The secret behind the ‘Bwam’ sound effect in Christopher Nolan’s ‘Inception’
There are few filmmakers with the same dedication to cinematic innovation as Christopher Nolan, the mind behind such classic modern movies as 2023’s Oppenheimer, 2014’s Interstellar and 2008’s The Dark Knight. Often working with the latest technologies, whilst also having a deep admiration for the history of the moving image, only the likes of Denis Villeneuve, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg can compare to his ambition.
To match his ambition, Nolan surrounds himself with a number of equally innovative creatives, including cinematographer Wally Pfister and his regular composer Hans Zimmer. All three of these creatives have collaborated on such movies as The Prestige, the celebrated Dark Knight trilogy and the 2010 sci-fi Inception, which may well be Nolan’s most innovative films to date.
A notoriously complex blockbuster, Inception tells the story of a thief who steals corporate secrets through the power of dreams and his near-impossible mission to plant an idea into the mind of a CEO. It might sound ridiculous, but Nolan’s film really comes together, largely as a result of its tremendous lead cast, which includes the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Elliot Page.
Yet, aside from the spectacular ‘Revolving Corridor’ scene, Inception is best known for its soundtrack, which ‘Bwam’ sound effect was ripped and copied in countless movies in the following years.
The iconic soundtrack underlines the ethereal terror of the movie, becoming a sensational beat to much of the film’s epic action set pieces. Created by Zimmer, few fans of Inception will realise that the effect was sampled from the classic Édith Piaf song ‘Non, je ne regrette rien’.
“He had the Édith Piaf always written in the script, the ‘da-da, da-da,’” Zimmer said of Nolan in an interview with The New York Times, “It was like huge foghorns over a city, and afterward you would maybe figure out that they were related”.
Continuing, he adds: “I had to go and extract these two notes out of a recording…I love technology, so it was a lot of fun for me to go and get the original master out of the French national archives. And then find some crazy scientist in France who would actually go and take that one cell out of the DNA”.
Inception would go on to earn $870million at the box office, a vast amount for a movie based on an original screenplay, and would also earn itself a ‘Best Picture’ nomination.
Speaking in further detail about the soundtrack, Zimmer adds: “All the music in the score is subdivisions and multiplications of the tempo of the Edith Piaf track…I was surprised how long it took them to figure it out…[It] wasn’t supposed to be a secret”.
Take a look at a video below that breaks down the use of the Edith Piaf song in the Inception soundtrack below.
