This video from The Royal Ocean Film Society makes a compelling case that sound is every bit as important as picture in cinema. Audio—or its absence—adds depth to images, directs our attention, and speaks with an emotional immediacy that words, or even music, can’t often match. Consider the moment in La La Land where the day-to-day feeling of living in Los Angeles is conjured directly into our minds with a single, well-deployed car horn.
“Storytelling With Sound” lays out some of the ways audio makes films better, and includes an interview with one of the masters: Ben Burtt, the brilliant sound designer behind the Star Wars saga who gave us R2-D2. He’s also the voice of Wall-E.
