Golden Globe Winner ‘1917’- an Intense & Immersive Sound of War
“1917,” a World War I epic Golden Globe winner, has surpassed Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker to become the most in-demand movie on popular ticket website Fandango.
The film from director Sam Mendes won the prize for Best Drama last Sunday at the Golden Globes against competitors such as “Marriage Story” and “The Irishman”. The next morning, last Monday, ticket sales for the film quintupled from the week before, according to the site.
The movie is indeed incredibly crafted. Director Sam Mendes and cinematographer Roger Deakins decided to shoot the film in a series of rather complex long takes that, with proper editing, feel like a long continuous shot. The film shows the story of two British soldiers as they get through the muddy trenches of No Man’s Land in order to deliver a warning of an upcoming ambush.
The direction for the visuals delivers a strong feeling of immediacy, almost as if the audience is running alongside the main two characters, immersed in the situations they’re going through. This, of course, demanded unique solutions to unique challenges created on the sound side, both for acclaimed composer Thomas Newman and for Oscar-nominated sound editor Oliver Tarney.
An interesting fact about the film is that Tarney managed to create quiet moments where viewers can definitely take a breath from the staggering action. In a recent interview, Tarney and editor Lee Smith mentioned how they used loop group actors alongside real soldiers to build up the environment around the main characters, how Foley ended up being a pivotal element to pull viewers into the overall filmic experience, and how their attention to historic details (ranging from weapons to words) allowed them to make this WWI story feel believable and trustworthy.
Mendes and Tarney met nearly a year before filming began. Since the story has always been the most important thing to the ‘Skyfall’ director, it all came down to the sound team to make sure that their creative focus was 100 percent on enhancing the production of the original performances captured on-set.
Once the film went to post-production, sound and music were the only sonic elements that could have a potential effect on the film’s rhythm and pace. The continuous-shot approach definitely means that the sound team never cut away to a different scene or film location, so it’s fair to assume that they didn’t have that as a means to change the energy or the film’s pace.
If you’ve seen the film, then you definitely know that we are talking about a very dynamic film, with the big set pieces playing as the audience might expect. Give its nature, and the presence of quiet moments mentioned above, it is fair to assert that the sound team decided to design the scenes in a way they could avoid the risk of overload. Of course, if they had kept such intensity throughout the whole film, then the tension would have faded away real quick.
The film excels at providing the audience with a fine balance, managing to keep the energy up, and allowing time to recover from the main events. In fact, the lead performances feel incredibly natural, which is why you don’t come across any Hollywood-style sounding weapon. Tarney asserted they had managed to secure recording sessions with original WW1 weapons and planes, which is why they likely didn’t process the recordings too much in order to maintain a certain degree of honesty to the original sounds.
Another incredibly sonic element within the film is the bullet-bys. Given the continuous-shot approach and the many possibilities sound design-wise, the sound team certainly wanted to remain anchored to the lead characters, which is why they probably decided to keep things front focused; however, there are several sequences that definitely took advantage of the wider Atmos stage. One can notice that the planes flying over No Man’s Land and the flares burning over the town were certainly enhanced in Atmos.
This film is now leading this year’s Oscar race, and for good reason. When it comes to sound and sound design, the film manages to deliver. The sound team was fortunate enough to have recording sessions for all the weapons used, along with the German and British planes. How they used those sounds is what helps this film deliver such a powerful and authentic story. From the sound point of view, the pace, the rhythm and the moments of stillness were only possible because of the sound team’s approach.
Many interesting sonic elements and decisions can be found and heard, which essentially confirms that although 70% of what you hear in a film is crafted later during post-production, there are many other elements that are simply “not there” — making those invisible pieces of sound pivotal for a film’s success in delivering a powerful story.
