Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1401019
26 I m ps e . o rg ERIC MARKS MPSE: Matt and Tim, what were some of your initial goals for the sound of Discovery and then Picard, as you started work on these shows? TIM FARRELL, LEAD SOUND DESIGNER: Well, Discovery had such an amazing look that our biggest goal of Season 1 was simply to keep up with the extraordinary amount of incredible imagery and the amazing story. Creating an entirely new Star Trek world was a huge task. We had to create everything from the ground up, even the classic signature sounds—the bridge, the doors, the ship design, the weapons for both the Federation and the Klingons. It was really such a gem that they handed us. Everyone felt we needed to work as hard as we could to live up to this amazing gift we had been given. NEIL MARKS: Tim, when you were doing that, did you feel bound by or limited by, or connected to the fact that this was 10 years before Star Trek: The Original Series (TOS)? In terms of sound, how did you stay connected to that? TF: There's a whole Star Trek lore and history, as you are very familiar with. Technology has changed so much since the original series that this show looks nothing like The Original Series, so there had to be some updating. If we just used all the original mono sounds from that show, they wouldn't keep up. [laughs] That's really where we came up with the plan of, if anything exists or has existed in the canon, let's reference that and use it as a starting point, and then expand upon or modernize from there. I think the first thing that I worked on were the doors which have that signature "psssh" classic sound. I took the original TOS door, and I put it in for the Shenzhou, and it was cool, but it needed a little something more. So, I widened it and added a couple extra little air elements to it, but I also did everything I could to make sure the new elements didn't overpower or detract from the heart and soul of the original signature sound element that I started with. That was really the plan for everything. Anything that we could reference, we would use as a starting point and go from there. If we could make the original work, then we would. If it didn't, then we'd have to just do what we needed to do based on what we saw to update, modernize, or simply create something new entirely. MATTHEW TAYLOR, SUPERVISING SOUND EDITOR: When we started on Star Trek: Picard, there wasn't this specific mandate of like, "You have to reference this, this, and this in conjunction with this timeline and canon." There will be times where Alex Kurtzman, in particular, who was involved with the 2009 movie series, will reference sounds that he liked within those movies as a starting point. But with Picard jumping a fair way into the future from the timeline from Discovery, there wasn't a wholesale discussion of what it should sound like. And plus, a lot of the visuals and tech they provide inform what the sound should be as well. TF: We knew that it had to have its own distinct character that was different from Discovery. Fortunately, visually it was very different, and that made things a lot easier on us. We recreated all the beeps, all the signature sounds—we would reference Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG), of course, for those sounds. Picard is 20 years after TNG ended, so we had a little leeway to create because enough time had passed. Whereas, Discovery was close in the timeline to Star Trek: The Original Series. MT: What was that episode of Picard —was it 101, where he goes to the archives and you just have the old doors from TNG—the "pa-caaah" sounds. [laughs] It was the one moment where you really just let that hang out there which was really cool. TF: In Discovery 208, they went to Talos V, which they also visited in The Original Series pilot. There was this specific plant that they had recreated, and they really wanted to make sure it sounded the same. So, of course we went back to the original stems of that episode and pulled that specific sound, and that became the sound. So there are moments where they're like, "Hey, this is already a specific thing," and we'll go get Supervising sound editor Matthew Taylor Lead sound designer Tim Farrell