Dunkirk(Dir. Christopher Nolan) is a historical WWII Thriller/Drama movie based around three storylines. Nolan wanted to make Dunkirk seem different to other war films, and to do this, he decided to focus on sound and specifically the realism and verisimilitude to try and make the audience hear all of the things that a soldier would hear.

The Filmmakers did not want to use any Generic boat and plane sounds, and therefore, many of the sounds heard have been recorded specifically for Dunkirk so that it would sound unique, while also being as realistic as possible. For instance, Richard King, (Dunkirk’s sound editor) placed around 25 microphones around several spitfires, with some behind the pilot, in the engine bay and in the fuselage of the plane so he would have an extremely wide variety of realistic sounds to use. King wanted to convey the “physical sensation” of being in the plane by using a lot of the rattles and shakes caused by the panels of the plane.

For the sequence where there are two soldiers carrying a stretcher, King estimates that they used around 30-40 different tracks, then when editing the scene when the ship is torpedoed, he said the number of tracks used was into the hundreds. King also stated that he didn’t want Dunkirk to remind the audience of other movies and this was the main reason he wanted to “rethink every sound”. A good example of this is when the bombs are being dropped on the beaches. Where most films would bring the pitch of the bombs lower the closer they got to the ground, king decided to do the opposite, saying “when you think about it, the noise should increase in pitch as it gets closer. We reversed all incoming shell sounds so they rose in pitch”. The Sound Mixer, Gary Rizzo, said that Nolan wanted to create “an altered sense of perception” and as many of the soldiers were so young that this would be the first time that they had heard things like a bomb falling in the sand or bullets whizzing past which would have most likley sounded different to how they would have imagined. Nolan creates this feeling for the audience as well, by using different sounds to the kind that the audience would be used to. Almost all of the sounds in Dunkirk had to be re-recorded due to the harsh conditions of wind and rain, not to mention noisy IMAX cameras. Nolan and King put a lot of thought into every sound used throughout the film, even the smallest subliminal ones. Ironically, all of the work that they have put in is intended to make the effort unnoticed to the audience.

Nolan and the film’s composer Hans Zimmer used a technique called a Shepard Tone. This effect is named after the American scientist Roger Shepard, and gives the impression that there is an endless buildup by stacking different pitches of sound waves on top of each other. one high pitched sound getting quieter, one medium pitched sound staying at the same volume, and one low pitched sound getting louder and vice versa. This creates the sense of rising tension as effect will seem to continuously get louder, similar to that of a barber shop pole which will seem to rise forever, but is really just a trick on your eyes; The Shepard Tone is the same trick, but for your ears. This was combined with the ticking sound of Nolan’s personal watch to create a sense of urgency and panic to keep the audience on edge. This sound effect, on top of the original and unique sounds produced for the film, makes the audience feel immersed in the film, creating verisimilitude as well as tension for the audience.