Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound

“Making Waves” covers an impressive amount of ground in 90 minutes and is a perfect introduction to the subject for a student or casual fan.

It’s tempting to talk about Making Waves as being educational, but it is not dryly academic, though it does introduce the subject in some detail. This is a fun film to watch, with the interviews and graphics illustrating how the sound comes together, the doc is an exciting behind-the-scenes look at the effort and skill required to create movie sound artfully.

Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound is a practically perfect primer for anyone interested in the history and craft of filmmaking, answering most of the pertinent, baseline questions while leaving plenty of room for supplemental research.

Here is a valuable and deeply felt documentary, celebrating the work of the sound designers, sound editors and Foley wizards in the cinema, and if it feels like a feelgood in-house promotional video for Hollywood technicians … well, they’ve got an awful lot to feel good about.

Documentaries about film technology, at least those that aspire to reach some portion of a mainstream audience, have to make wonkiness ingratiating. Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound, a cogent and winning picture directed by Midge Costin, does this in a variety of ways.

Making Waves is a brisk 94 minutes, the last half hour of which is a quick-study primer on the categories of movie sound. The film is quite educational.

The tradition of star-worship and auteur theory has unnecessarily diminished the key roles of others. Thankfully, Making Waves gives these genius-level background figures their well-earned due.