Sound keeps building the scene even when the camera does not show its source. Stateman and Cohen work on that relationship between what is visible and what is heard.
Wylie Stateman and Harry Cohen began their collaboration with Quentin Tarantino on Kill Bill. Stateman has taken on sound editing supervision, and Cohen sound design duties. Their responsibilities complement each other: organizing the construction of the soundtrack and developing materials capable of expressing an action, a space, or a perspective. Their continuity on the team does not allow every sound in a film, created through many different crafts, to be automatically attributed to them.
In a 2016 interview with Matthew Toffolo, Stateman described his work as a creative coordination that accompanies sound from planning through delivery. That perspective helps us understand that the soundtrack needs an overall organization. A nearby voice, a song, and a distant ambient sound can coexist, but the scene changes depending on which one demands our attention at a given moment.
Supervising, designing, and mixing are different responsibilities
Supervision needs to maintain an overall view: which elements are needed, how they relate, and which decisions must be coordinated with other departments. Sound design may focus on creating a particular identity for an action or on transforming materials so they work within the film. The final mix organizes levels, positions, and relationships among elements. These tasks are in dialogue, but their credits are not synonymous.
Nor do they mean the production sound recording. The voices recorded during filming belong to another stage and to other professionals, even if they later require editing and processing. Confusing all crafts under the label “sound” makes invisible the chain of decisions that allows a conversation to be heard clearly while the ambience, music, and actions surrounding it remain active.
In Kill Bill, that chain can produce very different results. A hit can feel dry and close; another can belong to an exaggerated stylization of combat. Footsteps can warn of a presence or be absorbed by the music. The choice does not always respond to the volume the object would have in real life. It also responds to the information and energy the scene needs to convey.
The viewer's experience depends on contrasts. If everything demands attention with the same intensity, it becomes difficult to recognize what is changing. A relatively quiet moment can prepare for an eruption; a continuous ambient sound can make its disappearance noticeable. Stateman and Cohen work within a cinema that uses those differences to move from conversation to threat without a verbal explanation announcing each transition.
Inglourious Basterds: the sound of one film inside another
The Nation's Pride, the propaganda film projected within Inglourious Basterds, needs to stand apart from the world that contains it. Its sonic identity helps us recognize a representation crafted to excite Nazi audiences. The wartime actions it shows have spectators within the fiction, while we also observe the conditions of its screening. That difference in position changes what the same gunshots mean to those who hear them.
The difference between the projection and the theater also organizes attention. The viewer hears a wartime representation while knowing dangers that the people in the room ignore. The sound of the film within the film can fill the space and help certain actions go unnoticed within the fiction. In this way, the soundtrack connects two narrative levels that the image alternates between, maintaining the sense that both take place in the same building.
That work requires more than adding a recognizable distortion. The texture has to fit the place from which we are listening and what is happening around it. A voice coming through loudspeakers does not have the same presence as a person standing nearby. The scene can use that difference to shift our attention between representation, audience, and threat. Sonic materiality helps us understand what belongs to each level.
Wylie Stateman's sound design work allows us to examine other specific examples. In a professional profile, it matters to recognize that these effects arise from coordinated decisions and from a conversation with the edit. The soundtrack can provide a continuity that links separate shots or introduce a break that transforms our perception of space without needing to change settings.
Hollywood and a city heard in layers
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood combines traffic, radio, conversations, and television productions. The city does not end at the frame's edges: engines and broadcasts suggest activity that continues beyond it. At the same time, a radio can accompany a character during a trip and give it emotional unity. Sound makes a route that visually crosses different spaces feel inhabitable.
Professional interviews about the film also distinguish Stateman's work from that of the mixers Mike Minkler and Christian Minkler. That precision helps us recognize how the final relationships among the materials are constructed. The listener receives an integrated experience, even though different contributions exist behind it. Analysis of ambient sound, foley, and soundscapes develops those functions without reducing them to a single name.
The collaboration between Stateman and Cohen allows a film to change in sonic density without losing clarity. A room can feel occupied, a street can continue beyond the camera, and a television broadcast can belong to another era. Their work does not simply make violence louder: it organizes what we hear, where it seems to come from, and how much mental space it leaves for what we still cannot see.
More information: Tarantino technical crew.