A House of Dynamite dramatizes the government response to a missile from unknown origin heading towards a U.S. city within 20 minutes. Director Kathryn Bigelow personally asked Volker Bertelmann to compose the score, and he worked with the musicians at George Martin’s AIR Studios to come up with an evocative sound with flutes and other woodwinds.
“I asked them to sing in the instrument and hum while they were playing to get this kind of moaning,” Bertelmann said at Deadline’s Sound & Screen: Film event. “I had the feeling there are creatures somehow under the Earth who are moaning in a way, crying silently about what’s happening on Earth. I was trying to figure out how I could achieve that with woodwinds.”
The AIR staff impressed Bertelmann so much he took some of their equipment home with him to Dusseldorf.
“I really appreciate their knowledge about microphones,” he said. “I nearly bought everything that they have for my own studio because they have such a knowledge about old microphones. I wanted to have the same to record strings in the same way.”
(L-R) Deadline’s Peter White and Volker Bertelmann at Sound & Screen: Film
Netflix‘s A House of Dynamite tells the story from three perspectives: The Situation Room, the Department of Defense and the President (Idris Elba) himself. Bertelmann knew each perspective had to become more intense.
“It is nice to connect the three chapters because they are describing the same thing, but at the same time they have to escalate, get more bold over the time of the film,” he said. “I had the feeling I need very small motifs because you somehow have to squeeze them in between the sentences.”
There is so much dialogue in the film that it leaves little room for music. Fortunately, Bertelmann had experience with minimal scores in Edward Berger’s 2022 All Quiet on the Western Front, which won the composer an Oscar.
“All Quiet had three notes,” Bertelmann said. “This one has four. I’m hoping I get the fifth one and I can write longer themes. It’s very interesting to use small motifs to repeat them and they are quite memorable. It’s not always the long lines that are memorable.”
Check back Monday for the panel video.
