Gary Rydstrom has been working with Steven Spielberg as a sound re-recording mixer since 1989's "Always," and his mantleful of seven Oscars includes four that he picked up working on Spielberg films, including "Saving Private Ryan" and "Jurassic Park."  And last year he was nominated again for a Spielberg picture, "War Horse," which represented another chance to get loud. 

All those epics couldn't stand in starker contrast to the audio minimalism of "Lincoln," where Rydstrom had to figure out how just how loud to make the shuffle of Daniel Day-Lewis' slippers and the whirl of his pendulous pocket watch.

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Ang Lee's "Life of Pi" was a famously difficult movie to pull off, a philosophical and spiritual journey featuring a young protagonist (don't work with kids) stranded on the open sea (don't work on water) with his only companion, a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker (don't work with animals).

Throw in a beloved bestselling book whose devoted fans would be comparing the adaptation to the novel, extensive special effects that included a menagerie of largely CG animals, and Lee's decision to shoot in 3D for the first time, and only the truest of true believers would have dared suggest that the movie would end up an international hit with grosses approaching $450 million, and a...

David Fincher's "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" is cold and dark, chilly and kinky; it's a virtuoso thriller in which sound plays a key role in ratcheting up the tension and keeping the audience uneasy as the main characters struggle to solve a decades-old crime.

Re-recording mixer Michael Semanick received his ninth Oscar nomination for the film, his fifth movie with Fincher. His other work includes the "There Will Be Blood," "WALL-E" and the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, for which he won one of his two Oscars. (The other came for Peter Jackson's "King Kong.")

What were...

Sound re-recording mixer Greg P. Russell may be a name few moviegoers -- or even many Academy members -- know. But with more than 185 films to his credit and more than a dozen Oscar nominations, he has worked with some of the biggest directors in Hollywood.

Russell picked up his 15th Oscar nod this year for Michael Bay’s “Transformers: Dark of the Moon.” With a worldwide gross of more than $1.1 billion, Bay's film ranks fourth after "Avatar," "Titanic" and "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2." Russell and Bay have collaborated on eight films, with six nominations for sound mixing. But so far the director's action...