The telling and beautiful pictures in the book capture the speech of thing, the many songs of people... the images take on sounds in the reader's mind, along with the emotions and the memories they evoke. --Philip B. Kunhardt, Jr., Editor, Magazine Development, Time Inc.

The Sound of Pictures is an illuminating journey through the soundtracks of more than 400 films. How do filmmakers play with sound? And how does that affect the way we watch their movies? Whether pop or classical, sweeping or sparse, music plays a crucial role in our cinematic experience. Other sounds can be even more evocative: the sounds of na...

Sound for Moving Pictures presents a new and original sound design theory called the Four Sound Areas framework, offering a conceptual template for constructing, deconstructing and communicating all types of motion picture soundtracks; and a way for academics and practitioners to better understand and utilize the deeper, emotive capabilities available to all filmmakers through the thoughtful use of sound design. The Four Sound Areas framework presents a novel approach to sound design that enables the reader to more fully appreciate audience emotions and audience engagement, and provides a flexible, practical model that will allow professionals to more easily create and communicate soundtracks with greater emotional significance and meaning. Of obvious benefit to sound specialists, as well as motion picture professionals such as film producers, directors and picture editors, Sound for Moving Pictures also provides valuable insight for others interested in the subject; such as those involved with teaching soundtrack analysis, or those researching the wider topics of film studies and screen writing.

Innovative digital techniques are used to convert historic "pictures of sound" dating back as far as the Middle Ages directly into meaningful audio. Disc contains the world's oldest known "sound recordings" in the sense of sound vibrations automatically recorded out of the air--the phonautograms recorded in Paris by Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville in the 1850s and 1860s--as well as the oldest gramophone records available anywhere for listening today, including inventor Emile Berliner's recitation of "Der Handschuh," played back from an illustration in a magazine. Includes the oldest known recording of identifiable words spoken in the English language (1878) and the world's oldest surviving "trick recording" (1889). Work also includes everything from medieval music manuscripts to historic telegrams, and from seventeenth-century barrel organ programs to eighteenth-century "notations" of Shakespearean recitation.