Get ready to be transported on a journey through the evolution of sound design in Hollywood! The 2019 Tribeca Film Festival premiered Making Waves: The Art Of Cinematic Sound, a documentary that took nine years to produce. Director Midge Costin delves into the history of sound design, from the era of silent films to today’s blockbusters, highlighting the influence of technology on the industry. It’s like a deluxe Hollywood backlot tour led by the scientists of cinema, providing an encyclopedic guide to each function of the sound design department. This showpiece of the festival is sure to become a classroom staple.
The documentary features sound design pioneers Walter Murch (Apocalypse Now), Ben Burtt (Star Wars), and Gary Rydstrom (Jurassic Park), who worked tirelessly to prove the worth of sound design to a studio system that didn’t value it. They created visceral experiences that could persuade even the most resistant gatekeepers, and a handful of tricks disclosed in Making Waves changed the game forever.
Did you know that Barbra Streisand played a pivotal role in the advent of modern sound design? Her understanding of sound as a masterful recording artist and her influence as a superstar made her the ideal figure to push sound design forward on set. She even helped change how movies were played in theaters with the 1976 remake of A Star is Born, offering $1 million of her own money to prove what could happen if enough time and care went into the sound design before a revolutionary presentation of the film in surround sound.
The founding of American Zoetrope by Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas in 1969 cemented a formative alliance between the two directors and their close collaborators. American Zoetrope would produce films that established how important sound design was in the alchemy of a movie. THX 1138 and Apocalypse Now are two notable examples of experimental soundwork by Walter Murch, enabled by the bold directors of American Zoetrope.
Get ready to be blown away by the power of sound design in the film industry. Check out Making Waves and these other articles for more coverage of the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival and the filmmaking industry.
