U-571：A Closer Look At The Acoustic Aspect of Submarine Film Genre

There is something undeniably attractive about submarines, it is a world of the unique soundscape with silence and darkness under the unknown sea and usually accompanied by uncanny underwater sounds in the atmosphere with low-frequency sound waves. A group of heroic young men is lead by an indisputable commander who is undergoing intensive mental and physical challenges in the dangerous and claustrophobic surroundings. The men hold their breath, and sweats are beading on their foreheads, while red light bathes inside as the terror of the sonar sound beeping around. All of a sudden, those unnerving high-pitch alarm breaks the silence without any warning, and we see the skipper screaming, "Dive! Dive! Dive!" Now it is time we know the game is on.

The movie "U-571" pulls us into the action right from the start. The plot is about a World War II German U-boat boarded by American submariners to capture the Enigma cipher machine during the Battle of the Atlantic in 1942. Lieutenant Tyler, played by Matthew McConaughey, is an ambitious but frustrated second-in-command officer, as his Lieutenant Commander Dahlgren, played by Bill Paxton did not recommend him, because he thinks Tyler is not ready to "sacrifice the lives of some men to save others or the mission." To frustrate the Nazis decimating the Atlantic convoys, the U.S. Navy plans to capture a stricken U-boat, U-571, which carried the Enigma coding device, the unbreakable Enigma code allows the Nazis to control the shipping lanes. The mission is to impersonate Germans and disguise their U.S. submarine as a Nazi U-boat, get to the broken U-571 before the German rescuers can, capture the sub with a boarding party, grab Enigma and sink the sub. However, the operation goes disastrously wrong. When their sub is torpedoed, they're left without a ride home and are forced to take the U-571, they have to play a deadly cat-and-mouse game through unfriendly waters and take the Enigma machine home.

Directed and co-written by Jonathan Mostow, U-571 is a 2000 World War II submarine film with high action sea battles, fast pacing plots, and impressive sound design and editing. The film's soundscape was well crafted with incredible attention to detail to match the psychological tension between the crew and their unseen enemy. The atmosphere was filled with painstaking sonar pings and depth charges dropping into the water, and the scraping sound of the metal hull, all mixed to ear-splitting Dolby magnificence. The film is a commercial success with a box office of $127 million with a budget of $62 million and is reasonably well-received by critics. However, the basic storyline is so controversial that it attracted substantial criticism since it was mostly British efforts to capture the German navy's "Enigma" code machine from one of the U-boats in the Battle of the Atlantic. After digging into the story behind the scene, I think this 20 years old movie is underrated by criticism. It is a thrilling and suspenseful film with an authentic depiction both visually and acoustically of the claustrophobia and terror of being inside a submarine. At the 73rd Academy Awards, this film was nominated for Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing and won the Sound Editing award.

Jonathan Mostow spent three years researching WWII submarines, "Although my primary goal was to create the visceral experience of being aboard a WWII submarine," Mostow said in one of his interviews, "I also wanted to give the audience a taste of some of the fascinating strategic aspects that occurred during the Battle of the Atlantic." The idea of war movies is usually involved with tests of men's masculinity, and their ability to keep themselves together under extreme tensions. "It's about half-inch thick steel pressure hulls that creaked and groaned and crushed like eggshells if the subs went too deep. It's about torpedoes and depth charge explosions and the terror of battle” (Mel Lambert, 2000).

The supervising sound editor on the project was Jon Johnson. His intension was to take the audience to the heart of this old submarine, hundreds of feet below the Atlantic. He realized there was a lot of off-stage sound effects, and he kept asking himself, "How do we get that unique diesel smell into the movie?" They visited Los Angeles Harbor to record the sound of steel containers being loaded, uploaded, and dropped. "We recorded the sounds of boats moving through the L.A. Harbor," Johnson recalls in his interview, "All in all, we recorded some 50-60 hours of location-effects recordings." He also used dry ice to create the sounds of underwater bubbles. "Melted dry ice in water sounds far more realistic - 'good color' - than compressed air” (Mel Lambert, 2000).

In order to achieve the best authentic sound effects, Johnson also researched different sort of power plants used on submarines, both German and American, "I also learned about the batteries, diesel engines, gear shafts, plus the pneumatic and hydraulic systems used for the periscopes. I then drew up a list of the sounds we need to record specifically for the film." Johnson offers. "Jonathan likes 'moments' in his films - small textures that underscore what's happening on the screen, and which can be highlighted by the soundtrack." In the end, the sound project for U-571 was enormous; there are around 100-plus tracks for backgrounds, with additional 250 stereo elements of sound effects and 75 tracks of torpedo sounds (Mel Lambert, 2000).

The submarine film is a sub-genre of the war film, some 150 submarine films have been made between 1910 and 2010, variously depicting relatively realistic stories through World War I, World War II or the Cold War, ether in fictional or fantastic scenarios(Koldau, Linda Maria, 2010). One of the most captivating critical features in this genre is its unique sound design, as in the submarine world, it is a world of sound. Sound serves to perceive and define the surroundings both in the real world and the fictional world. Sound in submarine films has crucial dramatic and emotive functions. As the psychological tension among the submarine's crew and their deadly enemy, unfriendly nature, and their fate, are signified by the soundscape designed around them; the creaking sound of the metallic hull under extreme pressure; the threatening sound signatures of a destroyer's propellor; the deep explosive sound waves of depth charges, and meanwhile the characteristic of the soundscape is acoustically enhanced by the quiet, regular, distorted, and almost alien-like "aquatic" sound in the atmosphere(Koldau, Linda Maria, 2010).

Among those effects, the most iconic sound is the ping of sonar. It is the sound cue before every attack, reverberating aftermath and ensuing, suspenseful silence, and has become the very icon of submarine life since Wolfgang Petersen's famous film Das Boot(Koldau, Linda Maria, 2010). The ping in the film Das Boot is a highly artificial sound effect: it took the sound designers great pains to create this effect by combining nine different soundtracks that were partly accelerated or decelerated(Koldau, Linda Maria, 2010).

In U-571, the ping is mainly used as a diegetic sound, which is the "real" sound from the hunter destroyer above them. The most impressive scene with the use of sonar ping sound is the last depth charge scene in the latter part of the movie when the destroyer finds out they had been deceived into a trap, there is a sudden acceleration of sonar scanning, and the tension inside the sub has significantly been expanding as if the sub crews are hearing the footsteps of the death. After that, there is a deadly silence. The sound effect was used brilliantly to achieve thrilling suspense under this scenario. In other submarine movies, the ping sound of the sonar can also be used as "harmless" underwater settings, and the most popularly used is the opening scene of Titanic. The combination of the sonar ping sound and propulsion noise in the atmosphere that turns the sound effect into an expressive device, and it stands for the hunt, for fear, and for death(Koldau, Linda Maria, 2010).

One of my favorite scenes in U-571 in terms of the sound aspects is the seven minutes long opening scene. As an opener, it quickly presents submarine service extremes for the German U boat U-571, which is giving a sneak attack at an oil tanker from Allies. As the crew's exhilaration at a direct hit, suddenly, the U boat is followed by the horror of an attack by depth charges from a British destroyer nearby, which heavily damages the boat. The sound is very dynamic in this scene, as there are only two scenarios, being "inside" and being "outside," there is a clear contrast between the "inside" and the "outside" of the sub. Figuratively, the "inside" means survival and safe, and diegetic sounds like an engine, and mechanical sounds are mainly used. Whereas "outside" means danger from the enemy, and the lower frequency "aquatic" atmosphere sound dominates the scene.

Two moments are nearly silent, but each silence has a unique meaning, the first silence in the sub is the sneak attack, this moment of silence means safe from the outside. The second silence is after the British destroyer has detected the sub, and the sub is evading from the depth charges, the crews have to remain silent so that the destroyer will not hear them from sonar, this moment of silence means desperation for hope. In terms of the music, there are two different types of instruments used here; the strings are used in the beginning part of the scene to build up the tension and suspense. When the destroyer has chased the sub, the drum is used to amplify the intensive action scenario. When the sub is heavily damaged, a piece of intensive orchestral music is played in the background to signify the damage and the struggle from the crew.

Here is a breakdown of this scene:

• The scene starts with a shot underwater, the opening is underlaid by music and a reverberating sound effect, and it is this sound that leads the audience directly into the underwater world. 
• Suddenly, the film title comes up in white letters, "U-571", with a deep horn sound reverberates in the background. 
• The image cuts to an extreme close up of an eye, the audience enters the world of the U boat, under a dimmed red light, the captain is looking through the periscope, it is dead silent in the control room, there is a slight mechanical sound in the background, and some fluid is passing through tubes. 
• The captain is giving orders to his crew, and they are whispering to pass down to every battle station. 
• A string instrument is playing in the background to build up the tension.
• There is a sound of switches on the control panel. Crews are adjusting the perimeter of the torpedo, to change its speed and direction. 
• Suddenly it cuts into the torpedo room, a sudden jump in the volume, it is much noisier than the control room, there are steam sound and high pitch twisting sound for the mechanical parts.  
• Submarine's torpedo launching doors are opened, it is the dimmed aquatic sound with low frequency in the background, and the boat's propulsion sound is underwater.
• It is deadly silent in the control room, and there is a sound of timer starts to tick. 
• Captain orders to fire the torpedo, there is a scratching sound of torpedo and the launch tube, the torpedo is gliding through water. 
• After the count down, there is a deep explosion comes far away, the sonic layer is impactful, with a low-frequency sound effect reverberating, there is a sound of metal collapsing from the ship's hull.
• Suddenly, the irregular sonar sound breaks the excitement of the crew. They become extremely terrified, the alarm has been sounded, and the silence breaks, and everyone starts moving and yelling, very unsettling. 
• The sound of sonar keeps coming in the background, the captain gives the order to dive, and crews are running towards the front of the sub in order to lower the front and speed up the dive. It becomes very noisy, with running, yelling, the music instrument has been changed into drums. 
• After every crew is in their position, the control room becomes quiet again. The captain starts to eat an unpeeled orange. 
• The music instrument changes back into strings. The captain keeps giving the order, the crew whispers to pass down, the proportion sound has become louder to signify the destroyer is coming very close. 
• Sonar technician warns the captain there is depth charge around them, and there comes a slight explosion that seems to be far from them. It is the moment of silence, where the crews are almost freezing, they look petrified, starring above them, we can even hear water dripping down.  
• One explosion after another, and it becomes louder and louder, the shockwave starts to impact the body of the U boat and everything in the frame starts to tremble, the hull starts to bend. There is an oil leak in the engine room.  
• A few depth charges explode very close to the submarine, causing damage inside the tube, a spark that triggers fire in the engine room. Intensive music starts to kick in, and alarms are everywhere, it has become an emergency that the captain has to order the submarine to resurface. 
• With a splashing sound, the reverberating deep aquatic sound is fading out, and the U-571 resurfaces in the ocean.  

In conclusion, the acoustic part of the film is a complex system that is engaged to create the soundscape to match the psychological tension between the characters and surroundings. Although U-571's historical detours have left some people feeling a bit lost, the movie did an impressive job at managing the claustrophobic discomfort for submariners in the state of extreme pressure in terms of the sound design. Sound in submarine settings is unique and has both dramatic and emotive functions. Meanwhile, the aquatic surroundings offer ideal conditions to experiment with the modification and distortion of sound, which again has a considerable emotional impact on the audience.