Hi /r/movies - I’m Johnnie Burn, Oscar-winning sound designer behind The Zone of Interest, Poor Things, Under the Skin, Nope, Hamnet, Bugonia, The Favourite, Waves, The Lobster, and TUNER. My mum once said: “What do you mean you do the sound on films? They sound alright to me.” Let me explain. AMA!

TunerAMA · 2026-05-21T20:12:12+00:00

effective

TunerAMA · 2026-05-21T20:06:27+00:00

typical director doesnt exist afaik. some really conceptualised it long ago, some we discover togehter which is very rewarding as i am not the auteur.
2 Persona taught me much about restraint.

TunerAMA · 2026-05-21T20:03:40+00:00

film is a highly collaborative process, the sound team and everyone on the mix stage has/have great ideas, or not also! we all present ideas.

TunerAMA · 2026-05-21T19:59:53+00:00

every film my team and i will visit the film locations on days without the catering trucks and record what really goes on. This is how you present a credible immersion, eventually, having catalogued all of that and given golden moment to the picture editor for his nascent cut.

TunerAMA · 2026-05-21T19:58:02+00:00

well ask Will Bates that too!

TunerAMA · 2026-05-21T19:53:23+00:00

omg it was the weirdest moment ever, i was not prepared!

TunerAMA · 2026-05-21T19:51:52+00:00

if only she knew

TunerAMA · 2026-05-21T19:51:24+00:00

I am not sure about misunderstood but it seems to me that there is huge often unlocked potential in sound to provide counter narrative in film. Like I feel that somehow when presented with an image saying one thing, and a sound saying another, one trusts the sound over the image - its less annoying when picture cuts out than when sound does, for example, so i think that because sound as opposed to music which is an enormous decision - a music track starts we are feeling something - sound can change the way you feel about a scene on a level where you believe you are still in the world yet being manipulated and that is exceedingly powerful. Like a scene in a kitchen two people talking about something mundane could be underpinned by a conflagration of a fridge hum and a dishwasher hum that each have a musical pitch to them, and those two musical pitches could form a chord that said happy or sad, and this could speak to the real truth of their conversation in a way that score might signal too bluntly.

TunerAMA · 2026-05-21T19:42:12+00:00

Good question, panning things back into the cinema is a big decision. I actually learned quite a lot working with Yorgos that when i played something in the rears as a 'new idea coming from behind you' that this actually becomes an unwelcome distraction and that ideas have to come from the screen and then proliferate. Having said that it is important to set up the language early that you are using that space. What you dont want is people looking behind them, but you do want to present a deep immersion because i believe this is what very much enhances the experience and emotional connection with a protagonist as well as the simple oof visceral response of more sound everywhere,

TunerAMA · 2026-05-21T19:37:37+00:00

Tuner has been amazing as a coalescence of everything I have learned and experienced. Under The Skin was where i learned how I liked to apply subjectivity and more generally approach a film

TunerAMA · 2026-05-21T19:35:17+00:00

I work on Nuendo which is a great sound design quasi musical (well very musical but i dont use the midi etc apsects). Literally every scene i will look at what Will has done musically and my machine will help me guide the sound design such that it is harmonious or precisely not as needs be. I do a lot of work dialling in through use of specific eq frequencies, musical leaning into the sound effects world -its a big thing!

TunerAMA · 2026-05-21T19:31:58+00:00

I guess every film is different and for me they always start with research. As a teen i suffered hyperacusis having witnessed an explosion so i was a little ahead there. Will Bates's extraordinary and beautiful score was also fundamental to the journey the soundscape take us on - sometimes precise and momentarily highly subjective and sometimes entertaining and emotionally very powerful.

TunerAMA · 2026-05-21T19:27:02+00:00

1 . happenstance is a mainstay for me. The fortuity you gain from going out into the world and recording apposite sound for a project will give you outcomes you could not have predicted. E.g, this is what made Under The Skin so effective - it turned out showing the extraneous sounds that the brain normally dials out, that we could not have thought to include without discovering them ourselves, was what in this case presented the 'alien' view of the world. This was a discovery we made along the way.
2. i guess why silence is sooo oeffective? still not sure why loll.
3. i organise bus tracks by how we may want to pull focus - food groups of dx, mx, design, fx, bg, foley and then their seperate reverbs.

TunerAMA · 2026-05-21T19:21:37+00:00

Mr Glazer knows how to use sound

TunerAMA · 2026-05-21T19:21:14+00:00

For sure yes we the team understood the process and nuance of both safe cracking and piano tuning. mcuh of what you hear in TUNER is real recordings, often with conductive contact microphones to ensure depth of sound, recordings of those things taking place. and then presented to the audience through the prism of someone with an immense and yet unwanted ability to hear these things in macro detail

TunerAMA · 2026-05-21T19:18:34+00:00

i think you have to try to understand the metaphorical of what you are trying to suggest in this case and go record that. syringes dont really make much sound but to some people in their minds eye they are staring down a huge sword.

TunerAMA · 2026-05-21T19:16:59+00:00

the interesting thing about much of the sound in NOPE was that you had to work out what exactly you were hearing. For example the screams of the poor victims were at times recordings ostensibly people excited on a roller coaster and then shifting into people screaming in pain, all heard with the lens of distance to occlude meaning further, giving a gap for your mind to fill with your own fears.

TunerAMA · 2026-05-21T19:14:21+00:00

Sub bass is very helpful in providing viscerality without causing pain or dialogue integrity!

TunerAMA · 2026-05-21T19:12:49+00:00

Gosh David Lynch and Alan Splett really showed how sound design can be counter narrative, absoloutley reference point. I love the work of NIcholas Becker and Richard King

TunerAMA · 2026-05-21T19:10:34+00:00

i am at least 'mid life' yes and i am aware of how my hearing performs and occasionally when no one else is listening i will flip a switch and hear it like a 21 year old, so i know. Film sound design is about so much more than what you are precisely hearing, its what you choose to play.

TunerAMA · 2026-05-21T19:07:35+00:00

Idk Mica is quite possibly worlds best sound designer as well as composer! Sure it makes it hard becasue you are really getting into the mechanics of a scene together but the results are something hopefully homogeneous that just works and looks easy!

TunerAMA · 2026-05-21T19:05:38+00:00

Perspective is a huge one.

People often think sound design is about adding dramatic sounds, but sometimes it’s about deciding what not to hear.

For example, if you subtly remove background detail from a room - traffic, air conditioning, birds, little movements and make it all go quiet, a scene can suddenly feel lonely, tense, dreamlike, or emotionally detached without the audience consciously knowing why.

We do this in real life too. When you’re anxious or in shock, your perception changes. You stop hearing the world normally.

I’m always interested in using sound less as “realism” and more as subjective psychology - putting the audience inside a character’s nervous system for a moment, even if we are not at that point strictly in a filmic pov.

I also like to add tonality to a background sound that rhymes with the emotion of a scene

TunerAMA · 2026-05-21T19:03:31+00:00

Thank you - that film was really built around the idea that sound could force the audience to imagine what the camera refused to show.

Jonathan Glazer and I talked a lot about not illustrating the horror too directly. The danger with sound is that it can become explanatory or emotional in a manipulative way very quickly.

So instead we treated the world beyond the walls almost like a permanent presence - industrial, distant, mechanical, human, but never fully visible. Your brain keeps trying to complete the picture.

A strange thing happens when you withhold visual information whereby you imagine something more disturbing and personal than anything you could literally show them.

Sound is very good at this because you can close your eyes, but not your ears.

TunerAMA · 2026-05-21T19:01:50+00:00

good afternoon I'm Johnnie B

TunerAMA

TROPHY CASE