Surprisingly, films tend to have a huge impact on the lives of people. Bobette Buster, a professor at Northeastern University had a similar experience when he watched The Elephant Man for the first time. He understood how influential a cinema can be and how emotional the power of a song can be. And this sound has given her a mesmerising experience in cinema.
Her work with Disney and Pixar as a screenwriter, film producer, and story consultant provided her with a new perspective in the entertainment industry. By this, she also says, “I began to observe how great films had been made.”
She also talks about the experience of sound in the film, The Elephant Man which ponders deep in the lonely world of the disfigured man and how the sound elevates this experience. Also in Saving Private Ryan, Gary Rydstrom creates a realm of war by showing the silence of the soldiers who lose their hearing amidst the chaos of the guns. Similarly in Star Wars, it is more than beautiful to see a man who proves to have a soul just by squeaking.
With these experiences, she wrote and produced Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound. This documentary presents experiences of sound designers by interviewing them and narrating their stories. Sound, according to her, not just accelerates the beauty of art but also inspires humans to live their life and ‘hear the world differently’.
Making Waves has used archival film footage in documentaries. It broke the tradition of quotation marks and foot notes which was followed by the invention of the printing press. The film was premiered at Cannes and Tribeca film festival. This film, according to Buster, showcases the history of sound and music that influences the very experience of a movie or cinema one watches.
Akshara Palshetkar