DVDs with sound featurettes, etc? (1 Viewer)

[DavidJ]

I am teaching a class entilted "Audio for Media" and I want to play for them some pieces about sound desgin, sound editing, music scoring, etc. I have the short piece on The Sixth Sense and a piece from theJurassic Park bonus disk. Are there others I should consider? Also, I would welcome recommendations on movies that exemplify the use and importance of sound. Keep in mind that I will not have the capabilities for surround sound playback. Thanks.

 

[DaveF]

One of the Toy Story DVDs has at least two featurettes about sound & music design; it might be the third disc in the box set. And both (I think) have a sound-effects only sound track.
The Sixth Day and Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within have composer commentaries.

 

[Neil S. Bulk]

AI - Artificial Intelligence has a section on this, as does Terminator II - Judgment Day.

Neil

 

[Marty Christion]

You need to get the THX "WOW" laserdisc . It has a ~20 minute featurette showing the sound design for a scene from Indy/Last Crusade. It shows everything, starting with the production sound, then ADR, then sound effects, then foley, then music scoring, then mixing, then the final scene. The only "dated" aspect is the sound editing being done on mag (whereas it's all ProTools now), so you could interject a little history lesson as well.
The piece even starts out by showing scenes from the Star Wars films with the actual production sound, so you can hear some PA "beeping" for R2, or shouting maniacally to fill in Vader's lines. It really drives home the importance of sound in post.

 

[DavidJ]

Thanks, I will check out the T2 disc. I have always regretted getting just the two-disc Toy Story collection instead of the Ultimate Toy Box. It would be nice to have that third disc now. The THX laserdisc sounds perfect, but I don't know of anyway of coming up with that one. Any others?

 

[Vince Maskeeper]

The "A Better PLace" disc has some audio related stuff: comparison with mono original mix, vs the Skywalker 5.1 remix.

Although I don't recall how much technical merit it had- I know the documentary on "requiem for a dream" has a bit of footage from recording at skywalker.

-Vince

 

[LukeB]

Emperor's New Groove (2-disc) and The Ultimate Toy Box both have sound editing features, where you can play a scene with just music, just SFX, just score, or any combination of them.

 

[DavidJ]

Thanks again everyone for your help. I was able to get a hold of the T2 disc and it should be great for the class.

 

[Michael Reuben]

One other suggestion: Se7en, Platinum Series, which has a good featurette on "near-field" mixes for home theater.
M.

 

[Jon Robertson]

Sounds stupid, but why not screen a scene from Citizen Kane or another classic of sound design and get them to shut their eyes while it's being played, then possibly see if they can work out what's going on.
It'd be fun, if nothing else.

 

[DavidJ]

Michael, I will try and take a look at Se7en if I get a chance. Jon, your idea about Citizen Kane is great. It has been such a long time since I have watched it. Is there a specific scene you would recommend? This is one of the other types of things I wanted to do next week. I also plan on showing some scenes with and without sound, etc. I was going to try and find something from Kurosawa since our text mentions him. Any other suggestions? Keep in mind I will not have a surround set-up.

 

[Brian JB]

Correct me if i'm wrong but doesn't Out of Sight have a special feature about some digital sound?

 

[Enrique B Chamorro]

If you want to get into music score?

I think Alien 1 has two different music score tracks?

 

[Derek Miner]

I'm not sure if there's anything on the Episode I DVD, but I have seen some material relating to the other Star Wars movies where Ben Burtt talks about creating the effects for various things and creatures of the Star Wars universe.

And if you're doing other types of media besides film, there's a great audio documentary about the Star Wars radio specials, which includes a segment where they "build" a scene from scratch and talk about how all the various pieces create the environment with sound only. This can be found on the CD box set including both the Star Wars and Empire radio dramas.

 

[KlausWinkler]

There is also a short feature on the ID4 SE.

 

[Enrique B Chamorro]

You may want to use Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense.

The DVD has a 2.0 Stero mix, a 5.1 Feature Film mix

that "puts you in the front row", and a 5.1 Studio mix

that "puts at a mixing board". The two 5.1 are very different.