Hollywood Soundscapes

Hollywood Soundscapes

Author: Helen Hanson

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2019-07-25

Total Pages: 198

ISBN-13: 183871622X

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The technical crafts of sound in classical Hollywood cinema have, until recently, remained largely 'unsung' by histories of the studio era. Yet film sound – voice, music and sound effects – is a crucial aspect of film style and has been key to engaging and holding audiences since the transition to sound by Hollywood's major studios in 1929. This innovative new text restores sound technicians to Hollywood's creative history. Exploring a range of films from the early sound period (1931) through to the late studio period (1948), and drawing on a wide range of archival sources, the book reveals how Hollywood's sound designers worked and why they worked in the ways that they did. The book demonstrates how sound technicians developed conventions designed to tell stories through sound, placing them within the production cultures of studio era filmmaking, and uncovering a history of collective and collaborative creativity. In doing so, it traces the emergence of a body of highly skilled sound personnel, able to apply expert technical knowledge in the science of sound to the creation of cinematic soundscapes that are alive with mood and sensation.


Sound

Sound

Author: Kathryn Kalinak

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2015-05-01

Total Pages: 345

ISBN-13: 0813575516

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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.


Film Music in the Sound Era

Film Music in the Sound Era

Author: Jonathan Rhodes Lee

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-03-10

Total Pages: 1096

ISBN-13: 1000091287

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Film Music in the Sound Era: A Research and Information Guide offers a comprehensive bibliography of scholarship on music in sound film (1927–2017). Thematically organized sections cover historical studies, studies of musicians and filmmakers, genre studies, theory and aesthetics, and other key aspects of film music studies. Broad coverage of works from around the globe, paired with robust indexes and thorough cross-referencing, make this research guide an invaluable tool for all scholars and students investigating the intersection of music and film. This guide is published in two volumes: Volume 1: Histories, Theories, and Genres covers overviews, historical surveys, theory and criticism, studies of film genres, and case studies of individual films. Volume 2: People, Cultures, and Contexts covers individual people, social and cultural studies, studies of musical genre, pedagogy, and the industry. A complete index is included in each volume.


Fatih Akin's Cinema and the New Sound of Europe

Fatih Akin's Cinema and the New Sound of Europe

Author: Berna Gueneli

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2019-01-09

Total Pages: 221

ISBN-13: 0253037913

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In Fatih Akın's Cinema and the New Sound of Europe, Berna Gueneli explores the transnational works of acclaimed Turkish-German filmmaker and auteur Fatih Akın. The first minority director in Germany to receive numerous national and international awards, Akın makes films that are informed by Europe's past, provide cinematic imaginations about its present and future, and engage with public discourses on minorities and migration in Europe through his treatment and representation of a diverse, multiethnic, and multilingual European citizenry. Through detailed analyses of some of Akın's key works—In July, Head-On, and The Edge of Heaven, among others—Gueneli identifies Akın's unique stylistic use of multivalent sonic and visual components and multinational characters. She argues that the soundscapes of Akın's films—including music and multiple languages, dialects, and accents—create an "aesthetic of heterogeneity" that envisions an expanded and integrated Europe and highlights the political nature of Akın's decisions regarding casting, settings, and audio. At a time when belonging and identity in Europe is complicated by questions of race, ethnicity, religion, and citizenship, Gueneli demonstrates how Akın's aesthetics intersect with politics to reshape notions of Europe, European cinema, and cinematic history.


Electric Sounds

Electric Sounds

Author: Steve J. Wurtzler

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 414

ISBN-13: 0231136765

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Focuses on the innovations in the electronic production and transmission of sound in the 1920s and '30s and their explosive impact on the American mass media, especially the radio, the phonograph, and the cinema.


Sound Design Theory and Practice

Sound Design Theory and Practice

Author: Leo Murray

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-05-22

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 1317298233

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Sound Design Theory and Practice is a comprehensive and accessible guide to the concepts which underpin the creative decisions that inform the creation of sound design. A fundamental problem facing anyone wishing to practice, study, teach or research about sound is the lack of a theoretical language to describe the way sound is used and a comprehensive and rigorous overarching framework that describes all forms of sound. With the recent growth of interest in sound studies, there is an urgent need to provide scholarly resources that can be used to inform both the practice and analysis of sound. Using a range of examples from classic and contemporary cinema, television and games this book provides a thorough theoretical foundation for the artistic practice of sound design, which is too frequently seen as a ‘technical’ or secondary part of the production process. Engaging with practices in film, television and other digital media, Sound Design Theory and Practice provides a set of tools for systematic analysis of sound for both practitioners and scholars.


Music and Sound in European Theatre

Music and Sound in European Theatre

Author: David Roesner

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-11-29

Total Pages: 365

ISBN-13: 1040225373

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The need for a research volume on European theatre music and sound is almost self-evident. Musical and sonic practices have been an integral part of theatre ever since the artform was first established 2,500 years ago: not just in subsequent genres that are explicitly driven by music, such as opera, operetta, ballet, or musical theatre, but in all kinds of theatrical forms and conventions. Conversely, academic recognition of the role of theatre music, its aesthetics, creative processes, authorships, traditions, and innovations is still insufficient. This volume unites experts from different disciplines and backgrounds to make a significant contribution to the much-needed discourse on theatre music. The term itself is a shapeshifter that signifies different phenomena at different times: the book thus deliberately casts a wide net to explore both the highly contextual terminologies and the many ways in which different times and cultures understand ‘theatre music’. By treating theatre music as a practice, focusing on its role in creating and watching performances, the book appeals to a wide range of readerships: researchers and students of all levels, journalists, audiences, and practitioners. It will be useful to universities and conservatoires alike and relevant for many disciplines in the humanities.


The Acoustics of the Social on Page and Screen

The Acoustics of the Social on Page and Screen

Author: Nathalie Aghoro

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2021-09-09

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 1501361392

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Sound positions individuals as social subjects. The presence of human beings, animals, objects, or technologies reverberates into the spaces we inhabit and produces distinct soundscapes that render social practices, group associations, and socio-cultural tensions audible. The Acoustics of the Social on Page and Screen unites interdisciplinary perspectives on the social dimensions of sound in audiovisual and literary environments. The essays in the collection discuss soundtracks for shared values, group membership, and collective agency, and engage with the subversive functions of sound and sonic forms of resistance in American literature, film, and TV.


Hollywood Unions

Hollywood Unions

Author: Kate Fortmueller

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2024-12-13

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 1978830602

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Hollywood Unions is a unique collection that tells the stories of the unions and guilds that have organized motion picture and television labor: IATSE, the DGA, SAG-AFTRA, and the WGA. The Hollywood unions represent a wide swath of the workers making media: from directors and stars to grips and makeup artists. People today know some of these organizations from their glitzy annual awards celebrations, but the unions’ actual importance is in bargaining with the Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) on behalf of 331,000 workers in the motion picture and television industry. The Hollywood unions are not neutral institutions but rather have long histories of jurisdictional battles, competitions with rival unions, and industry-altering strikes. They have supported the industry’s workers through the Great Depression, World War II, the McCarthy era, the collapse of the studio system, the rise of television, runaway production, fights for gender parity, the digital revolution, and a global pandemic. The history of these unions has contributed to making media work sustainable in the long term and helped shape the conditions and production cultures of Hollywood.


Making Stereo Fit

Making Stereo Fit

Author: Eric Dienstfrey

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2024-01-16

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 0520379551

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"Surround sound is often mistaken as a relatively new phenomenon in cinemas, one that emerged in the 1970s with the arrival of Dolby. Making Stereo Fit shows how Hollywood studios have instead been implementing surround-sound techniques for the past century and argues that their endurance owes primarily to the long-standing economic tension between stereophonic and monophonic sound. Throughout the book, Eric Dienstfrey analyzes newly discovered archival materials, as well as a myriad of stereo releases from Hell's Angels (1930) to Get Out (2017), to examine how Hollywood's dependence on single-channel sound left filmmakers unable to fully realize the aesthetic potential of surround sound. Though studios initially experimented with stereo's unique affordances, Dienstfrey details how film sound designers eventually codified a conservative set of surround-sound conventions that prevail today, despite the arrival of more immersive technologies"--