stars of the picture.  Russell said it was "like a kid in a candy store" for him and co-nominee/former mixing partner Kevin O'Connell.

•  Creating the robots' voices was a challenge for co-sound supervisor Mike Hopkins, Russell said.  Together with O’Connell, he used clever processing techniques and even placed the voices in each of the speakers at times (including the subwoofer), giving the robots that "larger than life feeling."

•  Finally, Van der Ryn and Aadahl had to come up with signature sounds for the different robots to give them variation and personality.  Thompson touches on this in her piece when she writes that "the sound of Optimus Prime, voiced by Peter Cullen, is about air.  Bumble Bee is about buzzing."

Well, there you go.  You learn something every day and I honestly think I could hang around with these guys a solid week and still be dizzy with the amount of work that goes into post-producing a flick like "Transformers."

Other stories of interest:

•  Gerard Kennedy interviews Kevin O'Connell about the ubiquity of Oscar. [In Contention]
•  Martin Grove talks to the sound team behind "Transformers" [The Hollywood Reporter]
•  Greg P. Russell chats up his 12th nomination with yours truly. [Red Carpet District]