Tod Maitland, the sound engineer behind the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, spoke about the differences in process for his most recent film, Deliver Me From Nowhere.
The Bruce Springsteen biopic, which stars Jeremy Allen White, centers on Springsteen’s “acoustic triumph,” the 1982 album Nebraska. Unlike for James Mangold’s Dylan film, Maitland worked rigorously with Springsteen to understand his recording process.
The six-time Oscar-nominee stated:
We talked right from the get-go, finding out if he was using headphones during his sessions, how Bruce worked with the microphones, how he recorded the takes. Bruce was very involved; he really wanted this thing to sound exactly like what he did.
Maitland explained how the process was effective because he wanted White’s and Springsteen’s vocals to be intertwined. For authenticity, he used microphones from the period and an old TEAC recorder.
You’re making a movie, but we’re making an album at the same time. And when you make an album, you focus on every little nuance. With A Complete Unknown, we had many things happening at the same time, except for a couple of scenes, but here, except for those moments inside the power plant and onstage, we really don’t have much of that.
Scott Cooper’s Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere was released in the U.S. on October 24, 2025, and is distributed by 20th Century Studios.
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