On Location: filmmaker Oliver Hermanus takes us behind the scenes of The History of Sound

“We all have soundtracks to our lives,” says Oliver Hermanus, the filmmaker behind The History of Sound. “We live our lives through sound, and music connects us to different memories and places and times.” The History of Sound is first and foremost a love story – Lionel (played by Paul Mescal) and David (Josh O’Connor) are two young men who forge a bond over a shared love of music. It’s the beginning of a beautiful, fraught, heartbreaking relationship, one that takes them from Boston to Maine, Rome to Oxford on a journey of discovery, reflection and grief, all through the prism of sound. Below, we caught up with Oliver to talk about the process of creating this film and the challenges of the many locations it was shot in, from the vast plains and rocky shores of New Jersey to the steepest hills and deepest valleys of the Lake District.

Josh O’Connor is David in THE HISTORY OF SOUND, directed by Oliver Hermanus.Gwen Capistran/Neon and Focus Features

The film takes us to so many places all around the world. How did you decide where to shoot each location?

It’s always tricky because the location is always very much determined by the money. That’s the challenge. There are so many factors that go into where you get to make a film, particularly in the US, because every state has different tax incentives. So some states are slower than others, and some states offer more incentives than others. That’s why Atlanta, Georgia, is a very popular state to shoot in, because they’ve got a really great tax incentive and they pay back really speedily. So Netflix shoots a lot of shows there, like Stranger Things, etc. New Jersey has a similarly attractive tax incentive, but the good thing about New Jersey is that it’s the ‘Garden State’. It’s fairly big, it has a lot of landscape, so you have a lot of choice, but you also have to hunt for it.

So was it quite difficult to balance the budget with your vision?

That’s kind of the thrill of directing a movie, but also the torture of directing a movie. You have to have a vision, but for a movie like this, which is set between Kentucky, Maine, Italy, England, Boston, Massachusetts, we pretty much filmed 75 per cent of that in New Jersey.

The first time I came to New Jersey for a History of Sound scout, I went to all the real places (Boston, Maine, Malaga Island). Once you know the real place and you know what you’re after, then you can go somewhere like New Jersey and imagine how to trick the world into creating multiple spaces. That’s the fun of filmmaking because you learn that different places can act as others.