The 94th Academy Awards got underway on Monday off-camera, with the first eight awards on the night being handed out at the Dolby Theatre before the start of the broadcast.
The statuette was one of eight being handed out in a non-televised series of announcements leading up to the main broadcast. While the decision to cut the categories from the main telecast has drawn a fierce backlash, the recipients’ 45-second speech did not include any mention of the controversy.
Dune got out to an early lead, winning for production design, editing, sound and for Hans Zimmer's score. Though it's not favored in the top awards, Dune — the biggest blockbuster of this year's 10 best-picture nominees — was widely expected to clean up in technical categories.
Theo Green, one of the five specialists cited by the Academy, thanked director Denis Villeneuve in edited remarks shown during the Oscar broadcast. “You, sir, were like the spice flowing through our brains, turning our humble ideas into your imaginary world.” He also thanked composer Hans Zimmer and editor Joe Walker, who also won Oscars for their work on Dune and “treated us as fellow artists. This is for you!”
The sound work on Dune was among many elements of the sci-fi epic to make an impression on Academy members from the moment the film burst onto the festival scene last fall. The team working on the film spared no effort in bringing to life the desert planet Arrakis, at one point sprinkling Rice Krispies cereal onto the sand of California’s Death Valley in order to produce the proper crunch. That solution is one of thousands in the film. Of the more than 3,000 individual sound elements in the final film, just a handful were achieved with synthesizers and electronic gear.
