"Sound of Metal": who is Nicolas Becker, the French sound genius rewarded at the Oscars

The film Sound of Metal, by Darius Marder, with Riz Ahmed, is released this Wednesday in French theaters.He earned an Oscar in French Nicolas Becker last April.They then entrusted us with his first impressions.

"It was a bit dematerialized, I was on the rooftop of Canal+, in the cold, and I was talking about a camera, so it was all a little abstract."Nicolas Becker, one of the three French people oscored last night, was not entitled to a "real" Oscar ceremony in Los Angeles, but his Oscar, for the sound of the film by Darius Marder, Sound of Metal, n 'is no less real.

This Oscar crowns thirty years of a crazy career, enamelled with films that have marked the cinema.He was thus a soundproofer on the hatred of Mathieu Kassovitz, in 1995 - a film which made him "grow professionally".He also worked on the pianist, of Roman Polanski, in 2002. Then on Gravity d'Alfonso Cuarón in 2013 and first contact, by Denis Villeneuve, in 2016. "I am going from afar", he jokes, "becauseThat when I started, I did the sound effect on the French version of the Fires of Love. "

"A sound activist"

Nicolas Becker defends the idea of a real integration of sound, from the genesis of the film: "Since I have been supervisor, I have been trying to integrate the sound practice when writing the script", he explainsThus.He therefore delighted that the assembly was also rewarded for an Oscar, and welcomed the talent of Darius Marder, of which it is the first film.

Whoever worked with Manoel de Oliveira, Alain Resnais and Roman Polanski, assures to find, in the American director, this vision, an "extraordinary understanding of work, an understanding of all positions", but also "real writing of cinema".

"The physical feeling of being at a concert"

From Sound of Metal, the story of a metal musician, embodied by Riz Ahmed, who is gradually becoming deaf, Nicolas Becker retains "a very strong human experience, an adventure".

The film, brought for many years by Darius Marder, was a strong experience for the whole team.Rice Ahmed had to learn and practice battery, but also sign language.

Some scenes were particularly difficult to sound.The first is a concert scene.

Transcribing with as much accuracy as possible, the moment when the hero loses the hearing and the one when he wears cochlear implants was also "very complicated"."We had to produce this sound, and I wanted it to be a sound that we never heard before, that there was no reference."

It remains for the spectator to discover this film in good conditions.Sound of Metal, a real sound experience, was released last December in the United States.But, deplores Nicolas Becker, few people saw him on the big screen."I can't wait for people to go there to be able to feel that," he concludes.