Brendan Devane Talks “The Sound” Filmmaking And Capturing “Real Authentic Climbing”

The horror thriller “The Sound,” directed and written by Brendan Devane,” centers on a group of climers who attempt to clime the Forbidden Wall. Sean’s (Marc Hills) grandfather made an attempt 63 years earlier but that was an ill-fated attempt. Devane talked about “The Sound,” a feature he describes as a cross between “The Thing” and “Free Solo.”  Catch “The Sound” in theaters and VOD June 27th, and Devane’s interview is below!

 

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Question: I’m here with Brendan Devane, the writer and director of “The Sound.” (It’s a) mountain climbing thriller. I will leave it as as vague as possible, but yeah, this was a really cool movie and what got this going. 

Brendan Devane: As a filmmaker you’re always looking for inspiration in places, right?

I’ve got a whole notebook of film ideas and some of them cost $200 million, some of  them cost less. So you’re always looking for inspiration. 

I think just popped in my head about what if the villain existed as a sound wave? And then after watching the great documentary “Free Solo” with Alex Honnold, which I thought was amazing I read a review of that where someone called it the best horror movie they’d ever seen.

It just sparked a little light bulb that (climbing is) scary to a lot of people (who are afraid of) heights. I’m a climber, so heights isn’t particularly scary for me. Maybe if we did like a horror thing on the side of a big wall, it’ll just ratchet up the tension for the film.

So I just married those two ideas. And my elevator pitch was “Free Solo” (meets) “The Thing.” And yeah that’s how kind of the ball started rolling. 

Question: What was it like putting this together and shooting it?

Brendan Devane: We are Las Vegas based and we shot almost all of this in Las Vegas. Alex does live here in Las Vegas. So it made sense to try to bring in, the world’s most visible rock climber to the project. We were very happy that he thought it was cool and was available for it.

As far as the shooting goes – that’s a problem because your regular Hollywood production crew isn’t gonna go anywhere near walls and shoot a thousand feet in the air. Of course SAG isn’t also gonna let you stick their actors a thousand feet in the air.

Question: Unless you’re Tom Cruise.

Brendan Devane: (Cruise) had to start his own insurance company to turn himself on those things. But yeah, unless you’re Tom Cruise, so I basically made two movies at once. One with professional rock climbers and a professional rock climbing crew to go up on these walls safely.

And then with actors and a professional Hollywood style production crew inside. We actually shot on an LED volume stage with the actors. Yeah, and we did the actors inside where we could be all safe and can control the weather and lighting and things like that.

But then we actually spent days, outside at this big wall up in Washington State called Libertyville with professional climbers and professional riggers and stuff, and getting those shots. It was important for me to make sure that people saw real authentic climbing in the film at least, really good drone shots and above shots where people can see that they were a thousand feet in the air. 

Question: What’s it like booking time for The Volume Stage? I just assumed that was like a Disney thing. Nope, we’re only shooting Star Wars is here. 

Brendan Devane: Yeah, it’s difficult. It’s difficult and expensive.

And when I first was in pre-production on the project, I didn’t think that we could shoot in a volume stage. We were gonna shoot outside up in Northern Nevada at this one location. Now putting people up high in the air, there’s ways to cheat camera angles and stuff like that to make them look like they were hiding in the air, but it was gonna be outside.

And then our DP Ryan Galvan mentioned that here in Vegas there is one LED volume stage and we just started talking to them and they cut us a really good deal to shoot it here. So I’m very happy and fortunate that we had a local stage here in Vegas that was willing to work within our budget.

Question: Another thing I noticed I didn’t notice while I was watching, but just afterwards the James Iha (The Smashing Pumpkins) did the music for this. 

Brendan Devane: Yeah. James I’m solid generation XI was at the first Lollapalooza and the second Lollapalooza and all that stuff, and certainly very familiar with The Smashing Pumpkins. And James is a really great guy and has been branching out into scores and soundtracks for TV and some other independent films lately, and he’s a huge “The Thing” fan, which this film was partly inspired by.

And so he was really interested in the project. The original score was composed and performed by James in his studio in LA and there’s some cool grooves in there. So we were very happy to have James with the project. 

Question: Did you just sign off on the score and say “looks good,” or is there any sort of collaboration you get to do along with that? 

Brendan Devane: I’ve got a whole music studio behind me that I do for fun. I used to be a roadie for bands and stuff like that back in my younger days, and so very connected to the music scene as far as working with scores and the talent who does them.

You definitely exchange ideas. We go through what’s called a spotting session where we watch the film together and I’m pointing out parts of just,  “hey, at this particular scene we wanna feel this emotion or this scene.” 

I’m also a big fan of letting talented people do their work and I’m not a talented musician like James. So it’s more about just telling him the feelings and the emotions we want each scene to evoke and then let him use his musical genius to provide that music. 

It is definitely a very collaborative process to get the score together. 

Question: I don’t quite have the release date on this. What I found was the June 27th. Is that when it’s coming out? 

Brendan Devane: Yep. It’ll be in theaters and on VOD the same day. So Apple, Prime Video, Fandango, and it’ll be in 10 or 11 cities around the country.

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Question: Yeah. I also wanna get a movie recommendation from you. 

Brendan Devane:  I would recommend people go back and watch Friday the 13th Part 2. I think it’s the scariest one, and I think it’s the most overlooked out of the whole sequence before, before Jason gets really crazy. And he becomes some (super human) in it. And the kills are like for (comedic effect).

I recommend people go back and watch, I think it was released in 81 or 82. But he’s more of a normal human person. He can be hurt. It’s before his hockey mask, so he just has his pillow over his pillowcase on his head and it’s very scary. So that’s what (I’d recommend)

Question: That’s a really good pick. Friday, the 13th Part Two is the one that seems to be lost in the shuffle for some reason. 

Brendan Devane: It’s ‘cause he doesn’t have his hockey mask on that one. But so I think people overlook that one, but they shouldn’t, don’t sleep on Friday the 13th Part Two.

Yeah. 

Question: Brendan, thanks for joining me and congratulations on “The Sound” and hope it does well.

Brendan Devane: Thank you!

“The Sound” hits theaters and VOD on June 27th.