SOUND & VISION
SOUND OF METAL – AN AWARDS DARK HORSE AND ONE OF THE YEAR’S BEST FILMS – CREATES AN ENTIRELY NEW AND WHOLLY ORIGINAL AUDITORY ATMOSPHERE. TOTAL FILM TALKS TO THE FILMMAKING TEAM ABOUT CREATING A UNIQUE PERSPECTIVE SHIFT.
Sound Of Metal has been a long time coming. Not just in its protracted UK release, which has been postponed repeatedly as a result of the pandemic after it first bowed at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2019 (and now finally has dates locked for streaming and, hopefully, cinema). This is a project that’s been in the works for more than a decade. “That journey from [TIFF 2019] until now feels particularly long because it’s also included a complete shift in who we are as a globe,” explains Darius Marder over Zoom, when we catch up just hours after his film has received four Bafta nominations in March 2021. “It’s been a journey, for sure, and the span from between TIFF and now is small compared to the rest of the span,” he laughs.
Remarkably, Sound Of Metal is Marder’s first narrative feature film as a director; he’s previously worked as a director and editor on documentaries, and is a close collaborator with Derek Cianfrance (with whom he co-wrote The Place Beyond The Pines). Sound Of Metal began life somewhat differently, as an ‘exploratory, hybrid documentary’ based around real-life metal band, Jucifer, and directed by Cianfrance. So, as Marder explains it, his writing process on Sound Of Metal began when editing early footage some 15 years ago.
“Being able to cut with this footage was really wonderful, because before I
even put words on a page, I was able to start feeling kind of [the] tone. I actually started playing with what I’m calling ‘point of hearing’.”
When it became clear that Cianfrance – who was gearing up to make Blue Valentine and Pines – was never going to be able to finish the movie, he offered it to Marder. “He said, ‘Do you want to finish this?’ And I said, ‘No, I don’t. I want to start over. I need to start over. If I’m going to do it, I need to do it from the ground up.’” Marder’s writing process began there with “that huge, foundational amount of work” already done before he put a word on the page.
The film as it came to be tells the story of drummer Ruben Stone (Riz Ahmed), who’s touring with his band-member/partner Lou (Olivia Cooke). Their nomadic lifestyle is disrupted when Ruben suddenly finds his hearing impacted, and he soon becomes fully Deaf. He then enters a home for Deaf addicts, presided over by veteran Joe (Paul Raci). There, Ruben must confront himself in more detail than he ever has before. Sound Of Metal’s remarkable sound design frequently puts you in the audioheadspace of the protagonist: Marder’s ‘point of hearing’. This changes across the film as Ruben first experiences tinnitus and then becomes Deaf, and into third-act developments.
Casting was tricky, but it’s now impossible to imagine anyone other than Ahmed in the lead role (and Cooke is also revelatory in a smaller supporting role). “I was scaring actors,” explains Marder. “I could have made the movie a couple of times over with actors I didn’t think were really up for it. And I didn’t. Most people around me thought I was crazy at the time.” When he met Ahmed, two qualities stood out. “You had a person that was intensely hungry [artistically], and then you had a person that wanted control. But in order to do it, he’d have to relinquish control. The whole enterprise of relinquishing control is what Ruben’s all about. That’s Ruben’s whole journey…”
Even trickier to cast was Joe. The only thing that Marder was set on was that he was not going to cast outside of Deaf culture. “I had to turn down financing just for that vision, for finding someone that I didn’t know existed,” he recalls. “And I did have to turn down a meeting with Robert Duvall at one point, even though everyone loves
Robert Duvall, and he’s almost the perfect Joe on paper – except [that] you can’t fake the culture, you know? It had to be authentic.”
As the character of Joe became Deaf in later life, it was an extremely complicated role to cast. It was only when Marder was recommended to cast a CODA [child of Deaf adults] that the net was widened and he found Raci, who delivers one of the year’s finest performances. “I saw a tape of Paul’s, and I just thought, ‘Holy shit. This is in him.’ That’s the magic of casting. He’s an incredible actor. He’s been acting for 40 years. But he’s also, obviously, steeped in Deaf culture, and he’s a two-time Vietnam vet. He’s dealt with addiction. He’s taught Deaf addiction groups. It was just kind of crazy.”
Another key collaborator from the Deaf community was Jeremy Stone, who was Ahmed’s ASL (American Sign Language) coach, and also has a small role within the film. Stone (who Ahmed named his character after) was initially hesitant to appear on screen. “I wanted to remain in my role as an ASL coach and consultant,” he explains. “When Darius asked me to step on screen, I felt resistant. That wasn’t what
I was called here to do. When Darius explained that I’d be taking on the role of one of the teachers at the Deaf school, it changed my perspective. That is what I do. It was fascinating to be in front of the camera, sharing the love of this language with Deaf students and Ruben.”
As well as learning the drums, Ahmed became fluent in ASL for the role. “Riz was a great student and never hesitated to ask difficult questions,” adds Stone. “He was open to experience different Deaf events, spaces and challenge himself to engage in conversations. Open to go to different places to have natural conversation settings. A natural learner!”
“It became clear on set that
I wanted Jeremy to really help me directing,” says Marder. “ASL’s so interesting, because there are endless interpretations of English to ASL and vice-versa. They’re two completely disparate languages. So for me, to give an English word to a Deaf person, and then just say “Action”, would be ridiculous. So Jeremy became my director – my Deaf director, essentially.” The scene in which Ruben receives his ASL name, for example, was modified on set when a Deaf cast
member explained how to make it more authentic. The cinema release also comes with open captions baked in; a tribute to Marder’s grandmother, a cinephile who campaigned for open captions after becoming Deaf (closed captions are available on the streaming release).
Ahuge part of drawing the audience into Ruben’s world is the film’s groundbreaking sound design. “I had [supervising sound editor and co-composer] Nicolas Becker on set with me, and he and I had already been working for over a year at this point on the sound,” says Marder. “Usually a sound designer doesn’t come to set. But Nicolas came with all of his crazy tools and toys.” Marder calls the film’s soundscape “a highly naturalistic – almost radically natural – sound perspective”.
“I think Darius was trying to find someone maybe not like a pure sound designer, but someone who’s used to working with a lot of different people – a musician, an artist, a scientist,” says Becker. In the early stages, Marder joined Becker in his Paris studio for a week. “We spent one week speaking about life, art, film, painting, writing… y’know, everything,” explains Becker. “And then at the end of this one week, the DoP [Daniël Bouquet] came and joined us for three days. And we started to understand all the different possibilities of combining the point of hearing and the point of view, how we could combine the idea of an immersive perspective – sonic-wise and picture-wise.”
When it came to the shoot, Becker used his “toolkit” of various mics to capture some unusual soundtrack material, much of it from Ahmed. There’s a scene early on in the film where Ruben’s in a booth, being tested by an audiologist. “I was there during the shoot, to record a lot of wild tracks and atmosphere,” says Becker. “I did a lot of field recordings. At the end of the day, I asked Riz if he could stay with me for two hours in the booth. I’d bring all this kind of weird stuff. We did a two-hour session of just him – you know, only his inner sound. I was able to create a library.”
Assembling the gathered material was quite an undertaking. “The sound design took 23 weeks of this film,” says Marder, almost in disbelief. “Twentythree weeks. Six times longer than the shoot, just to do the sound.” And while it’ll inevitably be hard to beat the immersive surround sound quality of the cinema experience, Becker says that they’d made sure the mix would play well to home viewers, knowing the pandemic would impact the film’s theatrical potential. “Our amazing mixers took a lot of attention on doing something really great for the streaming,” says Becker. “At the start, we were thinking, ‘Oh my God, it’s terrible, because people will not be able to share with us this 5.1 version,’ which is, of course, much more beautiful and much more impressive and much more immersive. But it was interesting to see that with a bit of thinking and a bit of time, you can deliver something which is quite right [for home-viewing].”
As Sound Of Metal nears its UK launch dates, it arrives on a wave of awards buzz. One person who’s not surprised by how enthusiastically the film has been embraced is Stone. “Honestly, I’m not surprised,” he says. “Often things that seem taboo, unknown, or foreign to an audience lead to greater achievement in understanding. Through film, people are now provided a safe space to learn about diverse cultures.”
Marder is philosophical when it comes to the film’s awards’ recognition. (As TF went to press, Sound Of Metal received six Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Actor and Sound.) “It’s always a weird one, because anybody who says awards mean nothing to them is probably lying. And anyone who says that it means everything to them, probably has to be checked,” he laughs. “For me, what’s so special about the recognition on an awards level, is this movie got made because people put their faith in me in a way that was shocking. I had kind of given people this directive of, ‘We’re going to do this thing that’s going to shift something, that’s going to be different, that’s going to be new.’ That’s an audacious thing to say. So to see those people getting recognised now for that faith? That is immensely satisfying to me.”
‘THE SOUND DESIGN TOOK 23 WEEKS… SIX TIMES LONGER THAN THE SHOOT, JUST TO DO THE SOUND’ Darius Marder