‘A completely unknown’ is not Bob Dylan musical. The noise team took extreme measures to keep it authentic.

A handful of films nominated for the best photo this year have heavy musical themes, including A completely unknown. The film, which maps the rise of a young Bob Dylan, has no fewer than 40 songs – but unlike Bad And Emilia Pérez, Don’t call it a musical.

Sound is his own character in the film, according to the Oscar-nominated team behind the Sonic element of the film. Ted Caplan, Donald Sylvester, Tod Maitland and David Giammarco spoke with Yahoo Entertainment about how they approached the complicated and unusual sound of the film.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Something that struck me A completely unknown Before I even saw, it was how nervous Bob Dylan fans were there. Some did not want it to exist or wanted it desperately that it was as accurate as possible. How did you all, if the sound team, have entered into the balance between authenticity and creating something new?

Ted Caplan: I think the leading principle was not to do a re-creation or re-enactment of his life. It was to get into the heart of what was going on with Bob. From a good perspective, that is all about authenticity. It is not that we have not tried to hide it, but we did not try to make the world look bigger than it was.

Donald Sylvester: I will be honest with you – many of these things were not really in the sense that nobody knows what really happened because they were not in the room when Dylan “blow in the wind” with Joan Baez for the first time. But it is a pretty good idea of ​​what happened. We reminded ourselves that we don’t make a documentary.

How did you make those concerts and live performances feel that feel so authentic for the time period?

Tod Maitland: We bought out 42 period microphones and placed them in the film in chronological order, because microphones changed very quickly at the time. Every year they got a little better.

Caplan: It is true of the sound of time as much as possible without being at Admittedly, because things sound better now. We want the faithfulness of modern technology to have the texture of a vintage recording.

David Gammarco: We wanted to place the films in a place where they feel that they might be at a concert, put crowds around them and make the crowd active to tell the story of what was going on with Dylan on stage .

Sylvester: The people in the bustle – in cafés, at streets and at parties – were really influential for Bob himself. He heard them. He saw them. He responded directly to them. They were a character in that film. There are many people who are unnamed and faceless, but they talk to Bob and he hears them.

Caplan: It was really important for us to do more than just saying, “Here is a performance!” And everyone gets quiet. The film is about the dialogue between Bob and the world – how they play apart. It is not a musical. It is a drama with music. That is a real distinction for this film that makes it unique.

Sylvester: People in our crowd said things like “groovy, man!” And other things that would sound pretty stupid today, but in the context of the film time, screaming “far out!” work. We had to remove all “oops” because members of the public did not know that people did not say at the time.

I Speaked with Timothée Chalamet And Monica Barbaro, who plays Dylan and Baez, about how to learn to sing for this film. Does the fact that they were new to the craft influence your process?

Caplan: When they go up all these songs, I could see that Timmy had what was needed. The actual production recordings were at a different level. And that is when you are relieved because you don’t want to go inside and repair everything. You give something that is brilliant instead of repairing something that is poor.

Maitland: When I looked at Timmy in rehearsals, I noticed that he held the guitar in the same way as Bob, who is high on his body. Normally we would just put a lavalier microphone on him, but the way he held his guitar denied the ability to do that. So I told him in rehearsals that the only way in which we could capture his vocals during these acoustic pieces without performance micropones would be to wip a microphone through his hair. That was a bit convincing for him and the hair department, but we finally did it about 14 times.

How did you design the sound of New York City at the time?

Caplan: Bob’s first arrival at MacDougal Street [in 1961] Is so important, because although it is subtle, it shows what Bob is so tempting. It is the gateway to the universe in which he wants to be – and that is not just folk music. It is an exciting smorgas board from a Sonic Universe that is inviting, and it is contrary to the universe that he feels in 1965 by walking the same street, where the music is oppressive and not so inviting.

Sylvester: I needed background actors who had knowledge of New Yorkers and the fact that they are not afraid to talk to someone they don’t even know.

Maitland: This was not a normal film. Normally in a movie, you clean the dialogue without music. But [director James Mangold] decided that every piece would be healthy, including the scene [a TV shows a Walter Cronkite broadcast about the] Cuban rocket crisis. We created a soundtrack with sirens and people who shouted that we were pumped into the set to give actors the energy to help them feel that they are really in the middle of what was going on. We filmed the Newport Folk Festival scene of 1965 as if it were a concert, with a film in one continuous take of 23 minutes with more than 40 microphones.

That explosive moment at the end when Dylan connects his guitar and becomes electric, to the great annoyance of fans of folk music around him – how was that shift from a good perspective?

Caplan: If you just make it loud, you will attack the film audience, that’s not what we want to do. Paul Massey worked his magic to create more energy without feeling too loud. It is a subtle magic of the mixing process.

Sylvester: We have deliberately made this a loud film, but it is not a constant loud film such as when you put a lobster in a pot and it cooks. You don’t know it gets louder and louder. At the start of production we had a discussion with [production company] Search light where they said they recommend certain hardness levels. And we said no, we are not really going to limit that, because theaters never really play something as hard as you make it.

That said, I know that the best place to see that this film is possible on the biggest screen, but it is on video on 25 February. Is there something that people can do at home to re -create that experience?

Giammarco: Play it loudly!