Interview by Jennifer Walden, photos courtesy of Sundance Institute; Peter Albrechtsen
Director Cole Webley makes his directorial debut at Sundance 2025 with ‘Omaha’ – in U.S. Dramatic Competition. The film is garnering acclaim for its honest, compelling performances of characters experiencing family tragedy and devastating loss. Their cross-country road trip oscillates between beautiful and heartbreaking.
The story is mainly told through the eyes (and ears) of a kid named Ella. The audience’s perception of events is filtered through her perspective. Award-winning sound designer/re-recording mixer Peter Albrechtsen talks about achieving this subjective POV by only making bits and pieces of her dad’s conversations audible (at times panning his voice to feel like it’s coming from another room) and allowing the sounds of Ella’s experience – like when she leans out of the car window or dives underwater – to overtake the soundscape.
Here, Albrechtsen talks about creating soundscapes for their road trip that showcase the beauty of the changing landscapes and freeways through the surprisingly musical sounds of engines, tires, and winds, designing sound to fit with composer Christopher Bear’s score, working with re-recording mixer David Barber to find dynamic balances that let the music and sound design breathe and flow, and much more!
From L to R: Director Cole Webley, Actor John Magaro, and Sound Designer Peter Albrechtsen in the ADR studio in Copenhagen
How did director Cole Webley want to use sound to help tell this story? What did you want to bring to the sound of the film – what were some of your ideas on how to help tell Omaha through sound?
Peter Albrechtsen (PA): Omaha is written by Robert Machoian, who I’ve collaborated with for several years; we’ve done three feature films together plus several short films and even a couple of small documentaries. For all the projects we’ve been doing together, we’ve always worked with sound in very expressive and experimental ways, like in the movie The Killing of Two Lovers, which screened at the Sundance Film Festival in 2020. Cole Webley saw that film and told me that he really loved the sound. So when he started working with Robert on Omaha, he immediately reached out to me. But it was evident from the very beginning, from the script and our very first conversations about the film, that the sound in Omaha should be quite different from the work that I’ve been doing with Robert.
the sound design should […] be more fragile and subdued
Omaha is a family drama focused on the kids, especially the daughter Ella, and the sound design should mirror this and be more fragile and subdued than on the projects I’ve been doing with Robert. It was truly wonderful to work with Cole. He wanted to explore what sound could do for the emotional trajectory of the story and that kind of curiosity is essential to any great collaboration. This was Cole’s debut feature film but he has been directing commercials for many years and he is very much a cinematic storyteller.
the soundscapes connected with the landscapes and freeways are fascinating to me.
For me, it also felt really special to do an American road movie as I’ve been driving quite a lot around the US during the years and the soundscapes connected with the landscapes and freeways are fascinating to me. The engines, the tires, the winds, the echoes – the sounds have extraordinary musicality, rhythm, and dynamics. I’ve recorded tons of ambiences and effects around US freeways. Plus, I’ve always loved road movies. I love the sense of movement in these stories which creates a lot of opportunities for a lot of different sonic shifts and ambient textures. Omaha has a lot of sonic variety – it’s quite an emotional journey.
The story is mainly told through the eyes (and ears) of Ella. Only bits and pieces of her dad’s conversations are revealed. Can you share some examples of portraying her perspective through sound, or, how her perception of events influenced your choices for sound and mix?
PA: I really loved how Cole worked with subjectivity in the film. For me, it’s always one of the strongest components of a film, that we can be totally immersed in a character’s world.
There’s a lot of panning of dialogue in scenes to give the audience the feeling of being there with the characters
From the very beginning of the film, we establish that the audience is hearing what Ella is hearing and that creates a very strong connection with her in the film. There’s a lot of panning of dialogue in scenes to give the audience the feeling of being there with the characters and not just hearing dialogue from one center perspective all the time.
There’s a moment when Ella sticks her head out of the car window while listening to her mother’s music. The sound of wind overtakes the music coming from the CD player. It’s one of my favorite scenes in the entire film but it took a lot of work to make that kind of subjectivity feel right. It’s a scene we came back to again and again, both during the sound editing and the mix. In the end, I think we nailed it. I don’t want to ruin the moment for people who haven’t watched the film but it’s a scene that goes all the way from total joy to deep sadness and the sound makes you feel both.
Later, when Martin (the dad) is by himself, we hear the sounds of buzzing or interference (either coming from a source like a neon light bulb, bugs, or just a ‘static in his head’ type sound). Can you talk about your sound design for Dad/Martin?
PA: There’s a lot of buzzing, bugs, and radio static elements in the film. I love how these sounds can create extra tactile layers in ambiences. Sometimes I process these sounds so they’re just echoey textures hanging in the air.
Sometimes I process these sounds so they’re just echoey textures hanging in the air.
In the most intimate scenes with the dad, I often turn down some of the more naturalistic background sounds to make him more isolated and alone, and then you hear more of these abstract sounds which I felt worked well with the inner unease he’s feeling.
I love how a perfectly placed tiny fragile breath from an actor can create truly extraordinary intimacy.
All the performances in this movie are brilliant. When you have actors showing all these emotional nuances I feel that using very little sound can be very powerful as we then focus on the character and nothing else. All three main actors were great at doing breaths and efforts during the ADR sessions so we could get close to them sonically. I love how a perfectly placed tiny fragile breath from an actor can create truly extraordinary intimacy.
Meet the Artist 2025: Cole Webley on ‘Omaha’
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The family car they’re driving around in is very central to the story. And, it seems to be barely functioning. How did you approach the sound of the car?
PA: The car really needed to be a character in itself. We had a lot of recordings of the actual type of car that they’re driving but from the start, it was obvious that the car should have a lot of special sounds to show how broken it is.
I used the good old trick of pitching and stretching animal sounds to beef up the engine sounds in a few places.
My sound effects editor on the film, Mikkel Nielsen, went out and recorded a lot of different malfunctioning vehicles and tools that were used to make the car feel damaged.
Foley artist Martin Langenbach also did some great extra elements for the shrieking car doors. We also had fun with the car seats and weird plastic noises to make the car interior feel as rattly as possible.
I also worked with distorted sounds as part of the car engine to make it even more gritty in places. And I used the good old trick of pitching and stretching animal sounds to beef up the engine sounds in a few places. We had a lot of fun.
Omaha takes place during the economic crisis in 2008. How did that influence the sound design?
PA: The story is set in a certain time but is timeless at the same time and we didn’t want to put a bunch of specific sounds upfront in the mix all the time that made you think of a certain year in history.
The closest thing to telling this story through sound is the use of radio news and excerpts that are sometimes playing in the car.
The closest thing to telling this story through sound is the use of radio news and excerpts that are sometimes playing in the car. We’re rarely playing them upfront and loud but they still give you the feeling of the desperate time the film is set in.
As mentioned before, I also use the radio sounds almost abstractly and I’ve been doing a lot of processing – primarily using The Cargo Cult’s Slapper – on radio voices which makes them almost musical and like ambient textures that lead us into scenes or make moments more poetic.
I like the more subtle sonic touches that tell you something about the time – like the old beeps of the cash register in a gas station.
I like the more subtle sonic touches that tell you something about the time – like the old beeps of the cash register in a gas station. Cole was really specific about these kinds of things which just shows his incredible sense of sonic detail.
Generally, it was important that everything felt gritty and rusty — not just the car they were driving, but also the different locations and environments and even the foley steps and props. The world should feel like it is slowly deteriorating.
Composer Christopher Bear wrote a beautiful score for the film. Did you get to hear any of his cues while you were creating the sound design? (I especially liked the kite-flying scene. The sounds of the kite flapping in the air worked so well with the music. And in the SPCA parking lot, the frantic dog barking was an affecting counterpoint to the emotional score. The fireworks scene is another example of music and sound working hand-in-hand)…
PA: I really love the band Grizzly Bear – where Christopher is playing the drums – and was also a big fan of Christopher’s score for Past Lives, so it was amazing to get to collaborate on Omaha.
I was very fortunate to get the score quite early and received it in stems so I could integrate my ambiences with the textural elements in his score.
I was very fortunate to get the score quite early and received it in stems so I could integrate my ambiences with the textural elements in his score. For every cue, Christopher was using some ambient musical elements, and these very much inspired my approach to ambiences and sound design overall. I could create tonal elements around his music and would also build rhythms from sounds that fit with the score.
The kite scene was one of these scenes where I had done a big pass on everything before I received the score but then totally reworked it when I heard what Christopher had done — pitch shifting the winds, changing the placement of foley sounds, and also in some moments just making room for the score to soar.
I was honestly a bit nervous about how Christopher would react when he heard how much I had been playing around with the textures of sound design and music throughout the film
I love the way that Christopher leaves a lot of space in his instrumentation and arrangements so there’s room for dialogue, ambiences, and sound effects. It leaves room for the sound to breathe.
The fireworks scene was a wonderful example of how the frequencies of music and sound effects were shaped together with my low booms never stepping on the melodic elements of the score. I placed all the sounds of rockets and explosions in ways that fit with the feel of the music. I approached the reverbs in a way that left room for both the score and the sound, really utilizing the entire surround system.
I was honestly a bit nervous about how Christopher would react when he heard how much I had been playing around with the textures of sound design and music throughout the film but when he came to the mixing stage in LA for the final playback, he was really happy and loved what I’d done. It was a truly terrific collaboration.
Mix at Juniper Post in LA with Mixer David Barber, Music Supervisor Maxwell Gosling, Director Cole Webley, Composer Christopher Bear, and Sound Designer/Mixer Peter Albrechtsen
I love your mix on the film, the way the underwater sounds lead into the music during the motel pool scene, the balance you found between the music and effects to bring the world into music-driven scenes like in Lee’s supermarket and at the zoo, using dialogue like an effect at times to poke through the music like during the butterfly scene… Can you talk about finding that balance on the stage with dir. Webley?
PA: I mixed the film with the wonderful David Barber, who I’ve been working with for several years now on many different projects — features, documentaries, and shorts. The first movie we did together was actually The Killing of Two Lovers which we mixed at Juniper Post in Los Angeles five years ago. Since then, we’ve done one mix in Copenhagen, one mix at David’s stage in Rhode Island, and several remote mixes.
With Omaha, we mixed together in L.A. again and it was a blast. We know each other very well now and there is a lot of trust between us. I had been working on Omaha for a year on and off when we got to the mix, so for me, it was amazing to have David’s ears in the mix as he had a fresh perspective on things. David is a truly incredible dialogue mixer who can make everything shine and at the same, he’s also very musical. David mixed dialogue, foley, and music on Omaha, while I was handling the ambiences and sound effects. Cole was there all the time during the final mix and you could tell he enjoyed every moment.
David mixed dialogue, foley, and music on ‘Omaha,’ while I was handling the ambiences and sound effects.
The mix is very, very dynamic. The opening of the film is probably one of the quietest I’ve ever done in a film but later on, there are several very loud moments. Throughout the film, we have some bold dynamic shifts. Just like the characters of the film are on a journey, I wanted the sound to be a journey. The soundscapes develop a lot during the movie and even within the scenes. The environmental sounds play a big role throughout and are constantly changing, like in the scenes you’re mentioning. I love very textured background sounds and the vivid, beautiful way Cole shot the film really lent itself to that approach. Apart from recordings from both Mikkel Nielsen and myself, I also got hold of several ambiences from Omaha so I had a lot of local sounds available, which was really nice.
Just like the characters of the film are on a journey, I wanted the sound to be a journey.
As I live in Copenhagen in Denmark and Cole lives in the US, most of our collaboration was done remotely. Cole did come to Copenhagen for an early temp mix. Our amazing lead actor, John Magaro, was shooting in London at the time. So, he came to Copenhagen to record ADR. You can do a lot of great work remotely but being in a room together makes a big difference. Cole and I had a great week together in Copenhagen. When we later met in LA for the final mix, it felt like a natural development of our collaboration. We were busy during the final mix, for sure – we only had six days for the final mix – but it never felt stressful because we knew each other so well.
Director Cole Webley. Photo by: MaryAnne Webley
What have you learned while working on Omaha? Or, what was unique in your experience of working on the sound for this film?
PA: We had a great process on the film where we kept on developing sound design and the picture editing side by side. On an indie movie like this, there’s not a big budget for many months of sound editing. So, we spread the work across many months. This way we could go back and forth between picture editing and sound editing.
We were sharing ideas back and forth and the creative process never stopped.
Of course, this meant a lot of conforming and my dialogue editor Lars Halvorsen worked really hard to make all the constant changes feel as seamless as possible. It paid off and did wonders for this film as image and audio inspired each other in wonderful ways. Cole constantly got new ideas based on the sound design and the other way around. It felt like the movie was constantly optimized. We were sharing ideas back and forth and the creative process never stopped. This is not a unique process in any way but I don’t think this kind of creative process happens that often when working on an indie movie which is a shame. Omaha felt like an extraordinary movie in every way. And the process did the same.
A big thanks to Peter Albrechtsen for giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the sound of Omaha and to
Jennifer Walden for the interview!
