Divergent Tracks
How Three Film Communities Revolutionized Digital Film Sound
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Book Presentation:
By examining three case studies of award-winning soundtracks from cult films—Barton Fink (1991), Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), and The English Patient (1996)—it becomes clear that major American film communities, when confronted with the initial technological changes of the 1990s, experienced similar challenges with the inelegant transition from analogue to digital. However, their cultural and structural labor differences governed different results. Vanessa Ament, author of The Foley Grail (2009), rather than defining the 1990s as an era of technological determinism—a superficial reading—it is best understood as one in which sound professionals became more viable as artists, collaborated in sound design authorship, and influenced this digital transition to better accommodate their needs and desires in their work.
About the Author:
Vanessa Theme Ament was the Endowed Chair of Telecommunications at Ball State University, USA. She was also Senior Consultant for Undergraduate Education at UC Riverside, USA. She has worked as a Foley artist on such films as Die Hard, and produced the documentary Amplified: A Conversation with Women in American Film Sound, and is the author of The Foley Grail (2nd edition, 2015).
Press Reviews:
"Divergent Tracks reveals a first-hand account of the behind-the-scene world of postproduction film sound in the 1990s, a key moment when industry professionals grappled with the disruptive transition from analogue to digital technologies. In her masterful account, Dr. Ament rigorously details how three geographically distinct film communities each made critical contributions to the development of digital film sound and how their innovative practices changed the way we listen to the movies. I anticipate that Dr. Ament's book will change how we also regard the role of sound designers and their post-production teams by helping us all better recognize their major contributions to the craft of moviemaking as creative professionals in their own right." ―Richard Lawrence Edwards, Director for the Center for Teaching & Learning, University of California, Riverside, USA
> From the same author:
The Foley Grail (2021)
The Art of Performing Sound for Film, Games, and Animation
> On a related topic:
Making Stereo Fit (2024)
The History of a Disquieting Film Technology
Listening With a Feminist Ear (2023)
Soundwork in Bombay Cinema
The Auditory Setting (2023)
Environmental Sounds in Film and Media Arts
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