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47-442: Wesley Earl Craven (August 2, 1939 – August 30, 2015) was an American film director, screenwriter and producer. Amongst his prolific filmography , Craven worked primarily in the horror genre , particularly slasher films , where he mixed horror cliches with humor. Craven has been recognized as one of the masters of the horror genre. Craven created the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise (1984–present), writing and directing

94-540: A "horror film director" with Craven noting, "It soon became clear that I wasn't going to do anything else unless it was scary". Craven frequently collaborated with Sean S. Cunningham. In Craven's debut feature, The Last House on the Left , Cunningham served as producer. They pooled all of their resources and came up with $ 90,000. Later, in Craven's best-known film, A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Cunningham directed one of

141-632: A few months. After his recovery, Craven went on to get his master's degree in philosophy and writing from Johns Hopkins University . In 1964–65, Craven taught English at Westminster College in New Wilmington, Pennsylvania , and was a humanities professor at Clarkson College of Technology (later named Clarkson University ) in Potsdam, New York . He also taught at Madrid-Waddington High School in Madrid, New York . During this time, he purchased

188-412: A half an hour to load the three or four dozen tracks a predub might require. In the digital era, 250 hours of stereo sound, edited and ready to mix, can be transported on a single 160 GB hard drive . As well, this 250 hours of material can be copied in four hours or less, as opposed to the old system, which, predictably, would take 250 hours. Because of these innovations, sound editors, as of 2005, face

235-518: A large online database. Many sound effects editors make their own customized sound recordings which are accumulated into highly prized personal sound effects libraries. Often, sound effects used in films will be saved and reused in subsequent films. One exemplary case in point is a recording known as the " Wilhelm Scream " which has become known for its repeated use in many famous films such as The Charge at Feather River (1953), Pierre Marette Story (1957), The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Raiders of

282-477: A print edition scheduled for an October 2015 debut. Craven has cited filmmakers Ingmar Bergman , Luis Buñuel , Alfred Hitchcock , Federico Fellini , Jean Cocteau , and Francois Truffaut as among his major influences. Craven's first film, The Last House on the Left , was conceived as a remake of Bergman's The Virgin Spring (1960). The goat in the dream sequence at the beginning of A Nightmare on Elm Street

329-852: A producer on Craven's films. Craven was a birder . In 2010, he joined Audubon California's board of directors. His favorite films included Night of the Living Dead (1968), The Virgin Spring (1960) and Red River (1948). Craven died of a brain tumor at his home in Los Angeles on August 30, 2015, aged 76. Many actors and fellow directors paid tribute to him, including David Arquette , Adrienne Barbeau , Angela Bassett , Bruce Campbell , Heather Langenkamp , Neve Campbell , John Carpenter , Courteney Cox , Joe Dante , Johnny Depp , Robert Englund , Sarah Michelle Gellar , Lloyd Kaufman , Jamie Kennedy , Rose McGowan , Kristy Swanson , Edgar Wright , and Amanda Wyss . The tenth episode of

376-526: A used 16 mm film camera and began making short movies. His friend Steve Chapin informed him of a messenger position at a New York City film production co, where his brother, future folk-rock star Harry Chapin worked. Craven moved into the building where his friend Steve Chapin lived at 136 Hicks St. in Brooklyn Heights. His first creative job in the film industry was as a sound editor . Recalling his early training, Craven said in 1994, "Harry

423-485: Is a writer and director. Jessica was a singer-songwriter in the group the Chapin Sisters . The marriage ended in 1970. In 1984, Craven married a woman who became known professionally as actress Mimi Craven. The two later divorced, with Wes Craven stating in interviews that the marriage dissolved after he discovered it "was no longer anything but a sham." In 2004, Craven married Iya Labunka; she frequently worked as

470-644: Is just a big movie. This concept was emphasized in the sequels as copycat stalkers re-enact the events of a new film about the Woodsboro killings (Woodsboro being the fictional town where Scream is set) occurring in Scream . Marianne Maddalena served as a producer on twelve of Craven's films. After working on Wes Craven's New Nightmare , Patrick Lussier became an editor on all of his features up to Red Eye . Craven tended to employ cinematographers Peter Deming , Mark Irwin and Jacques Haitkin on his films. With

517-469: Is of the "host based" variety. Sound-effects editors typically use an organized catalog of sound recordings from which sound effects can be easily accessed and used in film soundtracks. There are several commercially distributed sound-effects libraries available, the two most well-known publishers being Sound Ideas and The Hollywood Edge. Online search engines, such as Sounddogs , A Sound Effect and Sonniss allow users to purchase sound effects libraries from

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564-681: Is the digital audio workstation , or DAW. A DAW allows sounds, stored as computer files on a host computer, to be placed in timed synchronization with a motion picture, mixed, manipulated, and documented. The standard DAW system in use by the American film industry , as of 2012, is Avid 's Pro Tools , with the majority running on Macs . Another system in use presently is Yamaha owned Steinberg 's cross platform DAW Nuendo running on Macs using operating system Mac OS X but also on Windows XP . Other systems historically used for sound editing were: The WaveFrame, Fairlights, and Audiofile were of

611-407: Is the best microcosm to work with… It's very much where most of our strong emotions or gut feelings come from… I grew up in a white working class family that was very religious. There was an enormous amount of secrecy in the general commerce of our getting along... If there was an argument, it was immediately denied. If there was a feeling, it was repressed… I began to see that as a nation we were doing

658-483: The YouTube homepage on Halloween. In the mid-1980s, Craven worked briefly in the television industry by directing seven episodes of the 1985 reboot of The Twilight Zone , including an episode that was written by George R. R. Martin . Craven created Coming of Rage , a five-issue comic book series, with 30 Days of Night writer Steve Niles . The series was released in digital form in 2014 by Liquid Comics with

705-421: The "integrated" variety of DAW, and required the purchase of expensive proprietary hardware and specialized computers (not standard PCs or Macs). Of the two surviving systems, Pro Tools still requires some proprietary hardware (either a low cost portable device such as the "Mbox" or the more expensive multichannel A/D,D/A converters for more professional high end applications), while Nuendo (a successor to Cubase )

752-432: The 1950s. Magnetic recording offered a better signal-to-noise ratio , allowing more tracks to be played simultaneously without increasing noise on the full mix. The greater number of options available to the editors led to more complex and creative sound tracks, and it was in this period that a set of standard practices became established which continued until the digital era, and many of the notional concepts are still at

799-532: The 2009 remake of The Last House on the Left , Cunningham and Craven share production credits. Although known for directing horror/thriller films, he worked on two films which are outside this genre: Music of the Heart (1999) and Paris, je t'aime (2006) (as one of the 22 directors responsible for it). Craven designed the Halloween 2008 logo for Google and was the second celebrity personality to take over

846-492: The Left and The Hills Have Eyes . A Nightmare on Elm Street , Shocker , and the Scream films address the process of addressing family trauma. Several of Craven's films are characterized by abusive familial relationships such as The Hills Have Eyes , A Nightmare on Elm Street , The People Under the Stairs , and others. Families in denial are a common thread throughout his movies, an idea Craven openly discussed: The family

893-667: The Lost Ark (1981), and Reservoir Dogs (1992). Credited with naming and popularizing this particular recording is sound designer Ben Burtt . The first sound process to substantially displace silent films in the moviegoing market was the Vitaphone process. Under the Vitaphone process, a microphone recorded the sound performed on set directly to a phonograph master, which made Vitaphone recordings impossible to cut or resynchronize, as later processes would allow. This limited

940-672: The Rainbow (1988), Shocker (1989), Vampire in Brooklyn (1995), and Music of the Heart (1999). Craven received several accolades across his career, which includes a Scream Award , a Sitges Film Festival Award , a Fangoria Chainsaw Award , and nominations for a Saturn Award . In 1995, he was honored by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films with the Life Career Award , for his accomplishments in

987-454: The Vitaphone process to capturing musical acts or one-take action scenes, like Vaudeville routines or other re-creations of stage performances; essentially, scenes that required no editing at all. However, Warner Brothers , even as early as The Jazz Singer , began experimenting with the mixing of multiple phonograph recordings and intercutting between the "master" sync take and coverage of other angles. The original mixing console used to make

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1034-568: The Vitaphone system, but these were rendered obsolete with the widespread adoption of sound-on-film processes in the early 1930s. In a sound-on-film process, a microphone captures sound and converts it into a signal that can be photographed on film. Since the recording is imposed linearly on the medium, and the medium is easily cut and glued, sounds recorded can be easily re-sequenced and separated onto separate tracks, allowing more control in mixing. Options expanded further when optical sound recording processes were replaced with magnetic recording in

1081-579: The artistic contribution of exceptional sound editing with the Academy Award for Best Sound Editing . There are primarily three divisions of sound that are combined to create a final mix, these being dialogue, effects, and music. In larger markets such as New York and Los Angeles, sound editors often specialize in only one of these areas, thus a show will have separate dialogue, effects, and music editors. In smaller markets, sound editors are expected to know how to handle it all, often crossing over into

1128-471: The chase scenes, although he was not credited. Craven had a hand in launching actor Johnny Depp 's career by casting him in A Nightmare on Elm Street , Depp's first major film role. Elm Street villain Freddy Krueger appeared with Cunningham's Jason Voorhees in the 2003 slasher film Freddy vs. Jason , produced by Cunningham with screenwriter Victor Miller credited as "Character Creator". In

1175-512: The content of the film. After the negative experience of Last House , Craven attempted to move out of the horror genre, and began writing non-horror films with his partner Sean S. Cunningham , none of which attracted any financial backing. Finally, based on advice from a friend about the ease of filming in the Nevada deserts, Craven began to write a new horror film based on that locale. The resulting film, The Hills Have Eyes , cemented Craven as

1222-652: The core of sound design, computerized or not: Historically the Dubbing Mixer (UK) or Re-Recording Mixer (US) was the specialist who mixed all the audio tracks supplied by the Dubbing Editor (with the addition of 'live sounds' such as Foley) in a special Dubbing Suite. As well as mixing, he would introduce equalization, compression and filtered sound effects, etc. while seated at a large console. Often two or three mixers would sit alongside, each controlling sections of audio, e.g., dialogue, music, effects. In

1269-414: The decisions the editors made in assembling them, were now digitized, and could be versioned, done, undone, and archived instantly and compactly. In the magnetic recording era, sound editors owned trucks to ship their tracks to a mixing stage, and transfers to magnetic film were measured in hundreds of thousands of feet. Once the materials arrived at the stage, a dozen recordists and mix technicians required

1316-450: The early 1990s, when digital audio workstations acquired features sufficient for use in film production, mainly, the ability to synchronize with picture, and the ability to play back many tracks at once with CD-quality fidelity . The quality of 16-bit audio at a 48 kHz sampling rate allowed hundreds of tracks to be mixed together with negligible noise. The physical manifestation of the work became computerized: sound recordings, and

1363-461: The era of optical sound tracks, it was difficult to mix more than eight tracks at once without accumulating excessive noise . At the height of magnetic recording, 200 tracks or more could be mixed together, aided by Dolby noise reduction. In the digital era there is no limit. For example, a single predub can exceed a hundred tracks, and the final dub can be the sum of a thousand tracks. The mechanical system of sound editing remained unchanged until

1410-645: The exception of Music of the Heart , composer Marco Beltrami worked on all of Craven's films from Scream to Scream 4 . Although he usually wrote his own films, Craven worked with screenwriter Kevin Williamson regularly after Scream . Craven often used a number of the same actors on his projects including Neve Campbell , Courteney Cox , David Arquette , Robert Englund , Michael Berryman , Heather Langenkamp , and David Hess . Craven's first marriage, to Bonnie Broecker, produced two children: Jonathan Craven (born 1965) and Jessica Craven (born 1968). Jonathan

1457-591: The first film , co-writing and producing the third, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987), and writing and directing the seventh, Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994). He directed the first four films in the Scream franchise (1996–2011). He directed cult classics The Last House on the Left (1972) and The Hills Have Eyes (1977), the horror comedy The People Under the Stairs (1991), and psychological thriller Red Eye (2005). His other notable films include Swamp Thing (1982), The Serpent and

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1504-572: The frame, the traditional functions of a film editor are often unnecessary. Treg Brown is known to cartoon fans as the sound effects genius of Warner Bros. Animation . Other greats of the field have included Jimmy MacDonald of the Walt Disney Studios , Greg Watson and Don Douglas at Hanna-Barbera , and Joe Siracusa of UPA and various TV cartoon studios. In the production of radio programs and music, persons who manipulate sound recordings are known simply as "editors", in cases where

1551-954: The horror genre. In 2012, the New York City Horror Film Festival awarded Craven the Lifetime Achievement Award. On August 30, 2015, aged 76, Craven died of a brain tumor at his home in Los Angeles. Craven was born in Cleveland , Ohio, the son of Caroline (née Miller) and Paul Eugene Craven. He was of English , Scottish , and German descent. He was raised in a strict Baptist family. From 1957 to 1963 Craven earned an undergraduate degree in English and psychology from Wheaton College in Illinois . During his senior year, he developed Guillain-Barré Syndrome which delayed his graduation by

1598-571: The horror television series Scream and the fifth film in the franchise (2022) were dedicated in his memory. Craven was buried at the Lambert's Cove Cemetery in the town of West Tisbury on the island of Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts . The first scholarly collection of work dedicated to Craven was published by Edinburgh University Press in July 2023. Throughout his career, Craven

1645-422: The listener doesn't hear the transitions from shot to shot (often the background sounds underneath the words change dramatically from take to take). Among the challenges that effects editors face are creatively adding together various elements to create believable sounds for everything you see on screen, as well as memorizing their sound effects library. The essential piece of equipment used in modern sound editing

1692-460: The master recording of The Jazz Singer , still viewable in the Warner Bros. Studio Museum, has no more than four or five knobs, but each is still visibly labeled with the basic "groups" that a modern sound designer would recognize: "music", "crowd", and so on. Warner Bros. developed increasingly sophisticated technology to sequence greater numbers of phonograph sound effects to picture using

1739-420: The mixing realm as well. Editing effects is likened to creating the sonic world from scratch, while dialogue editing is likened to taking the existing sonic world and fixing it. Dialogue editing is more accurately thought of as "production sound editing", where the editor takes the original sound recorded on the set, and using a variety of techniques, makes the dialogue more understandable, as well as smoother, so

1786-478: The most terrifying things are adults, and unfortunately often it's the parents themselves that are the most frightening. —Craven on the theme of family in his works Craven's works tend to explore the breakdown of family structures , the nature of dreams and reality, and often feature black humor and satirical elements. Ostensibly civilized families succumb to and exercise violence in The Last House on

1833-529: The periodical's coverage of contemporary rock music and offbeat performers such as Frank Zappa . Craven left the academic world for the more lucrative role of pornographic film director. In the documentary Inside Deep Throat , Craven says on camera he made "many hardcore X-rated films" under pseudonyms. While his role in Deep Throat is undisclosed, most of his early known work involved writing, film editing, or both. Craven's first feature film as director

1880-426: The same issues as other computerized, "knowledge-based" professionals, including the loss of work due to outsourcing to cheaper labor markets, and the loss of royalties due to ineffective enforcement of intellectual property rights. In the field of animation, traditionally the sound editors have been given the more prestigious title of "film editor" in screen credits. As animated films are more often than not planned to

1927-537: The same things. The blurring of the barrier between dreams and reality, sometimes called "rubber-reality", is a staple of Craven's style. A Nightmare on Elm Street , for example, dealt with the consequences of dreams in real life. The Serpent and the Rainbow and Shocker portray protagonists who cannot distinguish between nightmarish visions and reality. Following New Nightmare , Craven increasingly explored metafictional elements in his films. New Nightmare has actress Heather Langenkamp play herself as she's haunted by

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1974-418: The villain of the film in which she once starred. At one point in the film, the audience sees on Craven's word processor a script he's written, which includes the conversation he just had with Langenkamp—as if the script were being written as the action unfolds. In Scream , the characters frequently reference horror films similar to their situations and at one point Billy Loomis tells his girlfriend that life

2021-411: Was The Last House on the Left , which was released in 1972. Craven expected the film to be shown at only a few theaters, which according to him "gave me a freedom to be outrageous, and to go into areas that normally I wouldn't have gone into, and not worry about my family hearing about it, or being crushed." Ultimately the movie was screened much more widely than he assumed, leaving him ostracized due to

2068-461: Was a fantastic film editor and producer of industrials . He taught me the Chapin method [of editing]: 'Nuts and bolts! Nuts and bolts! Get rid of the shit!'" Craven afterwards became the firm's assistant manager, and broke into film editing with You've Got to Walk It Like You Talk It or You'll Lose That Beat (1971). Craven had a letter published in the July 19, 1968, edition of Life praising

2115-440: Was an American film director, screenwriter, producer, editor, and actor. He contributed to many projects as either the director, writer, producer, editor, actor, or a combination of the five. Producer only Executive producer only TV movies Producer only Executive producer only TV series Executive producer only Sound editor (filmmaking) The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognizes

2162-415: Was included by Craven as a homage to Buñuel. Ideas that come out of families which are fractured or disturbed in some way are the most profoundly terrifying things to me. And I've always felt that I was on solid ground when I was making movies about families. The first real terrors happen to us in the first five years of our lives and that's where we are—in the middle of our family. Quite often, for children,

2209-693: Was nominated for and won numerous awards, including multiple Saturn Awards and several film festival honors. In 1977, Craven won the critics award at the Sitges Film Festival for his horror film The Hills Have Eyes . In 1997, the Gérardmer Film Festival granted him the Grand Prize for the slasher film Scream . In 2012, the New York City Horror Film Festival awarded Craven the Lifetime Achievement Award. Wes Craven filmography Wes Craven (1939–2015)

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