Bringing 1917’s sonic world to life By Patrick Birk
Sam Mendes’ 1917 tells the harrowing story of Lance Corporals Will Schofield and Tom Blake, following the two young British soldiers on their perilous trek across no man’s land to deliver lifesaving orders to the Second Battalion of the Devonshire Regiment.
The story is based on accounts of World War I by the director’s grandfather, Alfred Mendes. The production went to great lengths to create an immersive experience, placing the viewer alongside the protagonists in a painstakingly recreated world, woven together seamlessly, with no obvious cuts. The film’s sound department had to rise to the challenge of bringing this rarely portrayed sonic world to life.
We checked in with supervising sound editor Oliver Tarney and ADR/dialogue supervisor Rachael Tate, who worked out of London’s Shepperton Studios. Both Tarney and Tate are Oscar-nominated in the Sound Editing category.
A lot of the film is made up of quiet, intimate moments punctuated by extremely traumatic events. How did you decide on the most key sounds for those quiet moments?
Oliver Tarney: When Sam described how it was going to be filmed, it was expected that people would comment on how it was made from a technical perspective. But for Sam, it’s a story about the friendship between these two men and the courage and sacrifice that they show. Because of this, it was important to have those quieter moments when you aren’t just engaged in full-tilt action the whole time.
The other factor is that the film had no edits — or certainly no obvious edits (which actually meant many edits) — and was incredibly well-rehearsed. It would have been a dangerous thing to have had everything playing aggressively the whole way through. I think it would have been very fatiguing for the audience to watch something like that.
Rachael Tate: Also, you can’t rely on a cut in the normal way to inform pace and energy, so you are using things like music and sound to sort of ebb and flow the energy levels. So after the plane crash, for example, you’ll notice it goes very quiet, and also with the mine collapse, there’s a huge section of very little sound, and that’s on purpose so your ears can reacclimatize.
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