There has been a rising number of music biopics over the last several years, including Elvis and Bohemian Rhapsody. Yet, A Complete Unknown, James Mangold’s Bob Dylan biopic starring Timothée Chalamet, has a completely different feel to it. Something more unique and something more raw. One of the reasons for that distinct tone is veteran sound-mixer Tod Maitland, who is currently nominated for the Academy Award for Best Sound, marking his sixth nomination, after being recognized for Born on the Fourth of July, JFK, Seabiscuit, Joker, and West Side Story. He has also won a BAFTA award for his work in JFK.
Alongside A Complete Unknown’s nomination for sound, the film received seven additional nominations: Best Picture, Best Director for Mangold, Best Actor for Chalamet, Best Supporting Actor for Edward Norton, Best Supporting Actress for Monica Barbaro, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Costume Design. Maitland’s work also earned him a nomination at the Association of Motion Picture Sound Awards as well as a nomination at the CAS (Cinema Audio Society) Awards, where Maitland will also be awarded the 2025 Career Achievement Award, which will be presented to him by Oliver Stone.
Maitland has worked on music-based films before, such as The Greatest Showman, but A Complete Unknown marked one of the biggest and most rewarding challenges of his career. We were fortunate enough to sit down and talk with Maitland about his work on the film, as he explained to us what sets this movie’s sound apart from other music-based films. “We did it entirely live, no playback track, no click track, no earwigs.” Maitland compared the process to recording both an album and a “really complicated movie” at the same time.
Maitland selected and dissected four key scenes from A Complete Unknown for us, breaking down how the sound was recorded in each one.
‘A Complete Unknown’ Used 42 Different Practical Period Microphones

To accurately capture the quality of microphones in the early-to-mid 60s, Maitland revealed that the film used over 42 different practical period microphones to capture the sound and make it “as real and raw and natural as possible.”

“So we sourced them out, we tested them, we have them in chronological order, and we wanted to use different microphones in each different venue to create a little bit of different texture, sound texture in each, in each venue. So for any, anytime you see a microphone like that, I’m playing it, obviously recording those microphones, and I’m feeding those into a speaker, one, a monitor speaker for the actor on stage, so they can hear themselves.”

Maitland broke down the scene in the film where we first see Monica Barbaro’s Joan Baez, as she performs “House of the Rising Son,” and described the complex set-up in recording the sound and further compared the scene to filming a concert.

“I have Joan wired with the lavalier. And I also have a boom over her at the same time, so that when she pushes that microphone away, so you hear her through the PA system and singing normally as she would be up, and then she pushes the microphone away and goes acapella. So now you hear a totally different sound with her.And then after she exits the crowd, the crowd applauds, and then the emcee goes out, he again is back over the amplified system again. And then you have that little piece of dialogue with Pete, Joan, and Bob. And all of that is recorded as a normal film sound would be.”

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‘A Complete Unknown’ Will Hit the High Notes on Digital Later This Month

Like a rolling stone.

Timothèe Chalamet Wore a Mic in His Hair While Performing “Masters of War”

Image via Searchlight Pictures

One of the most amusing stories Maitland told us happened while filming the scene where Joan walks down a city street and enters a club as Bob performs “Masters of War.” Maitland noticed that Chalamet held the body of the guitar high up on his body, which would block the Lavalier microphone, so instead, a microphone would have to be placed somewhere else.

“So I talked to Timmy early on and said, the only way I’m going to be able to do this is to mic you in your hair. And he was like, are you serious? And I’m like, yes. And then I had to finesse that with the hair department, you know, as you can imagine. And I think 14 times we went to that hair mic to do it. And it worked brilliantly because if you think about it, it’s like right here, aiming straight down, so going over his mouth, down towards the guitar.”

Maitland then broke down a scene in the film where we see Bob performing “Highway 61 Revisited” in a recording studio. The set had to be built from the ground up, and it had to be ensured that all the equipment actually worked. Maitland called the experience “an amazing challenge and rewarding.”

“….having communication between the control room and the live room, having everything in the live room wired, every instrument, everything except for the drums. The drums we muted because drums can really kill you with it and just staying off beat like that. But just, again, another area where you get, you know, the feeling of these different level layers of sound, you know, you have the inside, you have inside the control room sound, you have inside the live room sound, you have him talking before he goes, before they start playing.”

The Challenges of Balancing Bob and Joan’s Voices

The fourth and final scene Maitland analyzed for us takes place during the fateful Newport Folk Festival, as Joan and Bob perform “It Ain’t Me” together. The scene required that Chalamet and Barbaro share a microphone, and since Bob’s voice is much more powerful than Joan’s, they had to play around with the positioning.

“So if they were equal distance, you would hear mainly just Bob. So we played with their distances to find really what worked perfectly to be able to get a really good duet performance.”

Maitland went back and looked at the actual footage of Bob and Joan’s performance at the Newport Festival and found that they were the same distance from the microphone.

“.. it’s a lot about finding the balance and how it all works. And the same thing with the monitor mixers that monitor speakers that were going to Bob and Joan. If I played those too loud, I would hear them coming through their microphones. So you kind of just work through the balances and figure out which ones are going to be best. And then I have all these different tracks and I make a lot of notes and I send them to post-production. So then post-production can really pull them apart later on and, and utilize whichever one they want a little bit more.”

A Complete Unknown is still playing in theaters and will be available to purchase and rent on demand on Tuesday, February 25.

A Complete Unknown

Release Date

December 25, 2024

Runtime

140 minutes