One of my class exercise is to analyze sound design used in movies and to write a paper on how the sound augmented the movie.
That's a tough assignment or at least a tough assignment to do well/accurately. As well as the fact that [1] sound design is an art and that [2] much of it is extremely difficult to even identify (let alone know [3] how it was done), there's also the issue of [4] when and [5] what!
1. As an art, it's extremely subjective.
2. There's the obvious sound design of big battle scenes, action sequences, etc., but much/most sound design is intentionally designed to be subliminal, to manipulate the audience without them being aware they're being manipulated. If you ignore this in your paper, it will be a deeply flawed paper but covering it well is nowhere near as easy a task as you may think.
3. Another very tricky area to research! While there's plenty of BTS docos which detail the "how" of sound effects design, there's extremely little about sound design.
4. This makes a big difference, audio technology has changed dramatically over the years and along with it, taste, style and methodology of sound use. For example, an obvious candidate for best sound use would be The Jazz Singer which was literally in a different league to other films of it's day because it was the first widely released film with sound. However, compared to today's films or even the films of say 50 years ago, it's implementation and use of sound isn't even competent.
5. "What" is also a very important and tricky one, "what" in terms of format. Again, let me use an example, Gravity. In stereo it's an average, run of the mill Hollywood type sound mix, nothing worth mentioning in your paper. Same is broadly true of the 5.1 sound mix but in Dolby Atmos (for which Gravity was specifically made), it's a milestone of modern filmmaking and more than worthy of winning both the sound Oscars. In fact some of the shots only really make sense with the Atmos mix and you would be remiss if your paper didn't at least mention Gravity. Another example is Saving Private Ryan, yes, the Omaha battle scene is extremely impressive (on a number of sound design levels) but it's not what impressed me or rather it's not only what impressed me. I was impressed by how they used 5.1, for example in the very opening (old man/cemetery) scenes the sound is essentially mono + music. When we cut to flashback (for the rest of the film) the music is cut and the sound suddenly switches from mono to full 5.1 surround, giving the impression that the flashback is the reality. Very clever and well implemented use of sound design. My question is though, how are you going to be able to properly analyse these two milestone examples (or many/most other modern films) without a 5.1 or Dolby Atmos theatrical sound system? Master & Commander is another film I'd very highly recommend for it's sound but again, not just for it's battle scenes and not in stereo (only in 5.1).
There's certainly something which can be learned from films like Lawrence of Arabia and even earlier films such as Psycho, Rebecca or Citizen Kane but relatively little of more than historical interest, sound design today and in some cases even as far back as the late '70s is quite a different animal. I'd recommend you read and go through the example in
The Principles of Sound Design thread, to get a better idea of what sound design actually is.
G
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