when the filmmakers respect the communities they're depicting

you guys sound check yeah no not yet going on it don't you sound checked yet no not looking forward to it I'm terrified half missions [Music] [Music] this is the quietest room on Earth located at Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond Washington the anechwood chamber is so quiet that background noise is measured in negative decibels and mere minutes inside have been known to induce panic disorientation and even auditory hallucinations blood bone breath the only sound you'll hear in the chamber and others like it is you but despite its sheer deprivation there is one thing that an anechoic chamber cannot be adequately likened to [Music] [Music] you know I think hearing people don't really understand that this this it goes Way Beyond the actual physical condition of deafness it's a it's a distinct culture and in that and Under the Umbrella of Deaf culture there's many subcultures but Deaf culture with a capital D is a very real thing and that's the first huge learning curve we are very hearing Centric we're very able-bodied thinkers we think of ASL as as an interpretation of English it is not American sign language is a different language it has nothing to do with English foreign ER whose 2019 feature debut sought to explore a slice of that culture on film and as authentically as possible illustrate a young man's transition into it through immersive filmmaking discipline performances and a rare measure of human awareness the concept for sound of metal was born a decade and a half ago in conversations between martyr and Phyllis greenwriter Derek C in France a former metal drummer who left his band after signs of tinnitus started to set in at the time San France was already half done developing his experience into his own film called Metalhead featuring members from the band josepher a Pneumatic metal Duo known for living and touring full-time out of an RV but when the project was abandoned martyr adopted the premise and raised it into sound of metal and the story of Ruben Stone a fictional drummer in a metal Duo of his own who rapidly becomes deaf and the left ear it came in at 24 okay is not good yeah I see that so what can we do about it how do I get it back but for martyr and his team capturing that experience on film was a tremendous challenge one less of sight than of sound and that's where sound designer Nicola Becker comes in um [Music] on our first meeting Becker and Martyr actually visited an anakovic chamber in Paris they used it as a starting point to discuss the internal sensation of external silence and set to work creating as authentic a soundscape as possible my first idea was to to go to something very naturalistic so the idea that we try to actually understand uh physically from from the people who have this experience what what was the the inner feeling you know like the body feeling of it when Consulting the deaf Community martyr and Becker chose to specifically learn about the experiences of individuals who were not born deaf the best match the life and perspective of their hero diegetically that meant a complex mix of noise and quiet the sound of drums blenders traffic are all suffocated through Reuben's point of view and as Reuben first grapples with his loss of hearing that point of view is reinforced by martyr's camera when Reuben Fells a shot his auditory perspective takes over and words to a hearing audience are drowned out but when the camera takes a step back to a spectator's distance like passersby we can hear again he's having trouble even communicating with me [Music] is [Music] these techniques are further paired with Becker's minimalist score which was composed for an instrument called a crystal Bashe a glass organ embedded with metal rods whose varying lengths and weights produce an eerie resonant drone when brushed quite literally the sound of metal foreign of course any emphasis on authenticity in a film also places enormous pressure on the performer rizamed who plays Reuben was tasked with learning American Sign Language and drumming in the months leading up to filming martyr made it clear that he was going to provide Ahmed with no safety nets when filming the raucous concert scenes shot in front of live audiences Martyrs philosophy was simple I said look if you suck you suck you know you're going to be as good as you get a Creed pushed to an even greater extreme with the film's use of language martyr demanded Ahmed learned to comprehend ASL Beyond just what the script contained I also said you know you're going to be in a deaf Community for uh as a character your character has lived in a deaf Community for four to six months so you have to learn ASL to agree that Reuben would know it you can't just learn your lines you have to be able to improvise it's disrespectful to the deaf Community you have to show up with a command of that language ASL coach Jeremy Lee Stone claimed that Ahmed refused to use textbooks opting instead to learn the language through conversation just as Reuben would the first day you were here you remind me of an owl owl murder also insisted that sound metal be screened to accommodate deaf audiences the film is captioned uh tonight so it's not just subtitled it's captioned and and really this is the beginning of an experiment of bringing together uh two distinct cultures and enjoying a film together and that means that we all experience the film slightly differently but we do it together in the same room when the film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2019 the subtitles were hard-coded into the Reel and the only moments where captions don't appear in the film are instances when Reuben's perspective takes over before he's become fully acquainted with ASL for a hearing audience these scenes become some of the most affecting left like Reuben in open water without a guide immersed in a community and culture and language very different from the one we take for granted every day of Our Lives the hard-coded captions have since been removed but murder encourages audiences to keep them on foreign that being deaf is not a handicap not something to fix it's pretty important around here those are words spoken by Reuben's Mentor Joe played by Paul racy himself a child of deaf adults and a lifetime ASL interpreter for the Allied court system I think what truly set sound the metal apart from too many other films that struggle to tackle similar themes and stories about change and loss is the way that it chooses to fold deafness into a broader narrative in sound and metal deafness is treated less is an obstacle than as a catalyst fueled to explore an equally potent influence on the story addiction my name is Reuben addict I have four years clean now recovery plays in the central role in Reuben's Arc a former addict of quote unquote everything as well as that of his partner Lou Who has previously committed self-harm likely linked to a traumatic family history but whatever demons the two battle in an effort to help themselves is outweighed by each one's mission to help the other at any cost Lou helps Reuben into a deaf Sober House a community of people who are importantly there to address their addiction not their deafness it's very important if you want to be here to understand that we're looking for a solution to to this not this and as Reuben's Journey develops within and without that Community he begins to come to terms with what he has and hasn't got to cut ties with the path Elon imagined for himself and finds peace and beauty and quiet culminating in a scene where dialogue plays second fiddle to non-verbal communication or emotion is universal where one Journey can end and a new one can be anything that we choose to imagine

Channel: CinemaStix

Views: 1,253,019

Keywords: sound of metal, riz ahmed, video essay, sound of metal video essay, cinemastix

Id: DP5AS-GRpg8

Length: 10min 43sec (643 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 07 2023