Sound: Dialogue, Music, and Effects (Behind the Silver Screen Series)

July 20, 2015 @ 10:47 pm

Sound: Dialogue, Music, and Effects (Behind the Silver Screen Series)

Language: English

Pages: 224

ISBN: 0813564263

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


Sound has always been an integral component of the moviegoing experience. Even during the so-called “silent era,” motion pictures were regularly accompanied by live music, lectures, and sound effects. Today, whether we listen to movies in booming Dolby theaters or on tiny laptop speakers, sonic elements hold our attention and guide our emotional responses. Yet few of us are fully aware of the tremendous collaborative work, involving both artistry and technical wizardry, required to create that cinematic soundscape. 
 
Sound, the latest book in the Behind the Silver Screen series, introduces key concepts, seminal moments, and pivotal figures in the development of cinematic sound. Each of the book’s six chapters cover a different era in the history of Hollywood, from silent films to the digital age, and each is written by an expert in that period. Together, the book’s contributors are able to explore a remarkable range of past and present film industry practices, from the hiring of elocution coaches to the marketing of soundtrack records.  
 
Not only does the collection highlight the achievements of renowned sound designers and film composers like Ben Burtt and John Williams, it also honors the unsung workers whose inventions, artistry, and performances have shaped the soundscapes of many notable movies. After you read Sound, you’ll never see—or hear—movies in quite the same way. 
 
Sound is a volume in the Behind the Silver Screen series—other titles in the series include Acting; Animation; Art Direction and Production Design; Cinematography; Costume, Makeup, and Hair; Directing; Editing and Special Visual Effects; Producing; and Screenwriting.
 
 
 

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celluloid.63 Fox’s Movietone system was demonstrated to the public for the first time in May 1927 with a brief newsreel remarkable only for its precise synchronization of image and sound. In October of that year Warner Bros. released its third Vitaphone feature; like the earlier Don Juan and The Better ’Ole, The Jazz Singer was in essence a silent film with an orchestral accompaniment—and occasional sound effects—recorded on phonograph discs; it veered sharply from the just-established norm,

first used by Fox, was proving the better option. In May 1928, the Big Five—MGM, Universal, First National, Paramount–Famous [Players]– Lasky (hereafter Paramount), and Producers Distributing Corp.—acting as a whole, leased Western Electric’s new sound-on-film system. Other studios were right behind. The Radio Corporation of America (RCA) had devised its own competing sound-on-film system, Photophone, and when passed over by the Big Five it allied with the Film Booking Office and the

All Time from ‘Sound.’”32 Despite organized opposition from the American Federation of Musicians to “the substitution of mechanical music, synchronized to screen action, for the personal appearance of musicians,”33 the Loews theater chain eliminated the orchestras and organists from thirty of its New York theaters in 1928. Variety lamented: “Never in the record of New York union musicians has there been such a lack of work, with prospects of other circuits taking a similar course when the

fortune to be asked to design sounds for [Star Wars] in which the producer, Gary Kurtz, and the director, George Lucas, were very interested in innovative sound. They didn’t just want to go to the libraries and pull out previously used material. kalinakText_RUP2.indd 111 2/3/15 6:03 PM 112 Jay Beck with Vanessa Theme Ament They were interested in original ideas, so I was given the task of inventing a lot of sounds.11 This contrasted with the longstanding job of the sound editor to cut in

available, sound editors used SMPTE time code to synchronize images with sound on multitrack recorders.81 The use of multitrack recorders and slaved video images meant that sound editors could record, audition, and mix sounds before the final rerecording mix for a film. Because premixes of particular effects or sequences could be constructed during the editing process, sound effects editors took on a larger role. While this proved advantageous for auditioning effects, there were problems shifting

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