‘Sound’ Stages

In between blasts from this summer’s incessant crop of action-adventures, you might consider taking in LACMA’s “The Big Sound” series over the next five weeks to comprehend just how far we’ve come.

From the landmark early talkies to the bombastic digital sensations currently heard in theaters, the art of the sound film will be celebrated with screenings and free Saturday evening lectures by a host of award-winning sound craftsmen.

The 16-film schedule certainly has commercial appeal, beginning Saturday with a new 70mm magnetic stereo print of that 1959 mega-spectacle “Ben-Hur” and concluding in August with those two ‘90s digital spectacles “Jurassic Park” and “Toy Story.”

And there are plenty of indispensable delights--”Forbidden Planet,” “The Exorcist,” “The Conversation,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and the rarely seen “Applause”--to help define the series. (Yet the series also cries out for such artistic complexities as “A Clockwork Orange,” “Nashville” and “Days of Heaven,” which LACMA screened last week but would be more appropriate here.)

Overall, “The Big Sound” manages to cover all the significant technological achievements, while displaying many of the creative or innovative uses of sound--particularly in the last 25 years, when sound has arguably had its most dramatic impact on our film-going experience.

The series begins Friday, fittingly, with “A Century of Sound,” UCLA preservation officer Robert Gitt’s three-hour illustrated lecture. Using various clips, Gitt traces the evolution of film sound, the turn-of-the-century pioneering inventions like Edison’s Kinetophone that made it all possible, the turbulent transition from silents to sound when rival sound systems competed for dominance, the advances made in optical soundtracks in the ‘30s and ‘40s--and the introduction of magnetic stereo in the ‘50s, Dolby stereo in the ‘70s and digital stereo in the ‘90s.

Perhaps the first great sound film, “Applause” (1929), the backstage musical starring the beguiling Helen Morgan, screens July 18. Director Rouben Mamoulian’s slithering camera and overlapping sound make this a “great bridge film,” according to historian Scott Eyman (author of the recently published “The Speed of Sound”), who introduces the film.

“It’s the first sound film to look back on the silent films of [King] Vidor and [F.W.] Murnau and look forward to sound films and what could be done,” Eyman says. “It really holds up--it’s the 1929 equivalent of ‘Citizen Kane’ and would be remarkable for 1940.”

If “Star Wars” propelled the Dolby stereo wave in 1977, then “Raiders of the Lost Ark” brought it to the next level four years later with its extraordinary wall-to-wall sound.

“If you analyze the film, we believe that we set the stage for all action-adventures to follow in terms of dynamics and detail that hasn’t been duplicated since,” boasts Bill Varney, vice president of sound operations for Universal. The Oscar recipient for both “Raiders” and “The Empire Strikes Back” will introduce the Aug. 2 screening.

“In ‘Raiders,’ the sound is constantly moving, whether it’s the ball rolling in the cave opening or the footsteps or arrows. There was no rule book to follow. But we had to be careful not to confuse the audience, or distort the sound. We didn’t assault the audience like films do today.

“Instead, we wanted the sound of the film to underscore the action, like the bubble above the characters in a comic book. There was nothing that intense before.”

“The Conversation,” Francis Ford Coppola’s undervalued 1974 film about sound, plays a dual role in the series, with its appropriate themes of high-tech voyeurism and wiretapping paranoia.

Walter Murch, who made the transition from sound mixer to editor on “The Conversation,” will give a lecture on sound mixing on July 19.

“It’s one of my favorites,” Murch says. “This arose out of my mixing a couple of films for Francis, one of them being ‘The Godfather.’

“He had this incredible deal on ‘Godfather Part II.’ He wanted this personal project to get off the ground and had the clout at that time to do it. But he wouldn’t have time to finish it, so he talked to me about editing it: ‘It’s about a soundman and you’re a soundman, so you’ll understand.’

“It was an opportunity to do both sound and picture and I’ve continued to do both ever since. It’s one of the most single-minded films you’ll ever see. We never know anything Harry Caul [Gene Hackman] never knows, which puts the audience in a unique situation along with him.”

In keeping with its technological emphasis, the series will also re-create two extinct low-frequency sound formats in the Bing Theater: Perspecta, the ‘50s pseudo-stereo answer to CinemaScope’s magnetic stereo, returns July 25 with the eerily electronic sci-fi classic “Forbidden Planet”; and Sensurround, the ‘70s sub-base ovation, rumbles back Aug. 2 with the original shake-and-bake disaster flick, “Earthquake.”

Chace Productions, which remasters soundtracks for laserdiscs, has designed circuitry to decode the Perspecta sound (low-frequency tones were directed from a mono track to three speakers).

“From an audio presentation, Perspecta wasn’t anywhere near to matching real stereo,” says Chace President Robert Heiber. “But when done artfully and mixed well, as in ‘Forbidden Planet,’ you got a nice directionality and movement.

“For two years, we’ve been working on a way of decoding Perspecta sound and replicating it with a decoder. With new technology at our fingertips, we still try to examine the older technology and figure out how it worked. We will patent the decoder cards so Perspecta films can be shown in retro and specialty houses.”

In the case of “Earthquake,” the Sensurround format was concocted by producer Jennings Lang so filmgoers could experience the vibrations. At the tune, optical soundtracks couldn’t handle such low frequencies, but Universal devised a way for the film to trigger a special generator to drive the large subwoofers. The format was such a success (the film won an Oscar for sound) it was used on three more films.

“ ‘Earthquake’ was the first use of a high-level sub-bass to have a dramatic effect on the sound experience,” says Brian Wachner, president of BGW Systems, which is providing special subwoofers to recreate Sensurround.

“You could say that ‘Earthquake’ was the forerunner of the sub-bass that is such a primary part of the digital experience today.”

The digital experience really took off four years ago with “Jurassic Park,” which launched Universal’s Digital Theater Sound (DTS).

In addition to DTS, which utilizes digital playback on CD-ROM, the industry has adopted two other rival formats: Dolby digital and Sony Dynamic Digital Sound (SDDS), which contain the soundtracks in different positions on the film strip.

All three digital formats will be highlighted in the series, with “Toy Story” representing Dolby digital and the director’s cut of “Das Boot” representing SDDS.

“It was so fun to be a part of the first DTS film, says sound designer Gary Rydstrom, the Oscar winner for “Jurassic Park” and “Terminator 2,” who will give a lecture on his specialty.

“I like all the digital formats. They’ve carved out their niches, and it’s good for competition. All three would love to be the monopoly that Dolby was in the optical format, but they’ll continue to coexist.

“From an audience point of view, it’s really complicated when you go to check the newspaper to find out what the different formats are and where they’re playing--and then THX on top of that--it can be frustrating. It’s confusing for me sometimes to decide which theater to go to. Fortunately, you can make one set of release prints with all three formats.”

Meanwhile, with “Das Boot” (showing Aug. 8), digital technology was used to dynamically enhance the Oscar-nominated soundtrack.