Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound (2019) Review
From the first words uttered in pioneering film The Jazz Singer – “Wait a minute, wait a minute I tell yer, you ain’t heard nothin’ yet”– to the early sound years of cinema including All Quiet on the Western Front, King Kong and Singing In The Rain, to groundbreaking blockbusters such as Apocalypse Now, Star Wars, Top Gun and Jurassic Park, sound and sound design are an integral part of films and film history. Sound design makes a film, but, if done properly, most viewers won’t even realise how a film’s narrative and themes are being advanced. Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound puts sound in the spotlight and makes a noise about the sound effects that set the heart racing.
Through film clips, interviews and verité footage, the film captures the history, impact and creative process of this often overlooked art form, through the insights and stories of film legends including George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, David Lynch, Barbra Streisand, Ang Lee, Christopher Nolan, Sofia Coppola and Ryan Coogler and their sound design collaborators. Coppola and Lucas have both declared that “sound is 50 per cent of the movie” with Spielberg saying “our ears lead our eyes to where the story lives.” In Making Waves, we see and hear from the key players of sound design – including multi-Oscar® winners Walter Murch (Apocalypse Now), Ben Burtt (Star Wars) and Gary Rydstrom (Saving Private Ryan) – who, in pursuing their art and desire to push the medium, are the very people who will go down in the history of cinema for developing sound into the immersive storytelling force it is today.
Director Midge Costin has been a Hollywood sound editor for over two decades working on projects as varied as the likes of Bette Midler’s HOCUS POCUS and Michael Bay’s glossy misfire ARMAGEDDON. Being established within the Hollywood hierarchy has afforded her the opportunity to interview heavyweights such as the aforementioned Spielberg, Lucas, Lynch and Redford, amongst many others, for her infectious and easily digestible documentary on the evolution of sound in movies.
It’s a very broad canvas to tackle but Costin has managed to cram a lot of detail into just an hour-and-a-half’s screen time and that never ends up feeling overstuffed or busy. There’s a wodge of fascinating detail on offer and its delivered in an infectious and easily digestible manner –a far cry from the stuffy, academic stance other directors may have chosen to tackle such a subject matter. It may prove too breezy and surface for the more hardcore sound-nuts but as a love letter to the form it’s effortless and captivating from start to finish and will appeal to general film fans and students of the craft.
TRAILER
