the director and one of the actors in “A Quiet Place."

What you're watching now is

at the very beginning of the movie.

This is our hero family walking home

from a — now established as an abandoned town.

And this sort of sets up a lot of the rules of the movie,

one of which you're seeing right here,

which is the idea of perspective and sound.

[light footsteps]

When we're close up on something,

you can really hear it.

And then when you go to a wider shot,

you can't hear that exact same sound,

which is one of the things we really loved doing

throughout the whole movie.

We shot this film in Upstate New York.

The idea was to be in a very rural area in sort

of a post-apocalyptic time to feel isolation.

And so being in the middle of nowhere

helps this family feel like they're in the middle of nowhere.

And it adds tension, I think, to the fact that

they have nowhere to turn or nobody around them to help them.

Sound design in this is huge.

It's totally a main character that is right along

here with the family.

So Millie, one of the actresses, is a deaf actress.

And we're about to do one of my favorite things in the movie,

which is play with her perspective.

We wanted the sound of the movie to

reflect her own actual experience.

So you can hear sound when you're walking with Emily and I, like this,

and with Noah.

[light footsteps]

And then right here, you cut to Millie, and we pull sound out.

So we're in “the envelope," we called it — the envelope

being in her head, she can hear very little thanks

to a hearing aid that she has.

But she can't hear much of anything.

And so we play with that throughout the entire movie.

So she can't tell that there's a sound being

made behind her right now.

And so this is her perspective — seeing me run,

seeing me look scared, but she doesn't know why.

And then she realizes right here.

And when she realizes is that her little brother just

made the first big sound of the movie.

And you can see that that sound has horrible consequences.

[music]