postPerspective Update

Sound of Metal Oscar Winner:
Editor Mikkel E.G. Nielsen

By Daniel Restuccio

The Darius Marder-directed Sound of Metal tells the story of a troubled rock drummer, and recovering addict, who is rapidly losing his hearing. Nominated for six Oscars, the movie took home two golden statues: one for Sound and one for Editing.

The film’s audience not only gets to see the lead, Ruben (Riz Ahmed), go deaf, they experience it viscerally, thanks to deft direction, compelling performances, and seamless sound design and editing.

To help tell his story, Marder brought on Danish editor Mikkel E.G. Nielsen with only three weeks left to the shoot. “This film was edited in so many different places,” explains the newly minted Oscar winner, who would work on a laptop running Avid Media Composer while on the road, and on a six-core Mac Pro (the trash can model) at Rock Paper Scissors in New York.

“Darius would also have a laptop with the material, so he could edit and send me sequences, or we would sit next to each other, working that way,” explains Nielsen.

He worked on Media Composer using the SAN Fusion virtual file system, which allowed him to work as if he were connected to an Avid Unity using existing shared storage. He also called on Frame.io and Aspera for Mac for review and approval. Assistant editor Alex H. Liu would also upload the edit to the internal server at Rock Paper Scissors, where they would screen and watch footage.

The film was shot chronologically, with an Aaton Penelope 35mm camera with Sigma Cine lenses on Kodak Vision3 50D 5203, Vision3 250D 5207 and Vision3 500T 5219 stock. Dailies were processed at FotoKem.

We caught up with Nielsen shortly after his BAFTA win and just prior to his Oscar win. Let’s find out more from Nielsen…

What did you find in the footage that had already been shot?
There was plenty of material and plenty of opportunities. I’m the kind of editor who doesn’t like working on a film while they’re shooting, so it worked out. Dialogue scenes, for example, were shot as wide, medium and close-up. We didn’t have 10 takes, but we didn’t have two takes. I would say we definitely had the material to play around with the scenes. Certain scenes were shot more like a documentary, especially ones showing the deaf community.