Darius Marder’s Sound of Metal is about a heavy metal drummer who loses his sense of hearing. As the audience follows the character Ruben, played by Riz Ahmed, on his journey from becoming deaf to finding himself as a deaf man, the task of the editor Mikkel E.G. Nielsen was to recreate the experience of being unable to hear for the audience. The audience becomes as frustrated and confused as Ruben as he loses his sense of hearing and then gains it again with a cochlear hearing implant that, unfortunately, makes the sounds he hears seem “metallic.” Nielsen, whose credits include A Royal Affair, Beasts of No Nation and Land, and whose work on Sound of Metal has earned him a BAFTA win and an Oscar, explains how he worked on the editing process when we speak to him from a hotel in downtown Los Angeles shortly before the Oscars ceremony.

First of all, what is the initial process for you when you get a script like Sound of Metal? Talk about how you approach it in the initial phases. How early in the film were you involved?

For Sound of Metal, I was involved two weeks before the end of shooting. Darius had interviewed multiple editors and he shared the script and some dailies. They shot the film chronologically, and I spoke to him when he went to Paris to shoot the last part.

How did he end up deciding to work with you?

It was really mostly about who I was as a person. He liked to share thoughts and play around with things, so it was not so much about the script but about him telling me what he wanted and what he was looking for. He used to edit himself – also when he did the documentary. He knew what he wanted and he raised the bar on all levels. He knew exactly what he wanted. I listened for a long time and told him who I am and how I read the script, which I really liked. Then, I told him how I wanted to work with him if he wanted to work with me, and that surprised him a lot because usually, you get what you want as a director. But he had also told himself that he wanted to pick someone who challenged him.

And you did?

Yes, because I told him that I do it a little differently from what he had explained. I needed time on my own to sit with the material and I did not want to talk to him about the scenes or his decisions. I wanted to bring my own experience with the material without talking to him about it and I made mistakes that would not have happened if we had done it together. But mistakes are not bad to make. They are not necessarily mistakes as they open up for new ideas on how to make it better. So I did a first pass, which was 3 hours and 45 minutes and then I invited Darius into the process and we worked together on it from then on.

What was it like working with sound designer Nicolas Becker?

Nicolas and I have never met. We have only been on calls, Zoom and Skype. Darius wanted for us to create a world where you get into the head of the main character. The audience should feel and hear what it means to become deaf. So they had already talked about how to do it, but for me, it is more about using sound as a storytelling tool, which is all about information. What kind of information do we want to give you as an audience? It is extremely powerful with sound because it is a physical thing. You feel it. Suddenly taking away a sense is something that you really feel in your stomach – it creates a different way of being disoriented and frustrated with your main character. Little by little, we found the language of how to use sound in the scenes as an internal and external source. That was created from a storytelling perspective. Nicolas could create these sounds and then we tried to develop a language in the edit and stick with those rules. So you and I almost create like a contract. So if we see a certain image, we are aware that it is an internal perspective. Little by little, we discovered that the audience should not be ahead of the character and know more than him – because that means that the audience would not see it from the first perspective. So it was extremely difficult to simplify all the time and peel off all these layers of information – when you can never know more than your main character, Ruben. That is until the middle of the film, where a boy awakens a sense in him and he almost becomes a drummer again, and from that point, he knows sign language and is ahead of you. We used subtitles for this. So that was an idea, but it is different to find a language where this idea works and we spent a lot of time on that. But when we found it, we stuck to the rule and then it was a gift.

You have talked about how the title Sound of Metal is reflected in three acts. Please explain, and how did this affect the editing process?

You can see the film as a three acts structure and what is interesting. Darius would work with the idea that the first part was the “sound,” and then we would work with the middle section with the deaf community as “off,” and him trying to find out who he is. Then, the last part would be “metal,” where you activate the cochlear.

Talk about the differences between editing a film like Sound of Metal and your earlier film, Land. Is there a different approach?

There is definitely a different approach because, on Land, we were two editors working with Robin. I never met Robin. We were only on Skype or Zoom, but I really liked working with her. Land is a more traditional way of telling the story whereas Sound of Metal is more a sonic experience. The difference was that I was with Darius most of the time after the first assembly and he would always challenge me to open my toolbox and try different things. So we would experiment a lot. It is difficult to find that simplicity in a story. I had to try to keep it a sonic experience so that the editing would not show as much. You should not be aware of the edits. It makes it interesting that I get a nomination for an Oscar because normally I have done a lot of films, which are more editorially “showy,” where you watch montages that you remember. But with Sound of Metal, you should feel that you were in the head of Ruben – it should be the sound that stands out. But that is difficult because you need to simplify the rest of the story. You have to feel like you are almost in Ruben’s head.

How does the editing enhance our understanding of Riz Ahmed’s character?

The editing allows you to go on Ruben’s journey, so the idea is that you see and feel the same things that he does, and by going through what he is going through and not knowing what is going on, you become Ruben and feel the same frustration, anger and disorientation and therefore, you sympathize a lot more with him. That was intentional from the first meeting. He wanted to make a film where the deaf are in on it and you as a “normal” hearing person would feel left out. That is very beautiful, and I think we achieved it.

Can you remove yourself from the process and watch the film from a different perspective?

Probably not. But our job is to be able to see things multiple times and try to see it as if it is the first time you meet the material. That is by looking at different things at certain times. The first time, I look at the structure and does the material make sense? Are there things in the structure that create issues? And then you start working with the structure and you try to find the best way to tell the story. Afterward, you start working with the character work, which are also the emotions. So the first pass can be an interesting film but it lacks all the emotions. It is very flat. After the character work, you start to work on the perspectives – like with Sound of Metal, you work with the sound perspectives. How do you go in and out of scenes? So, little by little, you create the language of the film. The film opens up and tells me how it wants to be told, and that has to do with how the actors move together with the DP and the director. It is a symbiotic way of doing things.

Talk about going from making Danish films to making international films – is there a difference?

Working on international films and Danish films is almost the same for me. I have been trying to work on films where the director is also the producer, so they are attached to the film in a different way. I have never tried a studio film. So it is very similar to the Danish way of making films. It is a collaboration between everyone. That I find is the same. The most important thing about a project for me is the journey with the people I do it with and that we are at least trying to see if we can do something in a slightly different way and raise the bar every time. I felt like I needed to get out of my own comfort zone working on Danish films, and I wanted to travel and get out into the world and meet interesting people. That was also to test my own talent and to see what is actually possible.

What do you think is the advantage of coming from Denmark?

We have a system in Denmark, which is extremely powerful. We have a government-funded film school where you can develop your craft for four years and you can focus on that craft as editor, sound editor, director, etc. You do it with six other students, and you develop a language with them, because you look at the same material and work on the same scenes, but you see that the stories have been told in completely different ways because people put things together in a very different way. It shows you have different energy and eyes that you bring to the table. Little by little, you learn the tricks of how to approach things. You develop a language where you can talk about structure and character work etc. We learn to talk about it and we learn to express why we want to go in a certain direction. It taught me that we have something special for sure in Denmark. We have extremely good editors and storytellers there. If you look at the past 20 years, you really see something extraordinary, and that is because of how the business works. We try to help each other and look at each other’s work all the time. A lot of people don’t know what editors do, which is a shame because we need young people to be interested and create more talent and challenge each other.

Talk about being recognized at several major awards events – you won a BAFTA and now you are nominated for an Oscar – is this significant for you?

It is not something that you dream of because we can dream of creating a Best Foreign Language Film and I tried that with A Royal Affair. It is a great feeling, but it is not about my craft as such. I am extremely grateful and very surprised. But it is something that I share with all the editors. It is the first time for a Danish editor – it never happened before. So I am just really grateful.