Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound

"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.