Richard King's Sound Design

The 2017 World War II thriller about the evacuation of British and Allied troops from Dunkirk beach.
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I found some very interesting videos of the Stuka Siren recording sessions we also read about earlier. And I also thought this thread should just exist lol.

Four videos:



The guy who posted them also has a website (https://www.ericpottersound.com/). There is some information about the recordings there:
THE STUKA SIRENS OF DUNKIRK

my favorite sound effect that i recorded for Dunkirk came about as Richard King had been experimenting with sirens at home, striving to recreate the classic, terrifying dive-bombing siren sound of the German Stuka planes of WWII. things quickly got too loud for the neighborhood, so he declared it a field recording mission, and we took off for one of my favorite desert recording areas. after a day of experimenting with different perspectives, we felt the need to make it sound more complex and chaotic. on this following session, we focused on using various resonators that the siren could physically activate, hoping it would induce a more gnarly, out of control vibration. on the way to our location, i had scoured the desert for junk piles, and found this wonderful 55 gallon drum. Richard also brought a 30 gal. that he had at home, and had been making various mounting struts at home to secure the siren. sometimes we flipped the barrel upside down and put the siren on the 'bottom' which acted like a drum head, as well as putting the siren inside the drum, and i mic'd the drum in a few different places, as well as the siren itself. this was the breakthrough we needed! it really helped take the sound from that of a simple fire engine to a more beastly WWII aircraft , with vibrating fuselage. i also set some remote mics out to catch ambient echoes off of the surrounding hills, further adding to the complexity of the tone. of course the sound from my phone videos below will hardly hint at the full effect of the close mics and Richard's subsequent design and mixing... but i'm not about to post everybody's hard (and proprietary) work on the internet anyway. go hear it in the theaters!

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It sounded so different in the finished film. And man that scream before the Stuka drops its load is scary and loud as hell.

I hope they release a featurette with Richard King like the ones they did with TDKR and Interstellar. I'm really curious to know more about the sound design.

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AhmadAli95 wrote:It sounded so different in the finished film. And man that scream before the Stuka drops its load is scary and loud as hell.

I hope they release a featurette with Richard King like the ones they did with TDKR and Interstellar. I'm really curious to know more about the sound design.
Probably also because the videos were recorded with a phone. I can imagine that siren in the barrel being loud as hell lol

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Of course lol but the guy who posted the videos said King did his magic processing the recordings. I just find it fascinating how he went from what you can hear in the videos to what we heard in the finished film. AMAZING!

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Yep. We knew already, but Richard King is the man. He never disappoints.

I'll never forget that Stuka sound in the beach scene the first time I saw the film. I was completely terrified.

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Sound design/foley never ceases to amaze me!

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It was top notch

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