Arrival

Johann Johannsson and sound designer Sylvain Bellemare built the alien communication in this film around processed vocal and choral textures rather than conventional synthesized effects, so the heptapods sound organic and unsettling instead of mechanical, which keeps the film's linguistic premise credible. Bellemare treated the ship's low-frequency presence as a sound object with its own evolving signature, distinct from the score, so picture and sound design remain separable even when they occupy the same register, a discipline many productions blur under time pressure. Denis Villeneuve reportedly temp-tracked early cuts with Johannsson's prior work, which let the composer write toward an established emotional shape rather than reacting cold to a locked edit, a workflow worth adopting when a director and composer have a long collaborative history. The circular alien script, designed by artist Martine Bertrand, was treated as a visual and conceptual anchor that the sound team then had to answer with an equally non-linear audio logic, avoiding any effect that implied left-to-right or sequential language.

What to watch for

Listen for how the heptapod vocalizations avoid any rhythmic pulse that would suggest linear, sequential language.

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