Name: See With Your Ears: Spielberg And Sound Design
Uploaded: 2026-03-06T17:14:26.000Z
Duration: 8 min 34 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

There are a few ways that you can build up tension in a movie scene.

Adverbs of manner

Through camera work, through pacing, and probably most commonly through music.

Adverbs of degree

Like the music you're hearing right now in this incredibly tense scene from Steven Spielberg's 2005 film Munich.

We all know that movies have only two ways into your through your eyes and through your ears.

But if you've ever had the chance to edit a movie, or a short film, or even a small video, it quickly becomes apparent that when you're watching something, these two senses are weirdly interconnected.

The visual side of film gets most of the attention because it's right in front of you, and

it's usually what you remember after a movie is over.

But in many ways, the visuals are simply the face of the operation, while the audio is actually the puppet master, the one that really holds the power.

So what does Spielberg want you to pay attention to here?

These people walking by and this car passing?

That was the sound design I just made for that shot.

Besides being infinitely better, it's easy to notice how the sound really, really affects what you see and from what perspective you see it.

In my version, the shot had an omniscient third person point of view.

In the real version, as soon as the audio starts, you're placed in a perspective.

The first thing you hear is a conversation from street level.

So even though the long lens is fixed on Eric Bana, you know the moment is taking place on the ground.

Then to drive the point home, you hear Daniel Craig singing the Temptations.

And the vocal recording is close, intimate.

Even though you never go inside the car, that's enough to put you there.

Then the car that you're really supposed to pay attention to, the black one, parks, and

the sound of it parking jumps out in the mix.

Just like you wouldn't hear Daniel Craig in that way from where the camera is, you wouldn't hear the car that clearly.

But the sound design picks these things out to tell a specific story.

The point here is that in film, you really do see with your ears more than you think.

Because a key to the power of sound design is its invisibility.

If Dialogue sounds close, then you are close to the person who's speaking it, wherever they are.

My brothers were killed, My papa and my sister were both hanged.

This 4 minute and 50 second scene is without music and almost entirely wordless.

How does Spielberg and legendary sound designer Ben Burtt, who gave the world this, how do they build the tension here?

Well, Bert does it by building a bed of constant noisy city ambience, then singling out and stringing together like beads on a wire, key noises that tell the story.

The background is that Eric Bana and his team are going to assassinate this man in his home by getting him to answer a phone that they've secretly installed a bomb in.

The string of isolated plot sounds goes like the car with the assassins arrives.

The dialogue of the target's wife and especially young daughter.

Then their car pulling away, signaling it's safe to move forward.

Then the coins and rotary phone that will make the call.

The first moment of trouble comes in sound.

Up until now, the isolated noises represent the steps of the plan going smoothly.

The truck passing by represents a break in that chain and a hitch in the plan.

At this point, the ambience outside starts to take on some strange qualities.

There's a high pitched whine like a train stopped stopping on top of everything.

And just like the moving truck blocks the assassin's view, the movers talking keeps them from hearing the daughter's car pull back up to the apartment.

She plays a key part in this scene, so Burt isolates her again, but

And the really incredible thing about this scene is that Burt and Spielberg build the tension not by working toward a great crescendo of noise, but

Once the daughter is up here, the danger can be signaled by a single sound effect.

The important elements have been set up so well by this point that you could follow the rest of the scene without seeing it at all.

The climax of this scene, brilliantly, is silence.

But it's a silence that works so well because it anticipates the.

At this point, the ambience has become really impressionistic and when it comes back in, it has echo and reverb, its hurried footsteps and an anxious siren.

The whole sound universe corresponds in a personal way to the end assassins, to their feelings and their nerves.

So it makes sense that when the final question is asked, it's the sound design that answers, are we on?

I'm not sure what they're doing in film school these days, but

if you have any interest in making movies at all, you should attempt to make a scene like this.

No dialogue, no music, just camera work and sound design.

Once you've finished it, watch the scene back.

But close your eyes and ask yourself, what do your ears see?

Thank you so much for watching and welcome to the first video of 2018.

Just finished my little recharge break over the new year, which was wonderful, and

I'm ready for the marathon that will be this year.

As always, I want every nerdwriter video in 2018 to be an event for you guys.

I want it to be something that really, really stands out in your subscription box.

And I'm going to work very hard to make that happen for you guys.

You can find the link below in the description.

Yeah, drink some coffee out of a Nerdwriter mug.

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See With Your Ears: Spielberg And Sound Design

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