Composer Volker Bertelmann and editor Kirk Baxter described how they worked together to ratchet up the tension in Kathryn Bigelow’s nuclear thriller A House Of Dynamite.
Watch the interview above.
The duo are both Oscar winners; Bertelmann for All Quiet On The Western Front and Baxter for The Social Network and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
Baxter said that creating a documentary feel was key for the film, which shows the various responses from government officials to a nuclear missile launched at Chicago from an unknown assailant.
“It always felt important to me that we were presenting something factual,” said Baxter. “That it wasn’t a filmic impression of what occurred. There was a documentary precision to how we presented time and information.”
Bertelmann added that this also informed his approach to the score: “With A House Of Dynamite it has a lot of dialogue and it is quite documentary so you don’t want to start with sweeping strings on top of it or with low thriller music. It needs much more undercurrent of danger. It’s hard to achieve with constant music or long themes, so you have to find little vignettes and drop them here and there.”
A House Of Dynamite stars Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, Gabriel Basso, Jared Harris, and Tracy Letts and was released by Netflix.
