Here are the best books that I own & reccomend on the subject of film sound design!
The Practical Art of Motion Picture Sound by David Lewis Yewdall – if you only buy one book, I would buy this one. It is very practical & talks through every department & element of the soundtrack. The only caveat would be that it suffers slightly from the ‘bigger is better’ syndrome, but that comes down to aesthetics & taste which I wont debate here…
Audio-Vision by Michel Chion – this is the best book on film sound theory I have read – it is very thought provoking with a great foreword by Walter Murch.
Soundscape by Larry Sider – this is actually a copy of various lectures given at the School of Sound, a week long course held every two years in London. This book features lectures by Walter Murch, David Lynch, Randy Thom, Michel Chion, Carter Burwell and Mani Kaul amongst others….
Sound-On-Film: Interviews with Creators of Film Sound by Vincent LoBrutto – this book contains some very interesting interviews including Walter Murch, Ben Burtt, Skip Lievesay, Gary Rydstrom, Mark Mangini and many others..
src=”http://www.musicofsound.co.nz/blog/wp-content/TPuploads/2007/01/FilmSoundbook.jpg” alt=”” width=”800″ height=”1138″ class=”alignnone size-full wp-image-50337″ />
Film Sound – E. Weiss & J. Belton
– fascinating book with indepth discussion and analysis of film sound design.
The Foley Grail by Vanessa Theme Ament – great insight into the world of the foley artist!
Dialogue editing for Motion Pictures by John Purcell – a very thorough, if a little dry, explanation of dialogue & ADR editing
The Sound Effects Bible by Ric Viers – a handy guide to recording sound effects
The Reel World: Scoring for Pictures by Jeff Rona – I don’t write music/score for film, but on every project I get to collaborate with film composers so I figure the more I know about film scoring the better!
Finally, its not a book but its the best online resource for sound design: filmsound.org
Feel free to comment any other books you’ve come across that are useful… I haven’t included any Game Audio books as I have no experience with that field of work.