Jay Beck

Designing Sound demonstrates how Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Altman, and other groundbreaking American directors of the 1970s possessed not only visionary eyes, but also keen ears that enabled them to take cinematic sound design in innovative directions. Offering detailed case studies of key films and filmmakers, Jay Beck explores how sound design was central to the era’s experimentation with new modes of cinematic storytelling and aesthetic sensibilities, from the lyricism of Terrence Malick to the gritty realism of Martin Scorsese.   

Sound introduces key concepts, seminal moments, and pivotal figures in the development of cinematic sound, revealing the unseen work of film composers, Foley artists, elocution coaches, and many more. Each of the book’s six chapters cover a different era in the history of Hollywood, from silent films to the digital age, and each is written by an expert in that period. After you read Sound, you’ll never see—or hear—movies in quite the same way.