Early Oscar Predictions: Music

Obviously, it's impossible to judge a film's soundtrack before it's released, or even recorded which may be the case with many of this year's upcoming prospects. Thankfully for us obsessive prognosticators, the music branch has some old habits that can lay the foundation for early guesswork. For starters, they are notoriously insular, usually only choosing one or two first-time nominees per year in the Best Original Score category.

So who are some branch favourites with multiple irons in the fire this year?

Early Oscar Predictions: Sound

Music and sound are amongst the final touches to be put on a film, which means there's usually not much to go on when trying to predict Oscar nominees from a year out. Actioners, war movies, or films of a grand size and scale are as good a bet as any at this stage. Better yet if their crews feature sound designers and mixers you have had brushes with awards success in the past.

Early Oscar Predictions: Visual Post-Production

Once principle photography has wrapped, the long, laborious post-production process begins. Editors splice together all the footage while visual effects artists and animators complete the effects shots.

The editing branch has a habit for mostly cribbing from the Best Picture lineup for their own nominees. That doesn't give us much to go on from a predictive standpoint, but there are a few early contenders that wouldn't be terrible bets.

Early Oscar Predictions: Cinematography

The thespians aren't the only ones who have to “perform” on set. Camera operators and directors of photography have their own marks to hit and creative decisions to make, working closely alongside the director to capture images that will compose the final product. Since I'm so crazy about cinematography in general, I determined that this category needed its own post.

Early Oscar Predictions: Design Categories

With the script finished and the project green-lighted, the next stage is setting the stage, as all the elements that will comprise the onscreen world of the movie need to be designed and built in pre-production. The Academy's production design, costume design, and makeup/hairstyling branches have traditionally favoured achievements in these fields that evoke period settings or more imaginative fantasy worlds. Movies that manage to straddle both of those design realms must always be considered formidable.