The guild whose award is analogous of the Oscar for Best Sound Mixing is the Cinema Audio Society. Their track record is very hit-or-miss. They’ll peg the Oscar winner several years in a row then whiff. In a year with so many strong competitors, it wouldn’t be surprising if they didn’t match. It could be just as interesting to provide Academy voters not familiar with the category some insight into what the professionals think.

CINEMA AUDIO SOCIETY AWARDS

Best Sound Mixing – Live Action

Bridge of Spies
The Hateful Eight
Mad Max: Fury Road (Wesley, Tripp, Thomas)
The Revenant (Peter, RU:Wesley, RU:Thomas)
Star Wars: The Force Awakens (RU:Peter, RU:Tripp)

Wesley Lovell: Historically, this group doesn’t go for the mega blockbuster. It nominated only one of the Star Wars prequels and ignored it. It skipped future Oscar winner Jurassic Park as well. That might hurt Mad Max: Fury Road and leave the next clearest benefactor as The Revenant, which won at BAFTA. If it wins here as well, then its Oscar chances have brightened.
Peter J. Patrick: The noisiest film wins.
Tripp Burton: Mad Max‘s frenetic chases seem to be a given for the sound categories, but never underestimate the myriad of sounds for Star Wars.
Thomas LaTourette: Mad Max: Fury Road stands the best chance of prevailing here as it had the most interesting and probably hardest sound to mix. Until recently I would have thought that Star Wars might win, or at least come in second, but with The Revenant turning into such a juggernaut, that would be the movie most likely to stage an upset. If Revenant does win here, look for it to come close to pulling a sweep in all its categories at the Oscars.

Best Sound Mixing – Animated

The Good Dinosaur (RU:Wesley, RU:Tripp)
Hotel Transylvania 2
Inside Out (Wesley, Peter, Tripp, Thomas)
Minions (RU:Thomas)
The Peanuts Movie (RU:Peter)

Wesley Lovell: The dominant emotions of the animation contests this year have been with Inside Out and I can’t really see them not giving the talents at Pixar the award, unless they go with the talents at Pixar and award The Good Dinosaur.
Peter J. Patrick: At this point it would be foolhardy to bet against Inside Out.
Tripp Burton: Yet again, Inside Out should easily take another prize.
Thomas LaTourette: Inside Out has been winning most awards related to animated movies, and I do not think this will be an exception. It got to create a fun inner world and I think that will propel it to a win. Its closest competitor would be Minions with lots of explosions, but I do not see it winning.