Billie Mind thinks in sound. They listen to film soundtracks in their free time – not the music, mind, only the sounds – and use the word ‘sound’ 58 times in their interview. So it only seems right that the Berlin-based sound designer and editor would work on Mascha Schilinski’s Sound of Falling. For Mind, artistic expression thrives on cross-pollination of influences, ideas and kindred spirits, and they offer a compelling blueprint for rethinking the often-overlooked creative roles beyond the director and on-screen talent. We discussed their collaborative, cross-departmental process, alongside a fascination with NASA sonifications, lament of lost Berlin spaces – including a long-gone (or is it?) mystery kino – and the process behind capturing the intangible sounds of black holes, stardust, memory and falling.
Congratulations on Sound of Falling. It’s beautiful. How did you get on board with this project?
I came on the project about six months before we started shooting it, when the last versions of the script were still coming in. The editor, Evelyn Rack, and I were reading the final versions and changes while already discussing the working process we were going to have with the director, Mascha Schilinski.
I would love to know more about that process, particularly on a film that’s so textured. One of the main things that struck me was the sound design and its relationship to this story…
Well, it would be good to mention at this point that I’m also the junior editor on the project. So I’m not only working on sound design; I’m also a motion picture editor and I worked closely with Evelyn. We went into the editing process early after shooting, around November 2023, with a first-draft cut. Mascha started to laugh very loudly and said, “Okay, that was a very, very expensive experiment!” The script was great, but it was written in an experimental way. We knew from the beginning it had to be rearranged completely. So we got stuck in early. By the time we started to work on the first cut, I was simultaneously working on the sound. This meant building up the sound libraries we wanted to use. We talked about developing the dramaturgical structure of the sound. We wanted the sound to have its own life in the film and not push or overload the picture, but work together with it. All of us were developing these ideas together.
Still from Mascha Schilinski’s Sound of Falling, image credit: XYZ Films
You mentioned collecting sound; I love the thought of a sound library for this film.
Claudio Demel was doing production sound. He was on set, capturing and working in real time, and would bring the sounds to us. We didn’t do any recording after that because I was using my own libraries to expand on the sounds he captured. I’d be recording a lot myself, testing microphones, listening to all sorts. So I was also using the sounds that were particular to the set, and then changing and developing them. My library grows with time. It was a collaborative way of working. We had certain elements – like water, wind, crickets, flies, pigs – alongside domestic sounds like cluttering, cutlery, water drops. We were trying to find the sounds that were universal. We didn’t close ourselves into specific time periods.
So this was being developed from the recordings you were sent and built from your sound library?
We wanted the sound to have its own life in the film and not push or overload the picture, but work together with it.
Yes. I think my biggest inspiration for those noises – the hums and rushing sounds – was asking myself how memory could sound. I asked how sound memory gets influenced over time, how it feels to look at yourself through the distance of time, through sound. We were discussing, “How would this character look from the distance of a thousand lifetimes, from outside themselves?” The protagonists are being watched, watching the others and watching themselves throughout generations in the film. So I was figuring out, how do we develop the sound with this feeling without manipulating the audience? Because that was also a big point, and that is, for me as an artist, important – to not manipulate the emotion of the audience but let them feel it and connect it to their own memory.
I think that’s one of the strengths of it; there’s not an overkill of retro.
You know, the interesting thing about the script was that there were actually ideas written in about the sound of the story. It doesn’t mean that they were the final sounds used, but when the sound is written, you can push your imagination into discussion with the director. One particularly interesting part was this feeling of sound emerging. There’s a moment where we completely cut and don’t have a single sound at all. We did something that you don’t do in the cinema: have absolute silence. It’s a scene with the character Angelica. She’s lying on the field as a tractor moves towards her. That cut is incredible, probably my favourite of the film. It’s just silent, no sound, just nothing, which is as powerful as sound. The silence is swallowing.
We did something that you don’t do in the cinema: have absolute silence.
Sometimes, I would go back to researching, because we didn’t only use natural sounds. I was completely haunted after one chat with Mascha, which is when I started to look into sonifications. Sonification is data that NASA and ESA are picking up from space and translating into sound. I listened to it for hours and hours. There was a question about how the black holes in the film would sound, how the stardust would sound, how much does sound sound like memory? Those NASA sonifications inspired and helped create this.
How did you get into the world of film, both as an editor and sound designer?
That’s a big one! Film was generally not my plan. I was coming from sound, and before that, I was coming from writing. I wrote short science fiction stories when I was younger, then I started doing sound work alongside DJing and producing. I went to London in 2006 to study sound. It was more music production, but certain elements of the course were geared towards sound in film. It was through this idea, alongside the course encouraging us to move about in our craft and not be so stuck in one role, that I came back to Berlin. But this is not particularly an outlook that will land you in the film industry. It was tough at first, being back in Germany. I was working as a sound engineer at multiple venues and started to look for little projects like documentary films that friends of mine were doing, while continuing to do recordings, mixing… whatever I could, basically. I started to be on more ‘professional projects’ around 2014, I think.
It’s funny where we end up, and where we come from as artists.
When I finished high school, I actually wanted to become an astrophysicist!
And now you’re using NASA sounds in the film…
Yeah, full circle! And I wouldn’t say I’m coming solely from sound; I’m editing too. Away from this picture, I’m directing and writing too, and I have my background in sound and music separate from film. So I respect everything. I know what amazing crafts they all are. They’re just different parts of the same art. It’s always, always about teamwork. And I wanted to say that it was only possible for this film to exist because of all those heads of departments, those unbelievable artists; they were working for the same goal, this vision of how to create a film. It was lots of different artists coming together to find the connection to Mascha’s story – to want to tell it and for it to be told by the right people. The production designer, Cosima Vellenzer, she’s amazing. Evelyn Rack, the editor: amazing. Fabian Gamper, our DP, is great. Mascha, she’s a very special director, one who has that vision and finds the people who make it possible with her. And that’s quite rare, you know. I want these kinds of people around me to make films, instead of, you know, a more industrial approach.
Yes, I read you mentioning being ‘project-based’ in your approach.
Yeah. I mean, every film is different. So I would say that every project needs its own approach. I would also say, in this very young art form (for film is only approximately 130 years old), there are a lot of drawers that people like to use because those are the ones that are known to open. I like open-minded colleagues who approach each project differently, with the material telling you how it needs to be approached. I like not keeping the same drawers open; I like to open different ones.
That’s a nice analogy.
Sound is always like this, especially in Germany. I find it’s treated like an afterthought, so everything is locked, and then we go to the sound in the studio, after the fact.
Un-imaginative?
The question about how the black holes in the film would sound, how the stardust would sound ; how much does sound sound like memory? Those NASA sonifications inspired and helped create this.
Exactly. And the approach to sound isn’t there. I’d say we need another culture for it generally in cinema, especially German cinema. In my opinion, somewhere like the UK has a more diversified approach to sound in film. Sometimes they have sound and editing happening at the same time. So it’s possible to take a different approach. You have to be open to change, and if you have three heads of departments from the beginning looking at something (as was the case with Sound of Falling), that’s so different to just getting notes for what to put under the picture after it’s locked. The latter and more common approach is usually where misunderstanding between director and sound design can happen. Usually, a budget is tight, there’s no time – sometimes four to eight weeks – and it’s mission impossible for the sound designer. You can put sounds in, but you can’t make art with it. To do that, you have to approach it as being at one with the story, as an element as striking as the picture itself, and as important. If you switch off the sound, watch what you get. Switch off the picture, you still have the sound. They need each other.
Were you listening to anything else when you were making the film? Or were you locked into the sounds you were developing?
I’m listening a lot, but I’m fixated on the world of the project. Sometimes when I went home, I’d put on my favourite soundtrack, but I don’t think it influenced me directly. I listen to a lot of film sound, so not music or soundtracks: sound. Or an experimental sound that has nothing to do with film but helps me think. I’ll be like, “Okay, if I take this 60 Hz and mix it up, it could be useful for my project. That would work!” I like asking how we process fragments of sound within the body. How does it hit you in the stomach? I’m searching for certain reactions, to make it feel like that through the sound experience.
Do you have any artistic influences that have stuck with you?
There are so many! I love Mica Levi. They’re out of this world, whether singular sound elements or whole pieces. I find it inspiring, deep and dark – something that goes under the skin. I have a huge record collection. There’s no one kind of music in particular, just things that touch me, for instance, old stuff that I carry with me through phases of life. I grew up with Sepultura and heavy metal; there are some brilliant pieces I would still go back to. There was grunge, hip hop. When I look back at my records, going through to electronic and dance, I’d still pick them up and find something new through all phases of my life. From the start, film music was special to me. My first tape was the score for Twin Peaks. I still have it and love it, and I still go back to those songs.
RIP Angelo and David! What about Berlin’s Kino scene? Any favourite places or memories?
We were trying to use sounds that were universal. We didn’t close ourselves into specific time periods.
Berlin is a special place. In the late 90s, all the parties were organised in cellars, when it was still possible before the huge clubbing culture took over. It was a different place; you could experiment. You could find your inspiration and artists were everywhere. I don’t see it anymore in the city. It’s gone, commercialised. By the mid-2000s, it was already going. At this time, squatting wasn’t legal, but there were still places bought up for what were called project houses, and there was a great one in Friedrichshain. You could go to the kino there. ‘Through the Window’ it was called – and it literally was. You’d go through doors and down corridors, and then finally go through a window space in a cellar, and you were there. There were sofas; it was punk rock. They would show Star Trek every Monday. But now? I love the fsk Kino [am Oranienplatz]. They’re organised as a collective. They sometimes show stuff no one else is showing – a tiny cinema with great indie curation.
So what can we expect from you next?
Right now, I’m working right on a script for a long feature, and the short film I’ll shoot at the end of February will be two scenes out of that. I’d say it’s a sci-fi thriller, a genre piece. Not a drama. As a film practitioner, I’m coming from an arthouse background, which I adore, but I really come from more of a sci-fi background through my writing and interests. So that’s the next project to try out and test. I’m excited about that. Let’s say, it’s a test for myself to see what’s possible.
For more information on Billie’s work, visit billiemind.com
