“MAKING WAVES: THE ART OF CINEMATIC SOUND”

Published January 7, 2020 by Robert W. Butler at Butler’s Cinema Scene

“MAKING WAVES: THE ART OF CINEMATIC SOUND” My rating: B (Plays Jan. 8 and 10 at the Tivoli at the Nelson)

94 minutes | No MPAA rating

The cinema has always been dominated by its visual elements and the moving image…there’s a reason we refer to them as “the movies,” after all.

But as powerful as visual images may be, they can be enhanced immeasurably by the judicious and creative use of sound. Some filmmakers, in fact, argue that what we hear in the theater is as important — perhaps more important — than what we see.

Midge Costin’s documentary “Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound” — she’s a veteran sound and dialogue editor making her directing debut — is a little bit of everything: history, aesthetic exploration, technological geek out.

It is also, for the most part, a look at the careers of two of the still-living giants of movie sound: Walter Murch, whose sound designs have graced the films of Francis Coppola, and Ben Burtt, who brought his talents to George Lucas’ “Star Wars.”

The film opens with Murch, now 77, commenting on how even before birth we are accustomed to hearing our mother’s breathing and heartbeat, as well as voices and noises coming from outside her body. For that reason, Murch asserts, hearing is a much more profound experience than viewing.

The film picks out from cinema’s past special films that advanced movie sound. There’s “King Kong,” whose sound designer manipulated the roars of zoo animals.  There was the radio era, when entire worlds were fabricated from pure sound; artists like Orson Welles exploited the artistic possibilities of radio and then brought that some creativity to the soundtrack of his “Citizen Kane” (1941). Alfred Hitchcock was an advocate of pure sound, eschewing all music for his “The Birds” (1965) and relying heavily on electronically distorted avian noises.

But these adventurous souls were few and far between. Mostly the studios were run like an assembly line that avoided adventurous sound design; each studio had its own sound library of gunshots, trains, screeching tires, ricocheting bullets and other noises that were used over and over again.

Of course for most of the sound era — which began in the late ’20s — movie sound meant monaural sound, noises coming from one speaker directly behind the screen.  It wasn’t until Barbra Streisand demanded a full stereo presentation for her 1976 “A Star Is Born” that stereo soundtracks became the norm.

In films like “Nashville” Robert Altman got creative with dialogue, wiring up everyone in a crowded scene with their own microphones and recording each actor individually so that he could manipulate what his audience heard in the final print.

But the monster that changed everything was “Star Wars,” for which Burtt gave us seat-rumbling intergalactic space vessels, shrieking dogfights, a roaring Wookie

and a tiny  robot who we understood perfectly even though he spoke in whines, clicks and beeps.

A few years later Coppola, wowed by the quadrophonic recordings that were briefly in vogue, decided he wanted the same spacial effect for “Apocalypse Now.”  From that point on putting speakers behind the audience became standard operating procedure for theater designers.

The first hour of “Making Waves” goes pretty smoothly.  The film’s final third, though, veers  into the academic; it’s a much dryer presentation.

Yes, it does touch upon the groundbreaking work of Gary Rydstrom for animation giant Pixar, and it is in the film’s final 30 minutes that we start hearing from the many women who are now working in movie sound. But by this time some audience restlessness may have set in.

The doc is peppered with talking-head appearances by famous filmmakers: Robert Redford, Barbra Streisand, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Peter Weir, David Lynch, Sofia Coppola. Sometimes they have something interesting to say; mostly they deliver one-and-out sound bites. Having landed interviews with these heavy hitters, one cannot blame Costin for making sure all were accounted for in the final version.

(NOTE: Producer Karen Johnson will hold a Q&A session following each screening.)

| Robert W. Butler

TRAILER for “Making Waves”