From Kimberworth to Hollywood – BAFTA winner Tarn is off to the Oscars

A former Thomas Rotherham College student who works as an international sound production engineer and has already bagged awards including a joint BAFTA for his work on a critically acclaimed film is hoping it will be third time lucky at this weekend's Academy Awards.

Tarn Willers, who today lives in Warsaw but grew up in Kimberworth, took the title for Best Sound Design with Johnnie Burn in the European Film Awards, held in Berlin in December, for their work on historical drama The Zone of Interest.

Last month the duo took home a BAFTA for best sound, despite being up against Hollywood big-hitters including Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, at the glittering ceremony in London.

And now the pair are off to Los Angeles for the 96th Academy Awards after a third nomination in the same category.

The Zone of Interest has garnered a number of five star reviews including from the Guardian which called it a “a brutal masterpiece”, while Empire hailed it as “striking and unforgettable.”

Written and directed by Jonathan Glazer, and loosely based on the 2014 novel by Martin Amis, the film stars Christian Friedel as the German Nazi commandant Rudolf Höss and Sandra Hüller as wife Hedwig as they build a dream life for their family – in a home next to the horrors of Auschwitz concentration camp, which are never seen but heard.

Tarn (51) – whose previous credits include 2014's war drama Fury with Brad Pitt and BBC TV series W1A – describes the shooting as “unconventional” with concealed static cameras filming in the house and garden, and quotes the director as chillingly saying the process “was like Big Brother in a Nazi house.”

Of the soundscape he says: “I made the film you 'see' (in the house and garden), Johnnie made the film that you 'hear' (machinery, shots and shouts from the camp).”

Johnnie had “meticulously researched” archive material to ensure the shouts of the people in the concentration camp were in the correct accent based on which nationalities lived nearest to the house such as French or Czech.

He also went to and recorded a third division German football match to capture the “aggressive sounds of men shouting."

“His research went to that level of detail,” says Tarn.

“There was no library (audio) material,” he added. “What I recorded in the house were the sounds of the people and the building and the garden,

“Jonathan wanted that level of authenticity.”

He and Johnnie had not expected to win at the BAFTAs, with the film being a “European art-house outlier.”

“We were up against big-budget Hollywood movies like Oppenheimer,” said Tarn, “Great-sounding movies made by multiple award-winning and nominated sound crews at the top of their craft.”

The experience was “surreal,” he said, adding: “I'm just a kid from Kimberworth!

“When they read the winning name out, all I heard was 'The' and then there were screams all around us and colleagues jumping up and down.

“Getting the BAFTA for sound means everybody (on The Zone of Interest) got it because the way we worked was so collaborative.

“Costume and make-up used hidden mics, production design painted over cables for us so a bit of the BAFTA is for all of them.”

After studying at Old Hall – now Winterhill School – and Thomas Rotherham, Tarn went to University of Sunderland before attending the National Film and Television School in Beaconsfield.

His first job was working on hit ITV drama Footballers' Wives, which broadcast from 2002 to 2006.

“As a student you think you know lots of stuff,” he said.

“You go on a set and find out how very little you know when you're doing 12 hours of hard work.

“But being from Rotherham I'm not scared of hard work!”

And of the Oscars ceremony this weekend – where he'll be taking his nine-year-old daughter as his plus one?

“Being nominated alone means people have noticed the film, people have acknowledged it and are talking about it – it's all creating interest in it.”