NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Sound Designer

This is an article about the film crew member known as a sound designer. There are also Sound Designers attached to stage productions. An important piece of sound design software is also called Sound Designer The sound director for a theatrical production is the person in charge of the sound crew. ... Sound design is a technical/conceptually creative field. ... Computer software (or simply software) refers to one or more computer programs and data held in the storage of a computer for some purpose. ...

In motion picture production, a Sound Designer is a member of a film crew responsible for some original aspect of the film's audio track. The title is not controlled by any industry orgnization, as with the title of director or screenwriter in the American film industry. The film director, on the right, gives last minute direction to the cast and crew, whilst filming a costume drama on location in London. ... Screenwriters, scenarists or script writers, are authors who write the screenplays from which movies are made. ... The cinema of the United States, sometimes simply called—correctly or not—Hollywood, can perhaps be summed up by the title American film critic Pauline Kael gave a 1968 collection of her reviews: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. ...

In the original meaning of the title, as established in the 1970s by Francis Ford Coppola and Walter Murch, a sound designer is an individual ultimately responsible for all aspects of a film's audio track, from the dialogue and sound effects recording to the re-recording of the final track. The title was first granted by Francis Coppola to Walter Murch for his work on the film Apocalypse Now, in recognition for his extraordinary contribution to that film; in this way the position emerged in the same way the title of production designer came in to being in the 1930's, when William Cameron Menzies made revolutionary contributions to the craft of art direction in the making of Gone With the Wind. This article provides extensive lists of events and significant personalities of the 1970s. ... Francis Ford Coppola (born April 7, 1939 in Detroit, Michigan) is an American film director, screenwriter, vintner, magazine publisher, and hotelier. ... Walter Murch (born 1943) is an Academy award winning film editor/sound mixer. ... The term dialogue (or dialog) expresses basically reciprocal conversation between two or more persons. ... Sound effects or audio effects are artificially created or enhanced sounds, or sound processes used to emphasize artistic or other content of movies, video games, music, or other media. ... Apocalypse Now is a 1979 American film directed by Francis Ford Coppola from a script by John Milius (rewritten by Coppola) which was inspired by Joseph Conrads classic novella Heart of Darkness. ... Production designer is a term used in the movie industry to refer to the person with the responsibility for designing the sets and costumes and choosing locations, and thus for creating the overall visual appearance of a film. ... William Cameron Menzies (July 29, 1896 - March 5, 1967) was an Academy Award-winning and versitile Art Director who earned acclaim on silent films and later pioneered the use of color in film for dramatic effect. ... Art director in the hierarchical structure of a movie art department, the Art Director works directly below the production designer and a large part of their duties include the administrative aspects of the art department. ... Gone With the Wind was an instant success. ...

This "strong" meaning of the title is meant to imply that the person holding the position is a principle member of the production staff, with tangible creative authority, equivalent to the film editor and director of photography. This development can be seen as a natural part of the evolution of film sound. Several interacting factors contributed to this: A film editor is a person/persons who practices film editing. ... A cinematographer (from cinema photographer) is one photographing with a motion picture camera. ...

Theater sound systems became capable of high-fidelity reproduction, and particularly after the adoption of Dolby Stereo. These systems were originally devised as gimmicks to increase theater attendance, but their widespread implementation created a content vacuum that had to be filled by a competent professional. Before stereo soundtracks, film sound was of such low fidelity that only the dialogue and occasional sound effects were practical. The greater dynamic range of the new systems, coupled with the ability to place sounds to the sides of the audience or behind them, required more creative decisions to be made.
Directors wanted to realize these new potentials of their medium. A new generation of filmmakers, the so-called "Easy Riders and Raging Bulls," were aware of the creative potential of sound and wanted to use it.
They were inspired in no small part by the popular music of the era. Concept albums of groups such as Pink Floyd and The Beatles suggested new modes of storytelling and creative techniques that could be adapted to motion pictures.
The new filmmakers made their early films outside the Hollywood establishment, away from the influence of the film labor unions and the then rapidly-dissipating studio system.

As many of these new filmmakers worked in the San Francisco Bay Area, the strong meaning of sound designer has become associatied with films made there, and the production companies situated there, such as American Zoetrope, Lucasfilm Limited (and its subsidiary Skywalker Sound), and the Saul Zaentz Film Center. For other usages see Theatre (disambiguation) Theater (American English) or Theatre (British English and widespread usage among theatre professionals in the US) is that branch of the performing arts concerned with acting out stories in front of an audience using combinations of speech, gesture, music, dance, sound and spectacle — indeed... This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... High Fidelity is a British novel by Nick Hornby, first published (ISBN 0575057483) in 1995. ... Dolby Stereo (or Dolby Analog) was the original analog optical technology developed by Dolby Laboratories for 35 mm prints in 1976. ... Popular music is music belonging to any of a number of musical styles that are accessible to the general public and mostly distributed commercially. ... Usually, in popular music, an album of an artist or group simply consists of a number of unconnected songs that the members of the group or the artist have written or have chosen to cover. ... Pink Floyd circa 1971. ... The Beatles (L-R, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, John Lennon), in 1964, performing on The Ed Sullivan Show promoting their first U.S. hit song, I Want To Hold Your Hand, and ushering in the British Invasion of American popular music. ... ... The Establishment is a pejorative term used in Western societies to refer to the controlling (elite) structures of those societies. ... A union (labor union in American English; trade union, sometimes trades union, in British English; either labour union or trade union in Canadian English) is a legal entity consisting of employees or workers having a common interest, such as all the assembly workers for one employer, or all the workers... The San Francisco Bay Area, referred to as The Bay Area by its residents, is a metropolitan area that lies along the San Francisco Bay. ... American Zoetrope is the name of the studios founded by Francis Ford Coppola, named after a collection of zoetropes he was given in the late 1960s by filmmaker and collector of early motion picture making equipment, Mogens Skot-Hansen. ... Lucasfilm Logo Lucasfilm Ltd. ... Skywalker Sound is the renowned sound effects, sound editorial, sound design and music recording division of George Lucass Lucas Digital motion picture group. ...

The role of sound designer can be compared with the role of supervising sound editor; many sound designers use both titles interchangeably. The role of supervising sound editor, or sound supervisor, developed in parallel with the role of sound designer. The demand for more sophisiticated soundtracks was felt both inside and outside Hollywood, and the supervising sound editor became the head of the large sound department, with a staff of dozens of sound editors, that was required to realize a complete sound job with a fast turnaround. It is far from universal, but the role of sound supervisor descends from the original role of the sound editor, that of a technician required to complete a film, but having little creative authority. Sound designers, on the other hand, are expected to be creative, and their role is a generalization of the other creative department heads. In radio, film, and television, the sound editor deals with the mixing, adjusting and fixing the soundtrack. ...