PopHorror Let's Get Scared
In his stunning feature debut, Filmmaker Alex Noyer electrified audiences with Sound of Violence during its world premiere at the virtual celebration of the renowned SXSW film festival in March 2021. After producing films in tandem with his love of music for the last few years, Noyer eventually heeded the call to write and direct. In 2018, he created the critically acclaimed short, Conductor, that became the source material for his feature, Sound of Violence, which I have come to savor as one of the best films I have experienced in quite some time (read my review of the film here).
It is early in the morning, hours before the world premiere of Sound of Violence, when I got to interact with Noyer via a Zoom connection. He is as excited as I am to speak and is effortlessly engaging as he dives into discussing how his short, Conductor, evolved into the feature, Sound of Violence.
“Conductor was sort of me dealing with the drum machine work on my documentary, 808, and the TR-808 drum machines that took over my life for five years,” says Noyer. “I needed a new challenge, and my wife was encouraging me to switch to horror because she knows that I’ve loved horror since I was a kid. Ever since I watched Night of the Living Dead when I was nine, and it’s just like, that’s it. All I want to see is horror.” We both laugh after he says this, not because it’s ridiculous, but out of an expression of solidarity.
“When you document a drum machine for five years and you’re developing a horror story, of course there’s a moment where you have a light bulb that says, ‘I need to kill somebody with a drum machine!’ Very natural ideas to have,” he jokes. Noyer goes on to explain, “So this is the idea from where Conductor came, and it was not supposed to go really beyond the experimental short. It has this big twist, and it was supposed to be intense. It toured and it did well, and we won a few awards for it. All unexpected! But really, what stayed with me beyond the practical effects and the madness of it all was the character of Alexis. Everything I had in my head about her I obviously couldn’t include in a six minute short, but I had to have so I could explain to Kelli [Jordan], who played Alexis then. And also the audience’s response was really about her.
“It’s funny, because Conductor is a very gruesome short but a lot of non-horror audiences were very excited about it because of this intriguing character that dances away. I had to think about her backstory, and I wrote her backstory almost like I would make a short about her backstory. But then organically, I just kept writing, and I created her environment. I first included the short in there, and then I took it out. I was like, ‘No, this is more of a character piece, more of a thriller,’ and so we moved towards a different treatment because there’s no way that what we delivered in the short could just last for 90 minutes. It’s just not possible. So really working on the character was going to be the key to hopefully convincing an audience to just stay with us for 90 minutes. So it became a real character thriller. It still has very many horror elements, but it also has love and drama.”
Noyer’s film is indeed a combination of genres. Generously punctuated with gore, it is sure to easily find an audience within the horror community. But the film delivers so much more, and, like Noyer, I refuse to simply label it a horror/thriller in fear that it would do it a disservice.
Helping to bring the complicated character of Alexis to life in Sound of Violence is actress Jasmin Savoy Brown. Featured in the hit HBO series, The Leftovers, and among the cast of the anticipated Scream 5 coming later this year, Jasmin, in a devastating performance, portrays a woman losing the battle with her moral compass. I inquired about the casting process for Sound of Violence with Noyer excitedly regaling an interaction he had with his casting director, Amey René, and her response to the script.
“Our first conversation was almost like a very passionate, creative conversation. She [Amey] really felt a stake in the script, and when we started to discuss, she brought up Jasmin, whom she knew well. I knew of Jasmin because I had seen her in The Leftovers, which I absolutely adore, and then I got to meet Jasmin. And there is a fantastic moment for a director when you meet an actor, and you’re feeling at the end of it that you just met your character.” He goes on to say, “With Jasmin, I met Alexis. It was not only the way I saw her, but the way she walked, her sensibility, the way she talked to me, the pride she takes in her craft. It was, I have to say, probably one of the most… Jasmin and I always go back and forth about who was nervous that day. I was. I will absolutely stand up to the fact that I was so, so, so nervous. But I came out really inspired, and that was amazing.”
I share with the filmmaker how impressed I was with all of the performances in Sound of Violence, namely the chemistry between Jasmin and co-star Lili Simmons. He is delighted to hear this and admits, “Lili is somebody that I’ve been following for a while. I love her work, from Banshee to Bone Tomahawk, all of those appearances she did in all those amazing shows like Ray Donovan and such. I always thought her charisma sort of jumped out from the screen. I was kind of asking Amey like, ‘Do you think she might consider it? It’s a local shoot.’ She read the script and loved it. So it happened. The first time Jasmin and Lili met, they clicked immediately.”
Excited to share the depth of Jasmin and Lili’s genuine connection, Noyer candidly describes a time during filming. “I remember we were doing the fittings, and I was in the room almost as a fly on the wall and hearing them share stories and stuff. Let’s not forget. This is my directorial feature debut. I’ve been a producer for 17 years, but it was still a very daunting prospect of directing something with experienced actors. They’re young, but they’re very experienced. I walked in as the least experienced guy on set.
“And then James [Jagger], you saw him in Vinyl, and then you didn’t see him too much. Again, when the idea came, we reached out, and I think he felt the script was very good for him. I really saw him in that role, and it took a bit longer, but then he jumped on board. We met, and we really clicked, and we talked about the role. We were having a coffee in Silver Lake, and the next thing you know, we’re talking about our common passion for Arsenal Football Club, and there you go,” he laughs. “I was having an actor who really was Duke, and who supports the same football team as me? I mean, I couldn’t ask for more! The role of Detective Fuentes was an interesting one because I had written it initially as a man. It was in early drafts, and I really found the character not interesting at all. I felt that it was very cliche and such. Hannu and I—Hannu my producing partner—Hannu Aukia and I went over the character and felt that first of all, the detective should be a woman [eventually played by Tessa Munro] and then we could create that sort of dynamic of… It’s kind of not a chase as much as it is trying to piece together an unconventional world of a killer.”
Several minutes into our interview, and I can’t help but appreciate the amount of humbleness emanating from Alex Noyer. The dude is just so happy to have been able to make Sound of Violence, and furthermore, is ecstatic that audiences are responding favorably to the film he and his team worked so diligently upon.
Shifting gears a bit, I go back to his deep seated appreciation of the genre dating back to his childhood viewing of Night of the Living Dead. Noyer’s film delicately treads the line of outright horror film versus arthouse ambiguity, creatively reeling in viewers from all walks of life. As we are both longtime horror fans, though, I was curious to ask if he had to scrap any gore that was included in the original script.
“One of the first versions of the script—I think the second or third draft—was 100 and something pages. I had to make a choice. When I’m writing, I’m a visual writer. I write everything I see. I’m writing how drops of blood are falling. I’m very OCD about the way blood looks, so the gore descriptions were pages and pages. I took out 20 full pages of blood descriptions just so I could create the space in the writing to really develop the characters. When I was in canon, I kind of accepted that I couldn’t carry over the crazy horror side of the short. Didn’t mean I didn’t want it. This was interesting to take it all out, rebuild the story around the character and the character story and the movements of drama, and then allow me to then create a different angle of the horror scene that would still satisfy horror hounds. At the same time, not put off people who are here for the characters. It was gruesome. It’s still gruesome. We just don’t dive into it the way we did with the short where we were actually close-up and stuff, and we were going for shock. Remember the short is like, ‘Oh, this is all very casual,’ and then all of a sudden! This is the fun we had.
“Also, it was important that there was a constant reminder that I had to make sure people felt conflicted about the character. If I went over-the-top gore, I would lose them. So, I’m very proud, and Robert Bravo, my blood wizard, is somebody who understands me, somebody who understands my passion for horror but also how to be very, very specific. I get mad when the blood doesn’t look right, and I get mad where we’re missing that texture, that shine, the light the way it reflects. And Robert is somebody who is extremely precise and extremely patient and extremely dedicated to getting it right. I am very, very fortunate that he put that dedication to me.”
Noyer also got it right with the diverse representation he decisively put in motion both in front of and behind the camera; sixty percent of his talented cast and crew were female Uncomfortably felt and seen, showing empathy for Alexis’ trauma while simultaneously reveling in ear of her, Sound of Violence delivers a unique and visceral gut-punch. Captured by cinematographer Daphne Wu, Alexis’ aggressive downward spiral, spiced with her synesthesia (a neurological condition which highlights one sense when another is absent) is something Noyer is incredibly proud of.
Saying this of Wu, “She is so great! And she’s normally not really working with horror or genre films in general. But her work prior to this was so colorful. When I was trying to explain to Hannu the look and feel that I was going for, an intense environment, we were also looking for DP’s and stumbled upon her work. I was like, ‘She knows how to do color around the environment naturally, and that is just incredible!’ She is awesome!”
The practical lighting and gore both work incredibly well. Noyer explains, “Obviously, it’s the synesthesia that we layer on. But it can only layer on to something that matches. We were dancing with these colorful tubes and creating things. It was very experimental. We took a lot of risks that really, really could have fallen apart. But she and her team were just dedicated to getting it right, and I occasionally took part in dancing with the tubes around Jasmin, because I wanted all the blues and pinks and all the colors to really dance around her. When we brought in the synthesis on top of it, it had to feel vivid, but it had to feel like it had depth. It was not just in front like here; it had to be all the way. I am so proud of this crew. I’m here representing a film with my name on it, but frankly, I’m here representing a bunch of people I will be eternally grateful to.”
We strongly encourage you to stream or purchase Sound of Violence, available in North America via Gravitas Ventures on May 21, 2021 and within the U.K. in the summer of 2021.
We want to thank Alex Noyer for his time and hope you check out the trailer for Sound of Violence down below!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTv4UZ4AiYY
