Sundance Film Festival

Noise premieres in the World Dramatic competition at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. Below are comments from the film’s cinematographer László Baranyai.

“As soon as I read the script, I knew that Noise would be a film that was different from anything else being produced in Australia; a film about all of us, our lives and our feelings. Coming from East Europe where filmmaking is far more political and social in its intentions, I felt privileged to be trusted with this project. I knew from the beginning that this was the kind of film I have always wanted to make.

“[Director Matt Saville] and I have very similar taste in films and creative ideals. We both love the adrenalin rush of risk taking and are always seeking new opportunities. I was fortunate to work with him on Roy Höllsdotter Live and all the while Noise was in the back of our minds.

“Matt knew long before production started that the visual style of Noise had to be driven by the emotional aspects of the film. The colours, the lighting, the camera movement, the framing were all designed to follow and explain the emotional state of the characters. Despite all the common action-film elements in the script; a mass murder on a train, a fight in a dark alley, a shoot out between cop and criminal, Matt never intended to imitate the clichéd action movie model. The imperfections of the characters were of the greatest interest - the clumsiness of their actions, the realistic look of their surroundings but most importantly their state of mind. It is this focus that makes Noise compelling to watch, an involving emotional journey rather than an action thriller.

“With all of this in mind, we often committed ourselves to certain irrevocable decisions on set that were driven by the actors‘ performances. The staging of the scenes, the coverage, use of the cinemascope widescreen format were all designed to psychologically involve the audience.

“To achieve the film‘s dark and monochromatic tone we used mixed or incorrect colour-temperatures with few primary colours. The tone changed as the drama developed but we always kept the widest possible tonal range in the surroundings. We used was 200T and 500T film stocks without any special processing or modification in the handling of the negative as we were determined to keep the analogue filmic look, despite the latest developments in digital technology. Noise was shot on super 35mm format to achieve the final 2.40 Cinemascope aspect ratio.”

-Digital Intermediate was performed at Melbourne, Australia’s Cinevex.

Short Synopsis of Noise

A young cop, Graham McGahan, suffers chronic, idiopathic tinnitus. After a mass murder on a suburban train, McGahan is pitched into the chaos that follows this tragic event. He struggles to clear the screaming in his head while the community around him deals with the crime and its aftermath.