W11 | sound design | Munich – Spielberg

In the much awaited Nerdwriter (2018) video, the video looks at one of the most underrated films of the 21st Century, Munich, Steven Spielberg’s thriller is filled with nerve-rack, action-packed, and emotional moments that tell this true story in a unique way. Nerdwriter’s video (2018), discusses one of the most compelling aspects of Spielberg’s storytelling in Munich – the sound design.

First, we’re shown a prime example how to cast attention on certain characters or devices without actually showing them. Spielberg does this by putting the audience in the character’s shoes, let us hear their thoughts, conversations, singing, or their actual point of view.

In one scene, Spielberg shifts our focus from a man on top of a building to a yellow parked car with someone singing inside, and then to a black car pulling up on the other side of the street – all with audio cues. The sound puts you where Spielberg wants you to be.

Even though the image showed us the man, we know he was on a crowded street by the sound effect of people walking by on the ground kept playing. The singing was intimate to the camera so that we know that the singing was from the nearest car. Also, Spielberg guided us gradually, by the sound of one thing to another. For example, there was a motorcycle came before the black car and there was the singing before that. In the image, it was a linear direction for the audiences.

In the featured scene, scene every plot point is told through sound. The car with our heroes arrives, the daughter of the man talks with the mother as they leave the apartment, their car pulls away, coins are inserted into a phone to make the call, and then [the true genius of the scene] a truck pulls onto the street, interrupting the plan. It screeches to a halt.

The truck blocks the hero’s view of the apartment, but also, the truck driver’s talking interrupts the hero’s ability to hear the family unexpectedly returning to the apartment. Once the daughter enters the apartment Spielberg slowly turns the audio down, instead of building up the tension with music and noise from outside. Therefore, once the hero dials the phone, we know that danger is coming and the daughter should not be in the apartment. The sound of the dial is the equivalent of a loud drum or crash in a typical score.

Once the daughter answers the phone, Spielberg cuts the audio almost completely (silent) as our heroes rush to stop the bomb from going off. As Nerdwriter (2018) shows in the video, you can listen to the audio without any visual context and still know what’s going on. This mastery of sound and space is part of what defines Spielberg’s filmmaking.

This is the main point of the video: Great sound design can do more storytelling than fancy dialogue, VFX, or incredible set design. If you’re working with limited resources, good audio is an unassuming way to immerse your audience. You don’t need a mega-blockbuster sized budget to craft magic into your scene, just an understanding of how to tell your story in a unique and engaging way.

 

References

Munich 2005, Universal Pictures & DreamWorks Pictures, United States & Canada, directed by Steven Spielberg

Nerdwriter1 2018, “See With Your Ears: Spielberg And Sound Design”, YouTube, viewed 12 Oct 2018, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=442&v=kavxsXhzD48>