Exploring the Haunting Sound of ‘Enys Men’– with director/sound designer Mark Jenkin

Cornish filmmaker Mark Jenkin splashed into the public sphere in 2019 with his handmade black and white 16mm film, Bait. A film with a unique look and feel, Bait offers a Cornish-centric story set in a seaside fishing village, with socio-political undercurrents surrounding gentrification issues swirling in the background. Spreading first by word of mouth and later championed by prominent critic Mark Kermode, the film’s warm critical and commercial reception culminated in a BAFTA award for Outstanding Debut in 2019. On the back of this success, Jenkin set about writing his follow-up – Enys Men – in 2020.

Enys Men (‘Stone Island’ in Cornish) is a psychological folk horror film starring Mary Woodvine, set on a fictional cornish island in the early 1970s, and chronicling a wildlife volunteer’s daily observations of a rare flower. Much like Bait, the film is shot on 16mm stock using a vintage Bolex H16 camera and features Jenkin’s signature post-production ADR. Ahead of Enys Men’s January 2023 release, Barney Oram sat down with Mark Jenkin to talk about his upcoming feature.

ENYS MEN – Official Trailer

Barney Oram: Shooting solely on film is not unheard of in the modern age, but shooting a feature film on the Bolex H16, a camera designed in the 1930’s, certainly is. Why did you choose that camera specifically to work with?

Mark Jenkin: I just know it inside out. If it went wrong I wouldn’t be able to fix it, but I know what’s gone wrong when it does go wrong, so there’s no mystery. With a digital camera, I haven’t got a clue if something goes wrong. If something goes wrong with the Bolex, like if the film’s chewing up inside, then you’ll hear it. I know a lot about that camera through the sound of it. I trust it implicitly when I’m using it and I understand it because it’s so simple – that’s the big attraction for me to that camera.

BO: What drew you originally to making a film in 16mm film format?

MJ: Film is where I started out. I started shooting film in London in 1993, I would’ve been 16 or 17 years old. I came up to London and shot a roll of Super 8, having seen Derek Jarman’s film The Garden on Channel 4 late one night and just thought it looked amazing. Super 8 was still really widely available at that time. You could buy rolls of Super 8 in the chemist, which seems weird to say now. It was process paid, so you’d send it off to the lab in Europe and it would come back two weeks later, and it was really exciting.

I started shooting film in London in 1993, I would’ve been 16 or 17 years old.

At that time, video cameras were just launching so people were getting Video8 camcorders, and as people bought this new technology they were flogging off their Super 8 cameras. Super 8 film was really available and super 8 cameras were really cheap, so if you wanted to shoot moving images that was the way to do it.

That was my start at filmmaking. Then I progressed to more high-end digital formats as I progressed in my career. At some point I just realized that I’d fallen out of love with filmmaking – and I sort of stopped and thought; ‘it’s the technology I’ve fallen out of love with,’ because effectively I felt a digital camera was just a computer with a lens on the front of it. So I retraced my steps back to where my passion started.
 

BO: And that led you back to film?

MJ: Yeah. 12 years ago I started shooting Super 8 again, and then from there I was making experimental short films whilst trying to develop feature films in a more conventional way. My short films started getting noticed, and winning prizes at festivals and stuff, and I thought; ‘What if I adopt those handmade film working processes to my long-form filmmaking?’ So I made a long short film called Bronco’s House – which is 44 minutes long – using my experimental film techniques with a narrative script, and it worked. I really liked the result – and we made Bait in the same way as Bronco’s House – and then we made Enys Men in the same way that we made Bait.
 

BO: Enys Men is visually stunning. In some places, very sharp, and in others, soft. How did you achieve that visual style?

MJ: The H16 is a beautiful camera but it does create a unique set of imperfections, it’s not a rock-solid image. I used these old lenses to give it a real period look – we shot this old Zeiss 10-100mm zoom lens that’d been given to me by a cinematographer who’d shot a lot of stuff for David Attenborough, back when they were shooting film.

I wanted to use stuff that filmmakers who were making a low-budget horror film in the 1970s would’ve been using.

It’s a manual zoom, so when I’m zooming from one end to the other, you get a sense there’s somebody hand operating the zoom. I wanted to use stuff that filmmakers who were making a low-budget horror film in the 1970s would’ve been using. We shot on a 10mm prime, all the way through to a 75mm prime and everything in between – and the zoom. Most of the close-up stuff on Mary I used a 26mm as that’s the best lens I’ve got. It’s just really sharp.

Photo credit: Callum Mitchell

BO: Once you’ve shot the film, how do you begin the editing process?

MJ: At the end of the shoot we had all of the high-res 2k scans on a drive from the lab, and then I started the edit using the offline proxies. We conformed it at the end and then it was printed back to 35mm. It’s a digital-analog hybrid workflow – we end up back on film and we get there via digital. It’s really important to me that it ends up back on film for audiences to see.

BO: What is your editing workflow like?

MJ: I work in Adobe Premiere. I do the picture and the sound at the same time, and again, the sound is like a digital-analog hybrid. I record everything to tape, ¼-inch tape, often directly.

I’ve got a ¼-inch tape loop that I run between two reel-to-reel machines and all of the sound goes round that.

I’ve got a ¼-inch tape loop that I run between two reel-to-reel machines and all of the sound goes round that. If I want it to be more abstract, I’ll do things like pull on the tape, stop the tape running across the heads, or pull it backwards. It’s very physical and hands on. Ultimately, it ends up in Pro Tools and is mixed by Rich Butler. Rich is credited as dubbing mixer and I’m the sound designer. I design the sounds and a lot of the foley as part of the sound design.
 

BO: Let’s talk about your approach to dialogue. For those unaware, your films are 100% post-synced dialogue, so nothing is recorded on the set. What attracts you to that way of working?

MJ: It’s largely due to the Bolex H16. The camera doesn’t shoot crystal sync. Part of the reason it’s not quite sync is because it’s got a dial on it where you set the framerate. You line up the framerate next to the number, but it doesn’t lock in, so it’s probably a rough approximation. I probably could shoot sync sound, but in some ways I use the Bolex as an excuse not to, as I like to do all of that later on. In the edit, I record the ADR directly onto the timeline in Premiere so I know the rough sync, then I will loop that out to tape.

I stood in the alleyway, and he stood in the kitchen doorway, and he shouted lines to me…

There was one bit I did with John Woodvine, Mary’s dad, who I realized that it was going to be impractical for him to come back down to do the ADR with the other actors, so I recorded that on my phone in our backyard. I stood in the alleyway, and he stood in the kitchen doorway, and he shouted lines to me, not to picture or anything, and I didn’t know if it’d sync or not – but he did about five different versions of it and we put one in the film. It’s got a slightly different sound quality but I think it’s nice, I think it sounds like he’s talking from an old archive recording, which kinda fits.
 

BO: The foley in the film – was that all recorded in a studio, or did you capture any of it on location?

MJ: A mixture. I didn’t record anything during the shoot, but with things like the generator, because it’s such a specific sound, I went back at the end and recorded it thoroughly to fit the edit. That was a very specific one, it just made such a great sound, there was no point trying to get something else; it was just perfect. I’ve got a bit of fake floor that’s above the concrete floor in my studio and I do all the footsteps on there. I’ve got a small wooden table that I use on the wooden floor to do any door sounds, chairs, tables, that sort of thing.

…when the gannet hits the water, the impact you hear is breaking glass.

 
I’ve got two bits of metal that I salvaged from an old heritage railway, and they are all the clanking and clinking of the mine. Other things I’ll grab off sound effects albums, old vinyl ones, and I’ve got a big sound effects library.

There’s a shot of a diving Gannet into the sea, and I spent ages trying to create a sound effect for that. I had a bucket of water and I was trying to get a splash with that, but it all sounded so close and so lame. In the end, I decided to do something that was the incorrect sound. In the film, there’s smashing glass later on so I thought I could do a nice little call forward; when the gannet hits the water, the impact you hear is breaking glass. You might not hear it consciously – it’s not quite right – it’s a level of abstraction that I really like doing in the audio that’s much harder to do visually.
 

BO: There’s a lot of abstract use of sound in the film.

MJ: With sound, you can do stuff that sounds almost real, but you know the audience are going to be slightly unsettled by it. There’s a clock ticking in the house, and the clock never ticks at the same rate – but you’d never notice. Hopefully, the audience is slightly unsettled, on some level they’d be feeling like there’s something wrong here but they couldn’t point at it because it’s not visual, it’s sonic.

…she’ll be walking forwards but the sound of the footsteps will be playing backward.

When Mary walks, sometimes the steps will be going backward – she’ll be walking forwards but the sound of the footsteps will be playing backward. It’s funny when people say, ‘there’s a real uncanny eerie feeling to it, in the way it looks,’ and I’ll be thinking – it’s not in the way it looks – it’s the way it sounds that makes it uncanny and eerie!
 

BO: It’s rare for a director to work on the sound of their own film. What is it about working with sound that convinced you to approach it so creatively?

MJ: The thing with sound, is it’s all about the power of suggestion. You put a sound on with a picture that isn’t right, but because it’s aligned with that picture, people go; ‘well, that’s just the sound of that thing’. I think you can get away with a lot. Our suspension of disbelief is crazy. We’ll believe anything. It’s all lies, but you sit there and get drawn into it – for me, that’s one of the beauties of film.
 

BO: Some of my favorite sound moments in the film are the roaring waves at the start and throughout, that surround the island. What was the process for creating those?

MJ: I recorded all of those myself, as waves are easier to record. I really enjoy that, just to sit on a cliff with a hard disk recorder and some headphones on and a rifle mic – that’s meditation for me. I have to limit myself because I end up with hours and hours of material. All of those seascapes are ones I recorded mostly around one cove in the north of Cornwall.
 

BO: Another important sound aspect of the film comes in the form of the radio that The Volunteer listens to – where did those sounds come from?

MJ: I grabbed a couple of things from sound effects libraries, but most of it came from a marine VHF radio that I bought, a handheld thing that I recorded all the sounds from. I like radios, because in the film you’ve got the VHF radio and then the portable AM radio – they’re very useful to bring story background in. The AM radio can play news reports and music, so it’s a good exposition tool. I use it almost like a voiceover. I use it to make plot points clearer – or sometimes more hidden.
 

BO: There’s a wonderful choral piece of music that plays on the radio at the start of that film. What’s the story with that?

MJ: That’s a song called “The Bristol Christ,” sung by Brenda Wootton – a great cornish folk singer. It’s a Charles Causley poem, our treasured Cornish national poet. His poem, sung by Brenda Wootton, is backed by the Four Lanes male voice choir. It’s a song I just love, it’s just beautiful. I had it playing in the studio on vinyl while I was editing, and I thought, ‘that’d be just brilliant to have that on the film.’ I opened a microphone in the room and just recorded it as it played off the original record – and that’s what’s in the film.

It was then very complicated to figure out who owned the rights.

It was then very complicated to figure out who owned the rights. In the end, it turned out Georgia Ellery – who was in Bait, is related to Brenda Wootton. Georgia’s auntie is Brenda’s daughter, so we were able to get it that way, which was brilliant because we were able to keep it in the family, as it were.
 

BO: The film also features a haunting Cornish folk song that plays throughout, written by Gwenno. How did that collaboration come about?

MJ: I’ve known Gwenno for a while, so when I’d written the script it was a no-brainer to first go to Gwenno and ask her to write us a brand new ancient may song – and to do it in Cornish as well – so we could get the language up on the screen.

…we suggested she record a version to put over the end credits.

Gwenno wrote a song called ‘Kan Me,’ which means ‘May Song.’ We could’ve used an old song, but those songs are so specific to certain locations and so precious to those communities who’ve sung them forever, so I thought it was really important to have a new song. We commissioned Gwenno to write it for the kids who sing in the film.

She sent through a demo of her singing it as a guide, with the sound of that drum on it – and it was just really beautiful, and so we suggested she record a version to put over the end credits.

The kids singing were recorded in three separate groups, just in my studio.
 

BO: Intermingled with the sound design and setting a haunting tone, the film’s original score was also your creation. What was your process for writing that?

MJ: Writing my own music came from Bait originally. I was faced with the task of having to foley hundreds of footsteps, and so I looked for something that could sonically fill out the scene instead. I had an analog synthesizer, a little Korg Volca Keys – that I’d bought on the recommendation of Gwenno. I created this discordant accordion sound, and I ended up laying it over the scene, and I left it in there just as a placeholder. By the end of the process, I’d got quite attached to that sound, so we left it in – as a ‘score.’

I created this discordant accordion sound, and I ended up laying it over the scene…

After the release, Invada Records got in touch, and asked about the score – they wanted to put it out. I sent them the master tracks, which had all been mixed to ¼ inch tape and then digitized, and they put that out as a release. So then in the preparation for Enys Men, they asked if they could put the score out for that too – so then I started thinking like a musician. I bought myself a Korg MS20 Mini synth – which I don’t fully understand how it works – and I created the tape loop. The whole score was made like that. I’ve got the synth, a really nice feedback pedal, a couple of really cheap delay pedals and a reverb box, and then two reel-to-reel tape machines. A lot of the foley ends up in the score as well, as I end up mixing it to tape and then it can never be separated again.
 

BO: Fantastic. Mark, thanks for taking the time to chat.

MJ: Thanks!
 
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Enys Men is in UK cinemas from 13 January 2023 with a preview/Q&A tour from 2 January.

The Cinematic DNA of Enys Men season curated by director Mark Jenkin runs at BFI Southbank and on BFI Player from 1–31 January. On 29 January, he will be joined by Peter Strickland for ‘Film Sounds: A Conversation Between Mark Jenkin and Peter Strickland on Sound Design’.

The Enys Men Original Score is out now digitally via Invada Records and will be released on vinyl on 24 February.

A big thanks to Mark Jenkin for giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the sound of Enys Men and to Barney Oram for the interview!

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