I'm going to go through each category, tell you who has been nominated and won for what, give a context for what that means, and order the nominees from most to least likely to win on Oscar night. That doesn't mean I'll be right, but it does mean I'll be informed. Wish me luck.
Previously:
Best Documentary, Animate, and Live-Action Short
Best Documentary Feature
Best Foreign Film
Best Animated Feature
Best Visual Effects
Glossary:
BAFTA Awards - British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards
CAS Award - Cinema Audio Society Award
Sound is tough. Do want to know why? Let's play a game called "What's the difference between sound editing and sound mixing?". Even if you know the answer, it doesn't matter because almost none of the voters know. It doesn't help that the Sound Editor Guild awards are specific to the point of being useless. All we have to go off if the generic BAFTA award for Sound and the Cinema Audio Society for Sound Mixing.
First of all, the double winner (Sound Editing and Mixing) isn't all that common. Ten of the last twenty years it's gone that way and it normally comes with a BAFTA win too (8 of those 10 years).
Second, the winner in one category tends to be a nominee in the other. 17 of the last 20 Sound Editing winners also have a Sound Mixing nomination. Only 12 of the last 20 Sound Mixing winners had Sound Editing nominations (although Sound Editing has only regularly had 5 nominees since '06 making it a bit harder to match up).
Lastly, the BAFTA Sound category seems to be aligned closer to mixing than editing.
Best Sound Editing
BAFTA - Sound - Nominee
Voters love war movies for Sound Editing. Zero Dark Thirty, Letters from Iwo Jima, Master and Commander, Pearl Harbor, U-571. These all won sound editing but not mixing. Nothing looks like enough of a technical behemoth to sweep the technical awards, so I'm looking for sound to go different ways, starting with another war movie win.
Birdman
BAFTA - Sound - Nominee
I'm feeling pretty good about the war angle. Something about Birdman's lack of nomination for its score has me wondering how much of a player this is for the sound awards.
Unbroken
I'd rather go with the war movie with a BAFTA nomination and more Oscar love. They could certainly go this way though.
Interstellar
Ok, the Sound Mixing is where the problems with this movie belong. I'm pretty sure that won't matter when people fill out their ballots though.
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
It looks like Middle Earth is going out with a whimper.
Best Sound Mixing
My apologies to Birdman. I made this before I considered the CAS Awards.
BirdmanBAFTA - Sound - Nominee
CAS Award - Sound Mixing - Winner
The CAS award win is the best thing I have to go off. Some people expect. Since it was snubbed for Original Score (I don't think it was eligible for some stupid reason), this seems like the best way to award the music in this movie.
American Sniper
BAFTA - Sound - Nominee
CAS Award - Sound Mixing - Nominee
It's has the required CAS nomination. Many are thinking this could sweep the sound categories. I could see a lazy voter pool going that way, but I'm not sure I believe it.
Whiplash
BAFTA - Sound - Winner
I'm torn. The BAFTAs have picked the last 7 winners in Sound Mixing. That's a good sign. Then, look at some of the past winners that didn't win editing too: Les Miserables, Dreamgirls, Ray, Chicago. The voters like to award music infusion here. Although, the last 20 winners of the Oscar have been nominated by the Cinema Audio Society, which Whiplash wasn't.
Interstellar
CAS Award - Sound Mixing - Nominee
This should be last place considering the massive sound mixing issues in this movie, when you couldn't hear what the actors were saying a good deal of the time. The fact that it is nominated though means that there's some blind love out there which makes this a wildcard.
Unbroken
CAS Award - Sound Mixing - Nominee
Perhaps I'm underestimating it, but it fell off everyone's radar very quickly.
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