Creating an otherworldly sound, making the desert speak in a way that you can feel its heat and lethal hostility, not falling into clichés by offering the sounds of another planet, and, all that, making use of a lot of creativity and a limited budget. Here are some of the sound design challenges of Dune, one of this year's most intriguing films.

All the sound aspects of the film have been the fruit of a lot of exciting work. Hans Zimmer, the soundtrack composer, for example, turned down an offer to work on Christopher Nolan's latest film, to focus his energies on this production. He claimed that he had been working on this soundtrack since he read the novel as a teenager, almost fifty years ago. Like the team that developed the film's sound design, Zimmer spent a week tuning the sound in the desert. He wanted to hear the howling of the wind to create all of his music here.

To achieve these difficult goals, they had to invent entirely new instruments, and from scratch. In addition, due to travel restrictions, quite common in Covid's time, many of these elements had to be recorded separately in different parts of the world, which involved a great deal of synchronization. 

Read also: How remote workflows are changing the future of sound film, by Enhanced Media.

One of the instruments created was a horn of about twenty-one feet and a duduk in the manner of a contrabass -a large version of the ancient Caucasian wind instrument. They also pounded, scraped and scratched several metal instruments, including one made from springs and saw blades, and another made from a superalloy used in cryogenic storage tanks and spacecraft engines. In the film, complex, resonant tonal textures accompany images of desert sands and windblown dust.

One of Dune's most important and striking musical moments occurs during a ceremonious arrival on the desert planet Arrakis. The scene is heralded by the portentous drone of bagpipes, an aural assault generated by a battalion of thirty highland pipers playing in a Scottish church. The sound produced by this number of instruments forced the recording staff to use industrial safety equipment so as not to affect their listening.

But perhaps the most mystical presence of the entire soundtrack is a choir of female voices, singing, whispering and chanting in an invented language. According to Hans Zimmer, the real driving force in this novel is always the female characters, because it is really the women who work out everyone's destiny.

A good part of Zimmer's entire composition did not make it into the film, but it has been released under the title "Dune Sketchbook Soundtrack", and can be found on Youtube.

Meanwhile, in the documentary The Sound of Dune, sound engineers Mark Mangini, Theo Green, and Ron Bartlett explain how they created this magnificent sensory universe:

The three embarked on an extensive process of experimentation to find the right natural elements. The basic instruction was that the sources of all sounds should be natural, such as the vibration of sand in the desert dunes of Death Valley, California. This is how they ended up with the sound of the wings of beetle from Eastern Europe to create the sound of the Ornithopter, a craft that imitates the shape and flight of a dragonfly, and which ends up being a character in the film because it plays a crucial role in one of the climax scenes. 

However, to that incredible sound, they added an unexpected mix. The director says that the Ornithopter's flaps were created from the sound of the beetle's wings plus the purring of a cat, which they captured with a microphone very close and imitates that flapping sound that surprises the viewer so much. To that, they added the sound of a canvas tent strap stretched out over a storm to make a fast flapping sound of an organic piece, and then they mixed all those sounds together.

To that particular combination of sounds, the group added others such as an engine, as well as bee buzzes. This incredible mix surprised the filmmaker and he was quite satisfied. After all, he wanted everything to sound familiar, in a way, but not to sound like anything familiar from our world.

Dune is not an easy film to adapt to. Alejandro Jodorowski had already tried, and he invested a lot of money and time in assembling a large team and even contacted Orson Welles, Salvador Dalí, Giger, Mick Jagger, and Pink Floyd to make something never before seen in the history of cinema. Unfortunately, nobody wanted to invest the fifteen million dollars he needed for such a project, and everything ended up in oblivion. Later, it was David Lynch who adapted this science fiction novel, and, although it has not been his most critically acclaimed work, it served as inspiration for films such as Star Wars or Blade Runner.

Dune is the kind of multi-sensory experience that demands to be seen on a big screen in a movie theater or making use of an excellent screen and soundbars.

*The images used on this post are taken from Pexels.com