Matthew Wood and David Collins are old hands at evoking golden memories through our ears rather than our eyes via their stellar work at Skywalker Sound, and chatting with StarWars.com they discuss the sounds of At-Attin, designed to be reminiscent of real-world ‘things’ while stopping short of flat-out replicating them.
The sounds of a Star Wars cityscape, the peaceful but mysterious planet of At Attin, posed an early challenge. “It was something that feels very familiar to childhood, but you’re also dealing with a galaxy far, far away, so you have to strike that balance very carefully,” explains Collins.
A good example for this delicate sonic world-building lies within the seemingly simple hover bikes favored by Wim, Neel, Fern, and KB. “You may want to make a really cool sounding speeder, but you really need to make a speeder that sounds like a beat-up kid’s bike, with a basket and tassels,” Collins says. “When I first saw Wim’s bike, I said, ‘You know, that should really have a bell.’ There’s not actually a physical bell built onto the bike, but if you listen very closely, when Wim tosses it [over the rail], you can hear that there’s a bell on that bike.”
Other sound effects for daily life on At Attin that were also found on Earth include the walkie talkies carried around by Wim and Neel. “My kids had gotten cheap-sounding toy walkie talkies for their birthday,” remembers Collins. “When I put them together, they would make all this wonderful static and feedback. I cut those toys into the show’s walkies because I didn’t want them to sound high-tech. I wanted them to sound plasticky and childlike.”
