A Complete Unknowntells the story of a young Bob Dylan and his rise to fame in the early to mid-1960s. His journey to find himself, and his art, culminates in a difficult decision during the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. The film also showcases the impact that Dylan’s music had at the time, and how his influence is still relevant today.
Timothée Chalamet stars and sings as Bob Dylanin James Mangold’sA Complete Unknown. His live performances were captured, rather than having him pre-record the tracks and lip-sync. This adds a certain authenticity to the film that brings it to a whole new level.A Complete Unknowncomes to theaters on December 25.
A Complete Unknown Cast & Character Guide: Who Stars In Timothée Chalamet’s Bob Dylan Movie
Joining Timothée Chalamet’s Bob Dylan in the biographical movie, A Complete Unknown, are various other talented stars. This is who they’ll be playing.
ScreenRantinterviewed the talented sound team behindA Complete Unknown- Ted Caplan (Supervising Music Editor), Tod Maitland (Sound Mixer), Paul Massey (Re-Recording Mixer), and Donald Sylvester (Supervising Sound). They discussed the challenges they came across while capturing the sound of a live performance with a live audience and revealed that it wasTimothée Chalametwho really pushed for that to happen. The team also detailed the collaborative process between them, as well as with James Mangold.
A Complete Unknown Is Made More For Newcomers To Bob Dylan Than Fans
“The people that love Bob Dylan will go see it anyway, and the people that are curious will get a big kick out of it.”
ScreenRant: I did not know much about Bob Dylan going into this movie, but was captivated by it. Were you fans of Bob Dylan before signing onto A Complete Unknown?
Paul Massey: I was familiar with him, but I wasn’t a huge raving fan, that’s for sure.
Donald Syvester: I would go with that too. I mean, I knew all the songs, but I didn’t know the story of Bob Dylan. And to be honest, I think we made the movie for people like you because the people that love Bob Dylan will go see it anyway, and the people that are curious will get a big kick out of it.
“Every day you went to work, and you felt like you were really recording something special and a piece of history.”
ScreenRant: Can you guys talk about the collaboration between all of you, and then, as well, with James Mangold?
Tod Maitland: I had the first crack with Jim. Jim is a unique character. He is strong. He knows what he wants. He had a great vision to do this. Timmy knew exactly what he wanted also. So going into it, we really went into it, as I said before, like we were going to record an album. Every day you went to work, and you felt like you were really recording something special and a piece of history.
Since most of this movie is 98% live music, and there’s so many music pieces in it, it is a music-driven film without any distractions from anything else. It is 100% about the music and the character, and they both mesh together so well, and just great artistry all the way around.
The whole entire crew just did an amazing job. Everybody loved what they were creating. It was not an easy film by any means. But when you get on something, and you know that it’s great, your heart is there. You give 110%, and I think that’s what everyone did on this film.
Paul Massey: Jim’s films are very character driven, very story driven, and for Don, Ted and I, who have worked with him several times in the past, we know that it’s going to be an exciting ride, because no matter how you think it’s going to turn out in face value, Jim is going to explore every single little crevice, and he’ll take you on a different story arc from what maybe you were thinking having read the script. It’s great fun working with Jim.
Ted Caplan: We, Don and I and Paul have worked a long time. Don and I work in the building with Jim, and we work with a lot of the same people over and over. I would say on this movie, it all came together because every once while, we’re all doing each other’s jobs for a little bit. Don’s pulling some music. I’m cutting a feedback line. Our editor is doing vocal lines. I’m in the cutting room.
Not that everyone’s doing everything, but we have such a team that has worked together and communicates well and is up for any challenge. And Jim doesn’t care what your job is. He just wants you to do whatever he’s asking at the moment. And that could be anything, and we’re all game for it. Because every day you come in, you’re like, what am I going to be doing today? It’s a real challenge.
Donald Sylvester: Also, Jim’s extremely meticulous. So if there’s a moment in the film which you haven’t addressed, even for a half a second, he will address it for you. He’ll tell you there’s something missing in this dead space. And you could defend yourself by saying, Well, isn’t there somebody inhaling at this moment?
But no, it’s actually, why don’t we hear more backgrounds? Why don’t we hear more crowds? Why don’t we hear more of this, more of that? Why don’t we hear a new idea, and it’s like you got it? Yep, that’s what we’ll do. And we end up doing it. As we go through the film, there become fewer and fewer of these holes, until we get to the very end, and we think we’ve got them all, and then he’ll find another one.
“You’ll find a lot of these scenes, they’re just singing with their guitars, and there’s nothing else going on.”
ScreenRant: Can you talk about recording these musical performances live?
Ted Caplan: Tod was able to capture they’re singing on set. So, you watch that first song, Timmy is singing to Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. And that’s Timmy and his guitar. And Tod’s in there with a bunch of mics, making sure we get every nuance and every little detail. We’re thankful that Timmy could do that, and Monica, all of them.
It’s just kind of amazing that the movie works. But it’s also a testament to just being really there. You’re witnessing something. You’re not just watching a recreation, you’re witnessing something go down.
ScreenRant: Oh, they recorded on set. I guess I assumed they pre-recorded.
Donald Sylvester: We had to make sure we got out of the way of that in terms of adding sounds in. A lot of times you lather up the soundtrack, you put a lot of sound effects, thing like that, but you’ll find a lot of these scenes, they’re just singing with their guitars, and there’s nothing else going on. And that’s by design, because we don’t want to really step on any of the performances. We will augment the backgrounds and things like that, but we expose them as much as we can.
Ted Caplan: One of those great moments is when Monica is singing “House of the Rising Sun,” and she stops playing, and she pulls a mic away, and that is her in the room singing to that group. It has a certain chill factor to it that I don’t know that we could have achieved if it was just a re-record, right?
Tod Maitland: Yeah, so much of this was about, again, creating that authenticity. And also going back to what you said before about the collaboration, one of the things that I always attempt to do, and particularly on this film, is to give my post partners as much material as possible to work with. So I’ll use as many mics as I possibly can. So just for that little scene where he’s singing the Woody Guthrie, we had five microphones.
I had Timmy wired in his hair, because the way he holds his guitar is so high up on his body, there’s no way to get a mic on him. Then we would have a boom underneath, a boom overhead, an ambient mic, and then mics on the other actors at the same time. So much of it really came down to making technique. And we used, I think, 45 practical period microphones. We used different ones in each venue to create more of a tapestry of sound so that they were a little bit different for each venue.
We worked with the actors for their on mic presence, and just trying to keep a continuity as they were singing live, and they would maintain what a professional singer would be, because Bob was a professional singer at that point, and plus we were amplifying everything out to the audience. So anything that had an audience, we had amplified speakers going out to those, and then I’d be capturing that amplified sound, plus all of the sound coming from the audience.
There are points where they sing along, they’re clapping, when they’re yelling at them at the end, all those moments. My guys, Jerry and Terence, they are wonderful at putting out microphones. They’ll see something, and we have six microphones that we keep just for ambience, and they’re ready to go. We just deploy them out like little sound hand grenades, just to capture whatever is happening at each different point.
Everything really was live, and that was Jim’s way of working with this whole thing. And we can talk about the Cuban Missile Crisis, where on set we actually created that energy on set, all of the sound, from people panicking through the televisions that you hear in the different areas, and all that. We gave it to the actors on set, and then it was up to everybody here to kind of pull it back out, reconstruct it and create what you see.
“What is it you’re trying to say in the scene, or in the song, or the emotion of Bob and his rebellious nature?”
ScreenRant: That final performance is so chaotic. With people screaming and throwing things. Was that the most challenging scene?
Ted Caplan: Oh, that was easy, right?
Paul Massey: That was really easy. Yeah, no. There was an awful lot there. And obviously you have to strip it down to what are the essentials? What is it you’re trying to say in the scene, or in the song, or the emotion of Bob and his rebellious nature in Newport ‘65 when he goes electric. So strip it down to those elements. Make sure those are shining, and then you can start adding back in and sweetening.
A lot of what Tod is talking about, where he had recorded a lot of ambient mics and such, if we couldn’t particularly use all of those because of technical reasons or noises or whatever, we certainly use them as a guide and a foundation for what we were going to sweeten and add. Specifically with crowds and things like that during that concert.
But it all comes down to really is what do you want to highlight, and what do you need to maintain as being strong during those loud sequences, those busy sequences. Strip out pretty much everything else that doesn’t need to be there or take it to a level where it can make the star shine.
More About A Complete Unknown (2024)
New York, 1961. Against the backdrop of a vibrant music scene and tumultuous cultural upheaval, an enigmatic 19-year-old from Minnesota arrives with his guitar and revolutionary talent, destined to change the course of American music. He forges intimate relationships with music icons of Greenwich Village on his meteoric rise, culminating in a groundbreaking and controversial performance that reverberates worldwide. Timothée Chalamet stars and sings as Bob Dylan in James Mangold’s A COMPLETE UNKNOWN, the electric true story behind the rise of one of the most iconic singer-songwriters in history.
A Complete Unknown
Cast
A Complete Unknown is a biographical movie that follows a young Bob Dylan as he integrates with New York and catches the eye of the folk singers in the area, eventually propelling him into stardom.
