A Ferrari doing revs in the background, drunk people engaged in lively conversations, or a boat whistle in the distance – during the post-production of highly appraised Netflix series The Helicopter Heist, Rasmus Winther Jensen would listen to hours of street recordings to find sounds that could be used to create a real-world, authentic feel. “I need to establish realism first. Then I start looking to escape it and create something poetic, something larger than life”.

Rasmus, we’ll dig into your sound work on The Helicopter Heist shortly, but first, what is your professional title?

My main title combines being a sound supervisor and a sound designer. So, those two, which could be different jobs in other parts of the world, are the same for me.

As the sound supervisor, I am responsible for picking the team, looking at the budget, planning, hiring people, and so on. Then there’s the sound design aspect, which I consider to be more hands-on – doing stuff with sounds, creating sounds, working with sound and music.

And, I work a lot with music. I would say, to add to what I do with Daniel (Espinoza, director of The Helicopter Heist and film school classmate of Rasmus’, Editor’s note), it’s not exactly being a music supervisor, but I do a lot of music-related tasks – finding music, placing it, and building around it. We treat it a little bit like atmospheres or backgrounds.

On The Helicopter Heist, I worked closely with music supervisor Allan Montan to find music fitting into the film’s ambiance and rhythm. If you look at the beginning of episode 1, there’s a lot of score music, and then there’s a lot of songs, like the Nina Simone song and a classical track. There’s so much stuff going on, and that’s me and Allan, and Theis Schmidt, the editor, and Jon Ekstrand, the composer, playing around, really like playing around like a band.

What led you to this profession?

I started as a music engineering apprentice at Sweet Silence Studios in Copenhagen in 1994. I was interested in technical stuff and also in capturing emotions and performances. And I had a fascination for microphones and all that. Then, around ’98-’99, the whole music industry changed a lot and many big studios closed. At that point, I had just discovered that there were guys working with sound for film, and as it happened, I was super lucky to get into the National Film School of Denmark. It’s a four-year school, and you can choose exactly what you want to do, like sound editing, from the beginning. It’s a very craft-focused school but you do it in a kind of laboratory environment where you can test, make mistakes, and do research. I started from scratch and had no preconceived ideas about what to expect or do. I was open, ready to pick up on all this crazy stuff.

In film school, I met Daniel Espinoza, Jon Ekstrand, and Theis Schmidt. The four of us made our mid-term movie and graduation film, so the team working with The Helicopter Heist was formed in 2001. Right after film school, we made our first movie with Daniel. So that’s how it all started, and then we just went on.

You’ve been nominated multiple times for Danish Sound Designer of the Year, and two years ago, you won the award. What do you think has made you successful?

It’s hard to see myself as successful, but I think I’ve had a good life with this. Already in film school, we created a work environment where you feel safe. If you don’t feel safe – if you feel stressed or insecure or have all this other kind of bad energy influencing your day – I don’t think you will be able to take chances and develop. I think it’s super, super important to take chances, develop, make mistakes, and challenge the way that people think and the way that people want you to work.

When we started, it felt like people wanted to put us into little boxes in Excel columns and rows, saying, ‘No, you have to do it like this because we did another movie exactly like this, and it turned out really good.’ We struggled a little bit with those concepts of doing everything the same way. But every time we were together with this team, I felt we could push these boundaries a lot. Of course, when you feel like, ‘OK, you can do this,’ and you feel like, ‘I’m in charge here, my word actually counts,’ then you can start to make stuff that’s brave and has a unique approach in some way, which is very much about what we do – trying to create something unique: the process, the sounds, everything, the whole approach.

So, if I were to say that I’m feeling successful, it’s through these long-term work relationships that we’ve built and supported each other through these 20 years. We’ve told each other that we are good. Someone like Daniel or Theis, would say, ‘Rasmus, remember, there are only maybe five people in the world that can do what you do.’ They would say stuff like that, and they would mean it. So, starting in film school, we built this safe space where you can experiment, be brave, and never be afraid of making mistakes.

Would you say that’s essential for those in creative fields?

I don’t see any way that you can be creative if you are under stress. You cannot be truly artistic and creative if you have some kind of fear or stress in your body. I feel very strongly that once you’re stressed, you only want to get rid of that feeling, which might lead you to deliver something that is not good enough.

How do you know when something is good enough? How do you develop such a compass within yourself that says, ‘Okay, I know this is good’?

It’s more like a hunch. A feeling that there is some space in a scene or montage where we can do something extraordinary. You go with that hunch, find something, and then I will test it on Theis and Daniel.

But of course, I know inside myself when a scene is going in the right direction. There were some moments like that in The Helicopter Heist. For instance, there’s a dancing scene between Rami, one of the main characters, and his wife. There was no music on it, and I found a piece of music from Freddie Wadling and Anna Ternheim, a duet. I put it on, and it was magical, but I wasn’t sure if it was cheesy, so I checked in with the others. And they liked it.

This ‘hunch’, is that something that you can develop?

This is my talent, you know. I think you can develop it, but for me, it is to always look at the material and consider if there is room for doing something extraordinary. That’s where the hunch comes in. Many scenes are straightforward, but then sometimes you have this moment of, ‘Oh, let me try this.’ At the beginning of The Helicopter Heist, Jon had done a fantastic score. Rami was in a specific situation, and my first hunch was to play a Quincy Jones song. Daniel liked it, and we were just going to send it to Netflix. He was like, ‘Did you send it? I need this in, please put it in.’ He got super excited, and this was something that came out of the blue and stayed in the cut for a long time.

Do you think that experience adds to the hunch?

I think you can still have the hunch, but with experience, you have more tools to realize that feeling. For example, ten years ago, maybe I wouldn’t have used this Nina Simone song. It’s about the little elements you pick up from other projects and life. It’s about finding a sound or a song that can elevate a scene to the next level. Sound in a film is largely about creating a real-world, authentic feel, and then there are those moments where you take it to another level. Typically, for me, it involves finding a space where the audience can reflect, maybe just for 10 seconds, on what they have seen or felt, and filling that space with the right sound or music. I think those moments are where the real emotions emerge. Most of the time, the audience is following the action, but sometimes we need 20 seconds of just an aerial view of a city and a moment to reflect.

The sounds and the songs that you use during your work, how do you know what to choose? How does that work?

For this show (The Helicopter Heist, Editor’s note), we wanted it to have a unique feel, not only in Sweden but also outside of Sweden. That’s why I thought it would be great to have Swedish songs, so someone in Brazil or somewhere else would think this is super exotic. I just knew, like, with Anna Ternheim, I had a feeling that songs by her would create that if I found the right song. Freddie Wadling, I always wanted to include, and this time, I did. We also used Lisa Ekdahl playing in the background for a specific reason.

I was a little bit inspired by True Detective. I think they did a really good job in the last season of having source music that added a very female, very fragile kind of feel to the whole show. I thought The Helicopter Heist could be a very male world, and I wanted to contribute to it not being that, to play a lot on a kind of female vibe and love and relationships.

But besides wanting to make it feel Swedish in sound and music, I also tried to date it to 2009 when the actual heist occurred. We contacted journalists who helped us find radio and TV stuff. The first thing I stumbled upon was the financial crisis in the late ‘00s. I thought, ‘Hey, this is great, this directly plays into our story. He’s struggling with the economy, and this will take people back to 2009’.

For me, that was a great idea, and we got it in. We played around with it. It’s authentic, it takes you back to 2009, and it ties into the story of people struggling. We didn’t use it a lot, but we really tried. It got a little bit in the way of the main story sometimes, but we have it in. We also found out that the heist was covered on the radio the morning it took place, and that people could follow updates on the ongoing police investigation. We developed a whole radio concept aligning with what was aired at the time to take people back to 2009. If you look at episodes 7 and 8, there’s also real, authentic radio stuff that was used. I think that’s brilliant.

Do you have a strong interest in music? Is it like you have your own internal sound and song catalog?

During the phase when we’re just sitting and investigating, I listened to a lot of music. It’s something nice to do at night when everything else from the day is done. Just sit down and browse and take notes. From experience, I know I can listen to 100 songs and filter out five that would work. Then, I would test it the next day, or sometimes if I found something that was really good, I would test it immediately.

It’s so specific what works. It has to be very simple, and it must communicate so precisely. That kind of music is like you can almost turn it down, play it through the basement, and it will still convey those emotions. With the Nina Simone song even, the lyrics areis a perfect match. The main line is something like “I wish I knew how it would feel to be free” and that is exactly what these guys are going through at that point in the series.

We tried probably 50 other songs. And many were pretty close but none of them were a perfect fit. In the end, Daniel called me and said, ‘Rasmus, this is not working. Could we just get the Nina Simone song?’ And we got a pretty good deal for using that song.

What part would you say that sound plays in the storytelling of a movie?

For me, when I work with Daniel and this kind of fiction, it’s a lot about creating a genuine and authentic world. Working with the audio of The Helicopter Heist I knew I needed to get a lot of sounds from Stockholm. There are no big libraries of Stockholm sounds available, so that was one of the first things I thought about – how to build that. In a way, for the movie to be present and engaging and draw the audience in, you need to create a presence of the characters and also the rooms they are in. Every room should have a sound and every character should have a sound. The scenes should have a sound that defines them, so you know, ‘OK, in this scene, this is the story,’ and then the story moves on to the next scene, where there is a different sound, a different story. By doing this, everything doesn’t just blend together.

This – that you always feel the presence of the real world in the movie – is one of the most important things for me. And that is probably the most essential part of helping the story. But you can also use sound to help make the story clear. Get rid of dialogue that is not needed, make it really clear. Ultimately, we want to create emotions. Once the story and the things going on are clear and precise, you have more room for feelings. I think that is a fun part of working with sound. It’s like you orchestrate different elements to create room for feelings.

How was the sound team set up during the post-production of The Helicopter Heist?

Before we even started, I contacted Hans Möller, who I chose to be my primary co-worker throughout the project. He’s a good friend and very experienced. I choose my team primarily based on personality. Of course, they have certain skills, but I really want people who have good energy, are fun to work with, and are flexible. I want to work with people who make my life more fun and less stressful and are ready to go with the flow. I think that’s super important.

I’m not going to dictate precisely how things are going to happen. I will listen to and feel the natural flow. For example, episode 6 has totally different needs than episodes 1 and 2. It’s a one-shot kind of episode that goes on in real-time. It’s a totally different thing compared to other episodes.

Also, I try to work with people that I know well. Kasper Janus Rasmussen, the sound effects editor in this project, has been with us all the way back . He knows this energy, he knows these pictures, we have the same taste. For a series of this sort, there needs to be a lively, authentic energy, like really lively stuff going on. To achieve that, we need the same mindset. Which we have.

What were the biggest challenges in creating the soundscape for this series?

This was my first series, and I felt pretty sure there would be moments where we would be under a lot of pressure. It’s a very big series with a lot of interest from stakeholders. I looked at the schedule and knew that I needed to create enough space for us to be creative. Once it starts rolling, it’s really hard to find time. It’s my responsibility to make sure I can find the time in the schedule to be creative and do the things expected of me, which can be difficult under a lot of stress or pressure even though it’s not stress in a bad way; it’s just that there are episodes to finish. So, what we did is that we started early. I started three months before I was actually scheduled to start, doing sound with the editors.

Another challenge was capturing the sounds of Stockholm. First, we had to figure out what we needed and what could be fun. I have a very practical, one-to-one approach, so we started by looking at the material and locations. Early on, I got in contact with Swedish sound effects recordist Sara Kristoffersson and Tomas Kierkegaard from Pole Position, who is also a sound effects recordist, and asked them if they could help me out with recordings. Sara knows Stockholm well, and she did amazing stuff. It was winter, so it was a little off compared to what we needed in terms of season, but there was enough stuff you could do, like indoors and trains. I spent a lot of time working with these two to capture what we thought would be the sound of Stockholm.

Also, in 2009, we did Snabba Cash – same crew, same setup – so I have a good sound library from Stockholm in 2009. So, we had these three big chunks – Tomas’ recordings, Sara’s recordings, and the library from Snabba Cash – that we could use to create the sounds of Stockholm. With Sara and Tomas, I just asked them to go out and record, and then we’d see what they got. Real life never disappoints; you always get something you wouldn’t know beforehand. It’s not like, ‘Hey, go get a car passing around the corner,’ but it’s about vibes and energy. We would try to inspire them to go places where crazy stuff would happen. Random stuff is what we’re looking for because it adds authenticity.

And what kind of sounds can help you create an authentic atmosphere?

What we’re looking for here is real-life authenticity and energy, and that’s something that happens by chance. We’re looking for random stuff that you pick up when you put up a microphone and start recording. I would say to them, ‘Just let it roll for 10-15 minutes. Sit down, just let it roll,’ and then at some point, somebody would scream, or something unexpected would happen. Like one of Tomas’ recordings, we were looking for a club kind of environment for the series, typically Stockholm at night in late spring or early summer when people are out in the streets. He would go out during the right season and sounds like a Ferrari or some other car doing crazy revs in the background would be recorded. I could never have orchestrated this, but we captured it because he was there. I would listen to hours and hours of recordings for these moments.

So, what I’m looking for are just these moments. It could be a train, and the moment it passes by, it blows its horn, or a boat whistle in the distance – just something with character. That’s what you want to capture. People just walking by and talking about life or yelling or partying or being drunk or whatever. That is hard to copy and it’s difficult to find in commercial libraries so that’s what I’m looking for in these kinds of recordings.

When you start working on a scene, do you have a vision of where you want to go and what the sound should be like in the scene?

Most of the time, we start with what we see. We build on the natural story of the scene – where are they in the story, where are they physically, and what’s going on. If I don’t know exactly, I would talk to somebody in Sweden, like, ‘What is Hötorget like? What does it sound like? What’s happening over there?’ I build from a really realistic approach, and then somebody would say, ‘OK, Hötorget, that’s a nice place. It’s a big square where they have these vendors selling fruits and vegetables.’ When we did this kind of scene sequence, I remember thinking a lot about Bourne movies. Whenever you think about a lot of sound, a lot of stuff going on, you just think about Bourne, at least for me. And I was like, I talked to Daniel and said, ‘Hey, shouldn’t we, shouldn’t it be like Bourne?’ And he was like, ‘Yeah, of course, it should be like Bourne.’ And then we built on that, and I had Sara go over to Hötorget a lot of times, just hoping that at some point when she was there, there would be these vendors just yelling in the right way or creating the right kind of feeling.

So, we start with making the scene come alive, and once you have established that realism, you start to look for how to escape the realism. But for me, I need to establish realism first. Then, I will see where the moment is where you can have something poetic, something larger than life, or some movement away from the ordinary. Maybe these guys meet, and they haven’t seen each other for 10 years, and obviously, you would have something there. It could be music, but it could also be just the world fading away a little bit.

You mention the Bourne franchise. How much does other movies and TV series inspire your work?

The biggest inspiration for me on a project like this besides the project itself, is the people I work with. Daniel, Theis and Jon. We would call each other almost every morning, exchange ideas and give each other a peptalk. And then, working with Daniel is very inspiring in itself, the way he makes the scenes, lots of movements, authenticity and energy.

But of course, we try to draw on influences. For The Helicopter Heist, we talked a lot about Melville movies like Le Cercle Rouge or Le Samouraï. They’re French gangster movies from, I don’t know, the ’50s or so. There’s a lot of attention to detail in them, and we really like that, and one of us would bring that up like, ‘Hey, do you remember we watched those movies in film school?’ It’s more like that, rather than something I’ve recently seen in the cinema.

On The Helicopter Heist you also used sounds from Pole Position. How did you get in touch with them?

Through a Danish sound effects recordist, Mikkel Nielsen. He’s specialized in sfx recording, and he’s helped me with many projects involving recording stuff, including key elements for The Helicopter Heist. He knows a lot of people in that community. When I asked him if he knew somebody who could help me with sounds from Stockholm, he suggested I call Max (CEO of Pole Position, Editor’s note). I called Max and asked him, ‘You have all these amazing sounds, but they are pretty expensive your libraries. Is there any way I can just go check it out without purchasing all the libraries?’ He was like, ‘Of course.’

Then I listened to stuff and tried things out, and in the end, we made a deal for what we used. Then later on, we were looking for another recordist because Sara wasn’t available, and Max suggested Tomas could help out and that worked out great.

About sound libraries, what do you think makes a high-quality sound library?

In the last five years, many independent people just put smaller libraries for sale for 10, 20, or $50. So, when I’m looking for the music of chance or randomness, I can just buy five different libraries and listen through them. Sometimes, all you need is one guy yelling, coughing, or laughing, and they work fine.

When looking for backgrounds, environments, and the things that make scenes come alive, it’s hard to say. I’m looking for randomness, long takes where just the right amount of stuff is happening. But when it comes to specific sound effects, like specific cars, helicopters, or guns, those are the ones Pole is really good at. For example, what Pole does and what helped me considerably during the work with this series is that they deliver a mult-itrack recording of the helicopter. And since that provides me with 10 different perspectives, I can balance and mix the same recording. That helped us a lot. Especially on episode 6, when there’s a lot of helicopter stuff going on – hovering, landing, taking off again, etc. – and I could mix between close and far away, more engine sounds or rotor sounds. That was helpful.

Comprehensive metadata according to the standards is super relevant and very helpful. Also, I like pictures. When I worked with Sara and Tomas, I always asked them to take pictures of every recording location. To get a feeling of what the environment and ambiance are like inspires me.

The Helicopter Heist premiered last November and immediately became one of the most-viewed series on Netflix. It also received great reviews from critics. Having been part of such a successful project, what are your key takeaways?

I am very happy with how we did this! We managed to do this our way, taking chances and building experience, learning, and constantly improving. We had a great team of both experienced and younger people, which created a dynamic, fun, and flexible work environment. Theis would often say when we discussed how to move forward, “Just pick something that feels fun and inspiring right now, and let’s work from there.“ I think that was pretty good advice.