Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound

Making Waves is both an informative, friendly introduction to the world of film sound and a passionate advocation of the art. There are in-depth interviews with some of the biggest names in Hollywood sound design - Ben Burtt, Skip Livesay, Randy Thom, Gary Rydstrom and the industry's superstar, the always-entertaining Walter Murch - and in directing - George Lucas, Stephen Spielberg, David Lynch, as well as a great many others.

There's an entertaining history of film sound and a breakdown of all the elements that go into the finished whole. In a concise 90 minutes it manages to include most of the major technological innovations and pioneering films and figures. It also manages to give a strong voice to the many women who have worked at the highest level on blockbuster films (e.g. Cecilia Hall on Top Gun, Anna Belhmer on Braveheart).

On the downside, it is very Hollywood-centric (or perhaps California-centric - at one point George Lucas says "so we relocated to San Francisco" like it was some giant leap for filmmaker kind). But to be fair, the filmmakers did admit in the post-screening Q&A that they wanted it to be much more of an international story but they already had over 200 hours of transcripts just from the US and didn't have the funds to travel for interviews.

That aside, it would be hard to ask for a better film about this fascinating but obscure subject.

"Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound" (2019 release; 94 min.) is a documentary about the importance of sound in movies. As the movie opens, we get a quick introduction and we then dive straight into some notorious sound designed movies such as the original Star Wars and Saving Private Ryan.

Couple of comments: the is the directing debut of Midge Costin, himself a veteran and well-accomplished sound editor and designer. While we get a chronological recap of the advance of sound in movie history (going from silent movies to "talkies", etc.), the documentary really focuses on three big names in the movie sound universe: Walter Murch (Francis Ford Coppola's sound guy), Ben Burtt (George Lucas' sound guy), and Gary Rydstrom (Steven Spielberg's sound guy). Of course a LOT of other people pipe in as well. For us movie lovers, the main fun and enjoyment is to see how sound is not just merely recording what happens on a movie set, but that in fact sound is built up from the ground in its many different aspects (voice, sound effects, music), and that there is indeed a "sound script" just like you have a "movie script". The documentary is chock full of movie clips, one more enjoyable than the other, but with the extensive looks at how Star Wars and Apocalypse Now were sound designed stealing the limelight (for me anyway).

"Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound" showed up last week out of the blue for what turned out to be a one week run at my local art-house theater here in Cincinnati. The Wednesday evening screening where I saw this at was attended poorly (6 people in total), but enjoyed immensely but the small crowd. If you are a movie lover in any way, shape of form, I would readily suggest you check this out, be it in the theater (if you happen to get the chance), on VOD, or eventually on DVD/Blu-ray, and draw your own conclusion.

Whoever is looking into the technicality of sound design... won't find much here.

So what's is all about? It's more about the turning points in the history of moving pictures that defines sound (in movies) how we know it today.

Of course the documentary revolves around what happened in the States and especially in Hollywood.

So we follow the sound as it comes to the world (in theaters that is) and it develops through tribulations (executives who do not understand the value of it and are concerned about how long it's gonna take) and moments of great triumph, when those pioneers who put in a lot of efforts ad overtime got recognized in a way or another (box office, awards, being in this documentary).

Great editing, the whole 90 min flow brilliantly, funny and serious at the same time.

Kudos for recognizing the absolute necessity of team work in the movie production.

The graphic elements that link the sound design components to an orchestra ensemble is a very smart way of presenting the various component to us, the audience. Audience that most likely is barely aware of the importance of sound in a movie and might know a bunch of directors and that's it. Well I'm pretty sure that this doc accomplished its mission, helping people to develop a better understanding of sound without boring them.

For a film nerd, this is fascinating. It is entertaining, intriguing and educational. For non-film nerds, this is probably a bore, though it may open some eyes and ears. Sound is the forgotten and overlooked aspect of filmmaking and for the vast majority of filmgoers it will sadly, for these very essential artists, always remain so. One note of concern for me. This is all about sound in film in this digital age of being able to control and alter nearly everything including voices and the same applies to audio recordings and the alteration of singers' voices to make then sound better, to improve their vocal quality. This was brought to mind by the appearance of Streisand and her "My Man" comments. She has one of the great voices of the modern era, but she hasn't made a recording in many years that doesn't sound over-manufactured. It's all very pretty, but much of it sounds artificial without any real feeling involved. It sounds dishonest. I use her as an example as I've followed her since the 60's and can hear the difference, but I'm sure this is much more true with far less talented singers than her, but who can tell?! This is something that I don't like about the manipulation of sound that we have nowadays, but this documentary is about film and it is what I said it was. A must for film nerds. The Star Wars and Saving Private Ryan examples were awesome, but so are some others. These are very important and creative people in the creation of making films.

I was disappointed. Instead of going into the depths of sound, the film mostly focuses on talking heads, including directors as well as sound pros. There's a short history of sound in films (not just speech), and a short segment about the categories of sound production. These were good but far too short and shallow. I felt like I'd seen a promo, hagiography even, for the sound professions instead of a doc. Those professions deserve a much deeper and more detailed documentary.