Watching Warfare makes you feel like you’re in combat. It’s thanks to this underrated element

A platoon of American soldiers sits quietly in an Iraqi apartment. Birds tweet peacefully outside, a pen cap clicks, radios intermittently babble directives. Then, all of a sudden, the harsh crack of a grenade envelops the room.

This deafening sound sets everything off in Warfare, A24’s hyperrealistic film set during the Iraq War. Developed from the memories of real-life navy SEALs, it depicts the visceral, concussive sound of war as much as the horrifying look of it – snapping bullets, booming IEDs, blood-curdling screams.

“You don’t only hear sound. You feel it,” says Glenn Freemantle, Warfare’s Academy Award-winning sound designer. “It completely transforms cinema. You can just listen to a film and get everything from it. Whereas, if you watch a film without sound, you miss a lot.”

In Warfare, Freemantle says, sound directs focus as much as the camera lens. Every sound, whether it’s dust settling or a passing jet plane, is intentionally woven into each scene.

Working alongside co-director Ray Mendoza, who was one of the soldiers at the real-life mission depicted in the film, Freemantle recreated the sounds of combat as accurately as possible. This involved travelling to gun ranges in the Czech Republic to record the sound of live ammunition and sonic booms (when bullets travel faster than the speed of sound).

“We needed to make it as real as it could be,” he says. “There’s no music, no other source guiding your emotions other than these sounds. It’s minutely detailed to the nth degree to create a sense at each moment – to make you uncomfortable, to make you scared.”

Sound has been imperative to many of the films Freemantle has worked on, including Civil War, which also depicts the sounds of combat, Slumdog Millionaire, with its bustling Mumbai streets, and all the Paddington films, which required sonically grounding the animated bear in our reality.

But despite how vital sound is in film, Freemantle says cinemas are increasingly failing to play movies at the correct volume.

“I took my granddaughter to see Wonka, which I worked on, and was so upset. I knew it was more vibrant than what they heard. It was just too quiet ... Give it the right sound, and everyone will love it.”

Glenn Freemantle has designed the sound for films like Civil War, Slumdog Millionaire, Paddington and Gravity.Credit: Hannah Couzen

Warfare joins a long list of titles famous for their innovative use of sound. Here are just a few.

Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (1977)

Sound designer Ben Burtt revolutionised sci-fi sound design by incorporating “found sounds” (natural sounds recorded in the real world).

For example, the blasters were developed from the twang of a radio tower guy wire, and the light sabres were a combination of a film projector and broken television that were re-recorded by a swinging microphone. Meanwhile, Darth Vader’s breathing was a result of a microphone inside a scuba regulator.

Instead of sounding electronic and artificial, A New Hope seemed real and organic, thus arguably creating the most immersive sci-fi film of its time.

Apocalypse Now (1979)

Walter Murch is largely credited with establishing the official role of “sound designer” in film. His work on the war epic was the first to fully use stereo surround sound, which ultimately paved the way for future 5.1 surround-sound systems.

The most impressive element of Murch’s work, however, was his use of sound to represent the lead character’s deteriorating mental state, blending mundane objects like a ceiling fan with the thumping sounds of helicopters.

Gravity (2013)

Mimicking the sound of space is no easy feat, but Freemantle captured it so effectively in Gravity that he won an Academy Award for it in 2014. There’s total silence in space because sound can’t travel through the air. Freemantle therefore decided to rely on vibrations and touch as the primary source of sound transmission. Using hydrophones and contact microphones with everyday objects like guitar strings, he recorded sounds that were then manipulated to create a sense of the characters’ surroundings.

Ex Machina (2014)

This sci-fi thriller was another one of Freemantle’s masterpieces. Instead of using actual mechanical objects to create the sounds of the android, he used gyros and other non-mechanical devices, including crystal bowls wobbling on piano keys.

Contact microphones and hydrophones were also used to record under oil and water, producing tracks that eventually overlaid the android’s movements. This sounded more believable and subtle compared with cliché robotic twangs.

Dunkirk (2017)

The relentless ticking clock in Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, which was overseen by sound editor Richard King, created a physical sense of foreboding throughout the film.

Elsewhere, its repeated use of the Shepard tone – an auditory illusion that makes a sound seem to ascend or descend in pitch indefinitely – has also become known as one of the most effective ways of depicting desperation and increasing anxiety on-screen.

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