“We got a lot of complaints,” Nolan said about the “Interstellar” sound design. “I actually got calls from other filmmakers who would say, ‘I just saw your film, and the dialogue is inaudible.’ Some people thought maybe the music’s too loud, but the truth was it was kind of the whole enchilada of how we had chosen to mix it.”

“It was a very, very radical mix,” the director continued. “I was a little shocked to realize how conservative people are when it comes to sound. Because you can make a film that looks like anything, you can shoot on your iPhone, no one’s going to complain. But if you mix the sound a certain way, or if you use certain sub-frequencies, people get up in arms.” Related ‘Oppenheimer’ Trailer: Cillian Murphy Prepares for Destruction in Christopher Nolan’s WWII Biopic ‘Oppenheimer’ Teaser: Christopher Nolan’s Explosive Atom Bomb Epic Has Live Countdown to Destruction Related Quentin Tarantino’s Favorite Movies: 48 Films the Director Wants You to See Nightmare Film Shoots: The Most Grueling Films Ever Made, from ‘Deliverance’ to ‘Mad Max’ to ‘Avatar 2’
Nolan added “there’s a wonderful feeling of scale” that can come by experimenting with sound design and “a wonderful feeling of physicality to sound that on ‘Interstellar’ we pushed further than I think anyone ever has.” For “Interstellar,” Nolan and his team “tapped into the idea of the sub-channel, where you can just get a lot of vibration.” “A lot of it was the music where Hans [Zimmer] had this organ and he used the absolutely lowest note, which would literally make your chest drop,” Nolan continued. “There’s certain low end frequencies that automatically get filtered out by the software. He took all of those controls off, so there are all those sub-frequencies there. And we did the same on the dub stage. It’s a pretty fascinating sound mix. If you see it particularly in an IMAX theater, projected, it’s pretty remarkable.” Moviegoers might think Nolan movies are too loud, but Nolan movies sound exactly the way Nolan wants them to sound. Read the excerpt on Nolan’s sound design below, courtesy of Trailer Track founder Anton Volkov. Shore’s “The Nolan Variations” is now available for purchase.

— Anton Volkov (@antovolk) November 11, 2020 Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.