In Birds by Alfred Hitchcock, It was one of the first time that a film had audio designed into the script. This allowed the sound editor and designer to have more of a hands on approach to the designing, It made the sound have more a meaning that just music for the background or just speech. This also occurred in other movies. Where music was not prominent and silence was used effectively. Stanley Kubrick 2001, David Lean – Lawrence Of Arabia. This was dramatically different to movies that were around in the 1950-1960s that were all predominately the same. Carbon copy movies coming out like a factory, with the same themes, ideas even sounds and scores. It was corporate creations.
Walter Murch was a key sound designer and editor of this era. His interest in sound started with recording sounds on a tape player. Cutting, reversing and playing with audio. He later found out other artists in Europe such as Paul schaffre and Pierer henry shaufer were doing the same. But making records, calling it Music Conreté. He found it fascinating to see what he was doing in his room as a broader application.
In 1965 an important moment happened. Television became widespread into every American home. Tv took over which made films harder to operate and at the time Hollywood was so dissociated with what was going on in the grander aspects of society that it felt out of synch and didn’t connect with the population.
One of the key equipment that allowed for easy portable recordings used on set during this time frame was the Nagra. Which allowed portable use of recording audio in synch to cameras.
The founding of American Zoetrope by George Lucas & Francis Ford Coppola meant that they were allowed to dictate how they operated and by their decisions they decided to incorporate sound design extensively into their movies. Putting sound as important as video.
The first movie directed by George Lucas that was released through American Zeotrope was THX 1138. Walter Murch who did the sound design and editing decided to record every sound himself in this feature length film. This was the foundation of more ideas to come later on his career. Despite being a commercial failure THX 1138 still remains a huge step towards sound design in its current modern state.
1972 Godfather. Walter Murch also worked on sound design on this great movie. He felt heavily influenced by john cage who spoke about how everything is music. The clapping of a crowd could be music. How even plants can be music. He used this aspect into certain scenes in godfather. For example when killing Sollozzo you can hear the ambient noise being filtered and his thoughts become sounds of trains. Showing his ideas in an abstract nature can encourage different thoughts.
Sound for film in the early 1970s was still in mono. Which in contrast to the music industry it was heavily behind. Stereo had already been a standard for years. This level of immersion that two speakers gave influenced the sound editors at the time to take creative steps into changing the norm. In 1975 the first stereo movie came, with Dolby providing the first initiative to bring stereo to the current day cinemas.
1975 A Star Is Born. This was the first stereo movie released. The standard time for audio editing was usually around 7 weeks for a commercial release. This took 4 months and was privately funded by Barbra Streisand. She was adamant about having the film in stereo. Feeling that the degree of reality that stereo posses cant compare to mono, the success of this application made it into an industry standard.
Jim Webb standardised the use of multitrack recordings during this time period. He would mic up even the extras with their own microphones to make it easier to create ambience and background noises in the mixing stages. This was important as before this it was incredibly hard to record live on set during filming. This made it that the story of films became more led by sound, which never used to happen.
Ben Burtt Star Wars 1977. Burtts work on Star Wars changed the attitude towards sci-fi sound design for ever. Before Burtt typically sci-fi work was used with synthesisers and other machines alike. Burtt decided to not use synthesisers with his work for most of the sound effects. He was tasked to create the noise of a Wookie speaking. He ended up recording a baby bear you loved bread and it fitted perfectly. His use of non synthesised sounds changed the cannon of sound design.
Apocalypse now 1979. This movie also changed movie sound with its specialisation usage as well as experimental techniques. Director Francis Coppola was listening to Planets by Tomita which was a 4 track piece. Essentially you put 1 speaker in each corner of the room. You then sat in the middle and were surrounded by audio. Francis Coppola was so inspired he told his sound design team that this was what he wanted his film to sound like. The only problem was most of the sound team had only ever worked in mono. The sound team spent 1 year and half editing the sound and 9 months mixing. The technique of making someone edit/mix one section of the audio also began here. You would have one person mixing/editing the dialogue. Then the other the ambient sounds, sfx etc. This 6 track system of audio reproduced in cinemas created the modern film sound we have today. Dolby 5.1 came out of this movie/production.