You got it - Sound of Metal fittingly wins Best Sound Oscar

 Olivia Cooke.

We know very well this film. Now Sound of Metal won Best Sound at the 93rd Academy Awards on Sunday (beating out competition from Greyhound, Mank, News of the World, and Soul in order to do so). This year, the ceremony combined what was previously two awards Best Sound Mixing and Best Sound Editing into one overall award.

The award was presented by the star of Sound of Metal himself, Riz Ahmed, who played punk-metal drummer Ruben Stone struggling with the loss of his hearing. The award was accepted by Nicolas Becker live from Paris, speaking on behalf of the film's five-person sound design team. 

Becker and director Darius Marder made great efforts to portray Ruben's experience authentically. They consulted with people who had been born with hearing but lost it over time, similar to Ruben's experience, and spoke to audiologists to understand what kind of sounds Ruben would hear after getting a cochlear implant. 

Becker built a small microphone to fit in Ahmed's mouth and capture the sound of his breathing. 

Iinstead of music, this film has more some kinf of reverberations and distortions.

The idea was to make it really, really naturalistic,

Nicolas Becker told the Washington Post. "When the audience is listening and looking at the film, it's not illustrative. It's created a direct connection with their memories, you know?"

Best Sound wasn't Sound of Metal's only win Sunday night. Editor Mikkel E. G. Nielsen also picked up the Best Film Editing award for his work on the film.

Sound of Metal is streaming on Amazon Prime.

Credits:

Sound of Metal (Amazon) Supervising Sound Editor: Nicolas Becker. Sound Effects Editor: Carolina Santana. And then Foley Editor: Pietu Korhonen Foley Artist and Heikke Kossi - from Finland.