For TOS, it was normal to have sound FX in space. The relative few space shots without sound effects are the anomalies.
Fact-Checking Inside Star Trek: The Real Story
- Thread starter Harvey
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As usual, a VERY interesting and well sourced read. It also appears the 'Fad 4' (Takei, Nichelle, Doohan, et. al.) were WELL aware of their minor role status ($600 per episode and not guaranteed to be in less than half of the episodes filmed per season.)
Actually in the second and third season (and the latter half of the first), for shots of the Enterprise flying through space, the lack of sound was the norm. The only sound effects were usually weapons and explosions. The rumble you hear now in nearly every episode was added in 1999.
Sounds like (no pun intended) we might have to find an article online to help us settle this!
Awesome as always. None of these books really get it right, do they? Cushman may get the brickbats, but Solow/Justman did their share of sloppy research - and they were there! The Gross/Altman book isn't helping either.
One glitch I noticed: very often you have Mark Clark's name spelled "Marc" like Cushman's. On the FAQ book I have, it's definitely "Mark."
Thanks for another fantastic post. I always look forward to these.
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I don't know how many times I corrcted this error, yet I still made it constantly. Thanks -- I will correct this!
Another one I kept making was calling Nimoy's agent "Alec" Brewis. I clearly have Star Trek fandom's two snake oil salesmen on the mind.
I get the sense that Solow and Justman did some research for their book (mainly in terms of memos pulled for it), but a lot of that book is reliant upon their memories (and the memories of others). As such, you really have to check it before reprinting it (something Clark and Cushman neglected to do).
Nope. I'm finding more and more sloppy mistakes in it (in the sections by the authors), and plenty of snippets which should have been excised on account of being totally false.
Thank you! It takes a lot of work, but I really enjoy writing these.
For you younger people, I suppose. I started ST halfway through season one, first run, then saw reruns through the 70s over and over. With those very early 2 or 3 ep's that had wind sound, or rumbling (I always thought it was breeze created by the ship's passage), I'd always cringe when I heard this. I'd be thankful they did away with this so soon in the course of the show. It's ludicrous that people go to the effort of inserting this basic mistake about space, when they got it right.
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Something I often mutter to myself watching newer SF on film or on TV , or say out loud to people when especially PO'd, is "It's damn noisy in space, isn't it..."
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Fifty is young? Who knew?
To recap, my original claim was:
To clarify, that's a claim, regarding the show overall, based on the perception I had watching the show in syndication while growing up in the 1970s, of the relative frequency of the "jet engine" sound often put in while the ship was in orbit or flying through space. It's a perception that, for whatever reason, was not altered after watching episodes on VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, and/or later reruns.
I was originally speaking about the overall frequency over all seasons as originally aired, so my remark here was in relation to that. I never even had a complete collection of episodes on VHS, and I have no idea where my audio tapes are of the episodes that I recorded in the 1970s, or if they even still work. I think it's a shame that the sound mixes have been altered along the way.
As for why sound was not always put it originally, or why it might have been used less frequently in the later seasons, I seriously doubt that it was because it was more scientifically accurate, though I concede that it could have been. It might well have been done simply to help speed up production, and therefore save money; perhaps someone like @Harvey could address the question at some point.
I've never taken sound in space scenes literally, but just as a dramatic embellishment. I mean, when we hear background music, we don't assume the characters can actually hear it. When there's voiceover narration, the characters can't hear that either, unless it's a comedy that breaks the fourth wall. So I treat sound effects in space as the same kind of non-diegetic element. The story isn't trying to claim you'd actually hear those sounds if you were there, it's just using them for dramatic effect.
Still, I have found it refreshing on those rare occasions when productions like Firefly or Gravity have used soundlessness in space scenes, because it's so rarely attempted. I particularly admired Gravity's sound design.
Still, I have found it refreshing on those rare occasions when productions like Firefly or Gravity have used soundlessness in space scenes, because it's so rarely attempted. I particularly admired Gravity's sound design.
With all that instrumental music and all.
It's certainly dramatic effect, but I think it's also for other reasons, too.
The engine sound tells you that the engines are running. The phaser sound tells you that the phasers are firing. Not only can these sorts of sounds get your attention, but also more importantly they can tell you what's happening, when you're not looking at the screen (or if you can't even see it). So, in many cases it's not just to heighten the drama, it serves a narrative function to communicate what's happening in an extra channel, one that's not always redundant.
Arguably also sounds in space meet the expectations of certain types of viewers and help them buy into the story. Their expectations are the opposite of those who are familiar with the science involved. If they look at a ship powering by on the screen, they expect to hear a sound, in that they feel something is missing if it's not there. Or maybe they just simply prefer it to be there. That would fall under the category of what the artists judge will please their audience more.
With TOS though , the idea wasn't "What will please the audience most?" or he might have just made another Western. SF was a hard sell.
They wanted a certain level of integrity, while partially compromising to the degree needed to draw the public into a kind of show they would not ordinarily care for, but not compromising so much that it undermined what they were trying to accomplish.
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I think soundlessness in space can be dealt with creatively. It just requires more thought now, than it did in the days when only the simplest ship motions could be shown. Now they can show elaborate space battles.
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Sounds from the battle will be heard inside ships... their own weapons firing, the impacts on the ship. Keep cutting back and forth, covering the space silences with music. The audience will be eased pretty painlessly off of needing sound in a vacuum if done right.
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It's all about like the debate over comedy laugh tracks. The audience "expected" them. So we had laughs on all comedies for a couple generations. No one thinks the Simpsons needs canned laughs, though.
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They wanted a certain level of integrity, while partially compromising to the degree needed to draw the public into a kind of show they would not ordinarily care for, but not compromising so much that it undermined what they were trying to accomplish.
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I think soundlessness in space can be dealt with creatively. It just requires more thought now, than it did in the days when only the simplest ship motions could be shown. Now they can show elaborate space battles.
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Sounds from the battle will be heard inside ships... their own weapons firing, the impacts on the ship. Keep cutting back and forth, covering the space silences with music. The audience will be eased pretty painlessly off of needing sound in a vacuum if done right.
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It's all about like the debate over comedy laugh tracks. The audience "expected" them. So we had laughs on all comedies for a couple generations. No one thinks the Simpsons needs canned laughs, though.
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Yeah, that's why I didn't say "most." I said "more," meaning between two given alternatives.
That could be a good parallel.
The idea behind adding sound effects in space scenes was the concern that the scenes would lack drama if they were silent. But I find that when I see shows or films that show space scenes soundlessly, it actually intensifies the impact. After all, we've all seen documentary footage from combat or surveillance footage of crimes, real-life images of intense things happening without our being able to hear them. So silence can actually make a scene feel more real and more compelling than the usual perfectly calibrated sound effects.
(See also Guy Ritchie's The Man from UNCLE, which makes very interesting use of silent -- or rather music-only -- audio in many of the film's fight scenes.)
That's always been a gimme in SF for film and television. It's a case of pure realism would be boring as hell because you would wouldn't see anything unless a ship were near a planet or sun.
I dunno, TMP did a good job creating the impression that the ship was self-illuminated like a jet at night. And we've seen other instances where a ship was lit solely by its own onboard lights from windows, engines, running lights, etc., like Voyager in "Night." I thought that looked great, and that it should be what the ship looked like all the time. It's hardly boring -- it's actually much more striking than the usual "daylight" look.
It looks neat because it's seen only occasionally. Done that way all the time would be dull.
There's no reason it would be any more dull than seeing "daylit" ships all the time. Why assume that nighttime cinematography would ever get dull? I mean, the contrast between the bright, multicolored lights of the ship's windows and running lights and such and the darkness of the space environment is quite striking. Think of it in terms of Earthly comparisons, like a city skyline at night. Plenty of cinematographers love shooting scenes in darkness. Heck, there's a whole genre named after it, film noir.
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