Midge Costin, the director of “Making Waves”, argues that sound is “50% of [a] motion picture”
SILENT MOVIES were never silent. Cinema’s earliest pioneers may not have figured out how to synchronise moving pictures and recorded sound, but their films had audio accompaniment, whether from orchestras and organists or from percussionists adding gunshots and thunder. Sometimes actors would speak into microphones behind the screen so that films had talking in them even before they were “talkies”. In all sorts of ways, the industry acknowledged that visuals alone were not enough. Cinema-goers wanted to hear something, too.
“Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound” chronicles how Hollywood went about providing that something. Directed by Midge Costin, a sound editor herself, this enthusiastic documentary employs a wealth of film clips and interviews with A-list directors to argue that the aural part of the cinema experience is still undervalued. “People always talk about the look of a film,” says David Lynch. “They don’t talk so much about the sound of a film”. But sound is used, in Ms Costin’s words, “to shape narrative, reveal character, elucidate ideas, and to express emotion”. It is “50% of [a] motion picture”.
Source: https://www.economist.com/prospero/2019/11/01/a-new-documentary-explores-the-underrated-art-of-movie-sound