MOVIEMAKER.COM 57PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF IFC FILMS
MovieMaker Magazine: How did you make
scenes of brutal violence resonate with the
sound mix?Pavel Rejholec: The Painted Bird is quite
special in the way in which the story is
told. Lots of things are not shown visually,
they are left to the hearing and imagina-
tion of the audience. This unusual free-
dom allowed me and my team to be quite
creative and imaginative in thinking how
certain actions might sound and still allow
them to be imagined by the audience. As
a sense, hearing is much more emotional
than vision, and thanks to that feature, you
can be touched just by hearing a certain
sound. You can almost physically feel it, if
it is done right. And that was what we tried
to achieve.Václav Marhoul: My aim was not to show
visually explicit violence, the sort that is
now so common in all films. In my case, in
the individual shots, basically everything
is just suggested. Each viewer has, without
exception, the possibility of following the
path of their own imagination, keeping each
scene in their head to play it out, project it,
fill it out in imagination. And precisely for
this reason, the sound in these scenes is es-
sential, because it completes or even fills theSTELLAN SKARSGÅRD AS HANS AND
PETR KOTLÁR AS “A BOY” IN THE PAINTED BIRD.THE SOUND DESIGN ISN’T THE ONLY STANDOUT
ELEMENT OF THE PAINTED BIRD, LENSED ON
BEAUTIFUL 35MM BLACK AND WHITESPRING 2020generally lacking visual impression.MM: How did you make the movie’s natural
landscape sound so vivid and alive?Rejholec: When we talked with Václav about
the sound, we came up with the idea that
we would like to create an immersive
world of sound, which would be far bigger
than what you see on the screen. Also, this
scarcity of dialogue and the nonexistent
score created a kind of space that normally
doesn’t exist in a usual movie. Ambiences
and sound effects were specifically designed
and mixed to create a deep sense of space
around the viewer. The feeling we wanted
to achieve was that there is a real world
around the audience and what is on the
screen is just a small part of it.Marhoul: We originally assumed that we
would work primarily with contact sound—
that is the sound recorded directly during
shooting. And not only with the sound
recorded for each take, image, or entire
scene, but also the sounds emitted by
nature itself. These were filmed every day
separately, off from the scene. And precisely
these sounds became a kind of guide, an
inspiration leading to our final creation of
a unique, self-contained but entirely truth-
ful world, which breathes and lives its own
life, which is really so truly indifferent to
human fate.MM: What post-production sound work
went into making American actors like
Harvey Keitel and Barry Pepper soundauthentic when they’re delivering lines
in the Interslavic language?Marhoul: Any Slavic language has
an enormous difference from all other
languages, whether Germanic, Romance,
or Anglo-Saxon. This difference is caused
quite strikingly by the different use of
consonants and vowels. Putting it simply,
the movement of the lips, breathing,
position of the tongue and vocal cords
are completely different. Also, the Slavic
languages use soft and hard sibilants.
For actors who didn’t grow up in one of
these languages, this was really a tough
nut to crack, because the screenplay and
I myself insisted that everyone speak
this Interslavic dialect. If I’d let them act
in English, thanks to the planned post-
synchronization, even the lip movement
would be so different that “embarrassing”
entirely fails to describe it.
Likewise, it was evident that even the actors
themselves would not, because of all these
factors, have been able to make even their
own post-synchronization work. It is worth
mentioning that Julian Sands was able to
enunciate several sentences so well that you
couldn’t believe what you’d heard. Nonetheless,
in the final process we selected Czech actors
whose voice coloration best matched the
original, and they spoke all the necessary
dialogues for the individual characters. MMMovie release dates are in flux lately, so
please check MovieMaker.com for updates
on when The Painted Bird will be released.“^
THE FEELING WE WANTED
TO ACHIEVE WAS THAT
THERE IS A REAL WORLD
AROUND THE AUDIENCE
AND WHAT IS ON THE
SCREEN IS JUST A SMALL
PART OF IT.
”
—PAVEL REJHOLEC,
SOUND SUPERVISOR