[Film] Sound Design

I liked some parts of this article on sound design by Robert Colvile.

Key quotes for me:

Virtually every sound you hear during a film has been constructed, overdubbed and manipulated to within an inch of its life.

Action films such as Bay's opt for a "wall of sound" approach - for Armageddon, he employed a scarcely credible 80-strong sound crew - to create a cacophony of special effects that bypass the ear for the innards. Decibel meters taken into the meteor movie showed that for long stretches it would have been quieter - and healthier - to stand under a helicopter's rotor blades.


Peter Weir recalls how Alan Splet, the sound designer who worked on David Lynch's Blue Velvet, "became ill from the sounds he was creating. He couldn't finish the film, they were so eerie and so awful."