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What does losing your hearing sound like?
It was a question at the front of Nicolas Beckers mind.
And, of course, there are moments of silence, carefully chosen and devastatingly rendered.
Then slowly, it becomes less and less strong.
The more you go in the film, the more it comes back to typical levels.
We come back to the kind of typical world that people know.
Sometimes you have a shot that is subjective, and it reminds you of the positioning of the film.
And then there is silence and the hearing loss, and [that feeling] becomes very strong again.
We spoke with audiologists, scientists who are working in that field, Becker says.
When you are underwater, your timpani is down, Becker adds.
What you hear underwater is the vibration you get in your body and your bones.
So in a way, your brain is able to reconstruct the sound through the body.
The audience connects with their own body memories, he says.
They feel that its right, in a way.
But we know this language.
These helped capture the physicality of Ahmeds performance, particularly in the early scenes when hes drumming onstage.
I created different stethoscope mics with very sensitive mics, he says.
And when the actors are playing music, theyrereally playing the music, Becker emphasizes.
What you hear is them, not a playback.
Its fiction but not so far from documentary.
The idea was not to have like 500 audio tracks and maybe use only 10 percent of it.
We tried to do things really precisely.
In the mix, we removed nearly nothing.
And thats what I like about the film.
We really tried to not do things over-the-top but to make the concepts impressive and right.
It would have been disruptive, Becker says.
In Europe, we use much less music in film in general.
We work much more with the atmosphere like with field recordings of birds.
I think we have a very strong documentary-school movement, so were more naturalistic, Becker says.
The idea of doing a film in the U.S. today is iconic.
It became like Frankenstein sounds, Becker says.
You have everything, but nothing matches together anymore, [its] more omnidirectional.
In the end, Becker credits the tightSound of Metalcrew with allowing for such an exacting approach.
Its about how you are able to confront problems.
Its much deeper, and its much more a life question.
Everybody can understand that and be a part of the film.
