Film is so axiomatically regarded as a visual medium that it’s easy to forget that sound came first. At least that was the order of things for Thomas Edison, who only invented the kinetograph so that people might be able to watch something while they listened to his phonograph.
That factoid is at the heart of Midge Costin’s “Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound,” an erudite and impassioned documentary that attempts to prove that we experience movies with our ears as much as we do with our eyes — perhaps even more so.
The film is a simple but righteous work of score-settling, made by someone with real skin in the game.
Costin’s long career as a sound editor spans Hollywood features as disparate as “Hocus Pocus” and “Armageddon,” and the deep love she has for those who pioneered and appreciate her part of the filmmaking process allows this historical corrective to be more than a plea for attention from a community that has always been difficult to silence.
Read the story at IndieWire.
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