Top 10: Films for Sound Design

Check out the list of the Domestika community’s favorite films for their music and sound design

Sound design is a key element of cinema. It doesn’t just accompany the pictures, but it evokes what can’t be done with images alone: moods, effects, emotions, and more. Made through audio effects and composes soundtracks, it can ruin or save a film.

We asked the Domestika community which films they considered to have the best sound design, and those nominated remind us once more that great cinema isn’t just about what you can see.

Here are the films your top nominations:

Star Wars —complete saga— US, 1977-2019

Sound design by John Williams et al.

The George Lucas saga is a classic, not just for its story, character development, and memorable visual moments, but for recognizing sound design as a foundation of production. Firstly, John Williams’ immortal soundtrack has become a classic of pop culture–it was voted the greatest of all time by the American Film Institute. Secondly, the Imperial March became the leitmotif of the franchise’s films. Finally, the sounds of lasers, wookies, and spaceships were created through real-life recordings of everything from elephants and planes to walruses. 18 of the saga’s 44 Oscar nominations are the result of music and sound, winning three of Star Wars’ ten Oscars.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon, US, 2011

Sound design by Ethan Van der Ryn, Erik Aadahl, Greg Rusell and Jeff Haboush; 2011

The work of musical, design, and audio editing artists on the third film in Michael Bay’s Transformers saga earned two of three Oscar nominations the movie received thanks to the car sounds and other elements recorded to give life to the robots.

It’s one of those cases of a giant production seeking to tell a simple story. Find out everything about the work they put in the documentary Soundworld Collection: The Sound of "Transformers: Dark of the Moon, which shows how a guitar played with a screwdriver can bring a deadly machine to life.

Roma , México, 2018

Sound design Sergio Díaz

One of the best decision director Alfonso Cuarón made with this film was choosing Sergio Díaz in charge of sound design and editing. He managed to capture and enthrall audiences with a moving and totally realistic audio experience.

They calculated that, for this project, they created 70 terabytes of audio files. “Silence doesn’t exist as such unless you know how to make it,” said Díaz as he described his work for the film.

Although it was not nominated for an Academy Award, his work cannot be ignored and helped create one of the best films in Mexican cinema’s history.

Interstellar , US, 2014

Sound design by Hans Zimmer, Richard King, Gary A. Rizzo, Gregg Landaker and Mark Weingarten

An example of how audio should be brought up to the level of great visual production. Zimmer made the music and King is the mind behind the extraordinary sound work, mostly done outside a studio to extract the organic sounds that, in post-production, became the details that transported millions of people into space. Four of the five Oscar nominations this film received were for audio and music. Watch Richard King talk about his production processes below:

Joker, US, 2019

Sound design by Hildur Guðnadóttir, Alan Robert Murray, Tom Ozanich, Dean Zupancic and Tod Maitland

This film is 100% atmosphere, and the audio plays a fundamental role in the construction of the many tense moments that made it one of the best films of recent years. The sound design of this film, based around the incredible music of Guðnadóttir and the effects and editing of Murray, Ozanich, Zupancic, and Maitland, is a work in itself that progressives along a well-defined trajectory: the interiors and exteriors are perfectly illustrated, and the train scene is a great example of the conjunction of the work of these artists.

Birdman, EE.UU., 2014

Sound design by Martín Hernández, Aaron Glascock, Frank A. Montaño and Antonio Sánchez

The incidental sounds, dialogues, effects, and the atmospheres of this film were the result of complex processes drawn from the artists’ understanding and analysis of the script. The film won five Oscar nominations, two of them for sound design (Hernández and Glascock for editing and Montaño for design). On the other hand, the Mexican jazz musician Antonio Sánchez received a Grammy for his musical work.

Cinema Paradiso Italia, 1988

Sound design by Andrea y Ennio Morricone

This movie is a community favorite. Its soundtrack received nominations at the David di Donatello Awards and the BAFTAs, winning both. The music creates a perfect harmony between the characters' emotions and the story, which has become a classic in the history of cinema.

Dunkirk, UK/US, 2017

Sound design by Hans Zimmer, Greg Landaker, Gary Rizzo, Mark Weingarten, Richard King and Alex Gibson

With this film, Zimmer completed his sixth collaboration with Christopher Nolan, for which he was nominated for an Oscar for best soundtrack. For their part, the teams led by Landaker and King earned the Academy's recognition for sound design and editing work, filling some of the most intense scenes in history with realism and emotion.

2001: A Space Odyssey, UK/US, 1968
Sound design by Winston Ryder

Another movie where the perfect handling of silences becomes a key part of the storytelling. Only 40 of the 149 minutes of this Kubrickian gem have dialogue.

Everything else is a mixture of breathing, machines operating, and the vacuum of space, elements Ryder used to overcome the challenge of telling a tense story where sound propagation was physically impossible. He received a BAFTA for his work.

Whiplash, US, 2014
Sound design by Thomas Curley, Ben Wilkins, and Craig Mann

A story about music needs great sound work. This film won the Oscar and BAFTA for best sound design, due to the quality in every detail. This reflects the passion with which this team of artists worked when handling volume intensities of environments, music, and dialogues.

You may also be interested in:

- 5 Websites to Download Free Stock Music
- How to Set up a Sound Studio at Home
- Download 16,000 Sound Effects from the BBC for Free