Utapau Chase - Sound Redesign

Hello Folks! 🤗

Here is my new redesign project of an iconic scene from Star Wars - Revenge of the Sith.

The main idea behind this redesign was to grind my teeth on a very dense and packed action scene and start from scratch with an alternative to the sound design of the wheel bike, of the giant lizard (called "Boga") and of some of the weapons and explosions.

It was a challenge which took me a good month to complete as for this type of universe, you cannot go too much astray from the original Sound Legacy as people know it all too well!

Now for those of you who wonder what makes the core sound of the Wheel Bike other from F4 exhausts, dirt bikes and unexpected findings, I would suggest you look on youtube for the sound of V8 Drills. Whomever had the idea to strap mini V8 engines on drills should be made a Saint at the very least! Mad Max would "Witness"! 🛞

Here are sources that helped me most:

  • David Farmer on Creature Sound Design (from Tonebenders' podcast "Lord of the Rings Looking Back"): "I was layering things up working on SyncKlavier playing too many keys at once, and you know it's kind of a mush (...) I was trying all of these sort of techniques, but nothing was sticking to screen, nothing was living there, you know. So I had to go back to the basics and just start playing back one thing at a time (...) just one element, not layering anything together, just kind of going, OK this is going to be a horse, this a lynx breath, this is going to be a tiger (...) Pick things that fit the screen" => After several failed attempts on the Giant Lizard Obi-Wan is riding, I applied his approach and and picked only 3 or 4 layers of animals (Elephant, Horses, Pigs and Tasman Devils mainly) for the different screams the animal would make, which I played and arranged in Radium with little processing and slowing things down here and there. The idea was to create as palettes of expressions (snarls, sniffs, screams, etc...) as I could and build up from that. Stick to the screen and tried to have fun playing on my keyboard rather than worry too much on the result!  🎧


  • In Depth Sound Design on the Vehicule Sound Design (on Instagram) => When I saw Ben Burtt use an electric razor on a metal receipe to create the sound of a CIS approaching tank in the Gun Gan battle settling sequence, I tried to get as much palette as possible from metallic elements like keys and grinding metal which I slowed down too for the bike and processed with Manipulator and Scheps Parallel Particles. I tried to get as much variations for different metallic sources as possible to create that vibrating BUZZ from the bike. 📼


  • From Randy Thom on Mixing (on Sound Designers Facebook Group) => Filter things out from 200 Hz to 800 Hz for all the things which are conflicting with the core of your story. It helped me overcome the recurring problem "too much sound". As Randy would put it, "we often conclude that low frequencies and high frequencies are where most of the drama is in sound effects, that those parts of the spectrum are the ones that get people's attention. So, we pile it on in those areas in action sequences: constant booming bass that feels like low-passed pink noise, and constant highs that basically feel like unrelenting, uncorrelated white noise. It's not dramatic, dynamic, or even coherent. It's just damn loud". 📚


  • From Paul Stoughton on Mixing => Be careful on your automation, try to get things to not always play at the same level. Create dynamism, follow you character / action in space and adjust volume accordingly! 📚


  • Gary Rydstrom on Mixing (from Sound-mixing The Phantom Menace with Gary Rydstrom article) => "Star Wars battles are fantastical. They’re bigger than life. (...) Star Wars is articulate. It’s clean.There’s a rhythm between lasers, explosions, and vehicle pass-bys. It's not real in the way that Private Ryan is. It’s a ‘movie real,’ a ‘fantasy real.’ The battle scenes have to have an unreal beauty to them.” => I tried to stay true to this philosophy but also get a bit gritter and less "clean" with some distortion here and there. 📚


I hope that this bit of information will help those of you who are eager to learn and find new inspiration for their own projects. I can't thank enough all of the legends who have looked back and shared their experience on all the media available too all like podcasts, youtube videos, articles and comments!

Art should be shared and discussed. We all learn from each other! So risk it and have fun ! 😁🤘

Cheers,

Thibault Receveur