sound design in the vacuum of outer space

[Epsilon-9]

It’s like the saying goes.

If a tree falls down in the forest, would it make a sound? If no was there?

I haven’t heard any atmosphere deep space sound effects in all the Star Trek films or Star Wars but one comes to mind Apollo 13 where we see final stage of the Saturn V appearing front left channel over to centre. The rest of the background has this low end rumble WTF!
Now I haven’t even heard underwater effects in films that sound uniform with frequency, as water would be around ones ears if shallow swimming and its often muffled with not much in the way of high frequency.

Some films like Saving Private Ryan where the camera looks under the water and as the water is sloshing around up and down where it goes out the water with brief few seconds of high frequency direction sound.

I think the explosive bolts in 2001 was not heard just the puff of white smoke blowing though the Discovery’s airlock.

The sound didn’t come on till there airlock was pressurised!

The star destroyers in Star Wars feel like Earthquake’s sensurround a bit ridiculous!

Warp speed in Star Trek feels like sonic booms! Seen the sound design video on how Ben Burtt achieved it. Wow and old (sound generator oscillator). Who would have guessed such and old device can make modern movie sound, sound like engines riving up!

Oh, a word on 2010 on bluray its been poorly remixed with fake stereo surrounds that have been stripped from left and right front discrete and folded onto the original monaural surrounds.

This creates and annoying constant surround a fake stereo surround because you can hear the front directional pans like dog barking on the fronts on the surrounds when Bowman visits his wife though the tv-set.

Also the centre phantom of the front left/right has been folded onto the centre discrete. Its really a sad sham who ever re-mixed this, needs his hands chapped off! So he/she can't re-mix ever again! So listen real hard there are fake Dolby/dts bluray out there! I would list the other offending titles. Just ask me.

Lucky I still have the DVD with non-16:9 in fact the DVD makes the bluray fit for the dustbin! Now then!

 

[Kaijima]

Personally I liked how nuBSG handled sound in space. There was plenty of it, but it was quiet, low frequency, and whispy by turns. It gave the impression of one hearing an expanding shell from outgassing of explosions or missile contrails. (Which depending on the individual explosion might be more realistic than you'd suspect.)

I always got the impression they were intentionally rethinking sound in space, to allow for some artifice yet create a unique soundscape that said "this is not sound as on a planet, but something fundamentally different."

 

[Checkmate]

I always assume you're just hearing things from within the ships, not out in the vacuum where the cameras are.

That said, I find it curious how people have trouble with sound, but not the fact that there's all these mysterious cameras floating around in open space. Where's the cries about realism there?

 

[Hyperspace05]

Even during Alien (1979) when the crew detaches the Nostromo from the refinery before going down to planetoid [LV-426] the audio from the computer countdown over the PA an echo effect is used over the wide exterior space shots which is totally ludicrous as sound would not get heard in space due to the vacuum much less have atmospheric effects of delay and echo bouncing off the refinery.

These kind of arguments are so IDIOTIC. Why? Motion pictures are artifical... Do you really think that the sound you hear in a regular hollywood production is what was recorded on set during the shoot? Or that they only use natural light instead of the army of lights that they actually use to light a scene just they way they want it?

Have you not seen any regular film where you are hearing dialogue that you should not be able to hear from the camera's vantage point? Of course you have. ALL THE TIME. In EVERY FILM.

These are the typical conventions of film making in general. And films set in space follow the same conventions.