Blindspotting is a movie about two life-long friends in a rapidly gentrifying Oakland, California, whose relationship is challenged and tested after one of them witnesses a fatal police shooting of an unarmed black man.
Directed by Carlos López Estrada and cowritten and starring Rafael Casal and Daveed Diggs, Blindspotting received this year’s Dolby Family Sound Fellowship. The grant supported the filmmakers in augmenting the sound design and mixing the film in Dolby Atmos.
The grant, administered by the Dolby Institute, allowed the filmmakers to explore and express the importance of sound in telling this complex story. “The sound changes and evolves from the first day [of the story] to the second day to the third day,” said Estrada. “And the music you hear, the sounds you hear, the city around it changes as these characters are learning more and more about what’s going on.”