How's It Sounding?

I was recently reading a forum thread in Gear Slutz about which movies have the best sound effects.  There were a few shared responses, and one of those was The Matrix (1999).  First off, let me say that this is one of my top favorite movies.  The concept, the graphics, the settings, and the sound were just stellar for the time, and even now.  Reading that people believed The Matrix had great audio gave me an excuse to watch it for about the hundredth time to do “research” for this blog.  Before I get into the audio, let me inform you readers that I DO NOT have surround sound.  The judgment of this audio is based off of my 2.1 system.

If you have seen the movie, you know everything action in the movie is digitally and electronically based (I don’t mean the way it was made, I mean the fact that the Matrix itself is a computer world.)  Also, everything action of the characters is based off of speed.  The audio reflects this very well!  There are TONS of whooshes and electrical sounds throughout the movie.  As you no doubt have guessed, I think Dane A. Davis did an amazing job as the sound designer for this movie.

Robert Alexander is a “Data Sonification Specialist”.  That is an awfully fancy term right?  Well it simply means that he takes any type of data and turns it into sound.  A basic example of this would be a heart rate monitor.  That “beep, beep, beep” sound that you hear is essentially the sonification of someone’s pulse.  This is very basic though.  Alexander takes this to the extreme.