Re-Creating the Podracers - Spaceship Sound Design Breakdown

In this post I break down the recording and design process of 3 different Podracers inspired by the techniques used in the original film. I’ll briefly share some resources and articles for the original films then go more in depth on my recordings, source material, layering and the sound design tools I used to create my own Podracers.

Being born in the 90's meant the prequel movies were my era. I was just about old enough to see Episode III Revenge of the Sith in the cinema but seeing and hearing the Podracers in Episode I - The Phantom Menace always stuck with me.

If you haven’t already watched the main YouTube video for this project, check it out here:

Key Sound Design Techniques Used

• Field recording vehicles, vibrated metal & reclaimed tools
• Pitch shifting and automation
• Saturation and distortion 
• The Doppler effect
• EQ and filter sweeps 
• Granular Synthesis

Resources & Inspiration

I found quite a few articles and interviews from Ben Burtt, Gary Rydstrom and the rest of the team online which really inspired me to create my own Podracer sounds. The site I found the most useful was the official Star Wars website. It’s full of absolute gems for sound designers, listed below were my favourite articles for this video: 

• https://www.starwars.com/news/gary-rydstrom-the-phantom-menace
• https://www.starwars.com/news/matthew-wood-the-phantom-menace
• https://www.starwars.com/news/ben-burtt-the-phantom-menace 
• https://www.starwars.com/news/jedi-at-40-ben-burtt-randy-thom

One quote from Ben Burtt (this article) really articulates what I was trying to achieve with my own Podracer sound design. When referring to the work on the Podracers in the Phantom Menace he says:

“It’s a hodge-podge of high-energy vehicle sounds that the audience knows from their own experience that these things represent power and danger. If you place them in, and disguise them just a little bit so you don’t hear a dragster or a P-51 Mustang, then you capitalize on the emotions those sounds carry with them, because people have heard them in real life.”

What I took from this was to gather great source recordings then manipulate those recordings with a bit of sound design to make it feel like it's from a new universe, while still retaining elements from our universe to ground the sound in reality. 

Sound Design Uncanny Valley

For me personally, trying to create sound effects entirely out of synthesis doesn’t inspire me all that much and I feel like I can easily wind up in the uncanny valley of sound design. 

If a sound is entirely synthesised or completely alien, my brain sometimes struggles to connect with it emotionally. It can end up sounding thin and digital. Real-world recordings (organic textures, mechanical friction, animal calls) carry natural imperfections that are really difficult to fake from scratch which is why I love field recording so much. Recording my own sounds gives me a good foundation for creativity.

I’m not saying it’s impossible to create super convincing sound effects using synthesis from scratch. I watched this absolutely mind boggling video a little while ago by Amfivolía:

Amfivolía managed to create an entire alien ecosystem using generative synthesis. It’s super fascinating and very convincing but it's just not the way I work. I prefer to take a more physical/practical approach, away from my computer if i can help it.

Sebulba 

So let’s start off with Sebulba. Creating a Podracer like Sebulba’s requires some wicked elements, ld WW2 fighter planes, drag racers, hot rods, souped up trucks and outboard boat motors. This wide variety of source material originally used makes this Podracer the hardest to replicate. It’s so iconic and getting source material like that is quite the challenge. 

In an interview Ben Burtt also mentions using a Kyma System to manipulate the recordings. A Kyma System uses granular synthesis and spectral elements to design weird and unique soundscapes. This is quite an expensive piece of kit but luckily these days granular synths are relatively commonplace as virtual instruments inside your chosen DAW. The one I use on Cubase is called Padshop.

For my version of Sebulba’s Podracer I recorded a:

• British Spitfire
• an old 1970's Volkswagen T2 Campervan
• Muscle Cars ranging from 1950's to 2000's
  
• and a broken petrol strimmer.

Spitfire Recording

I really wasn’t expecting much from this recording session but it turned out to be an absolute BANGER! I was able to get really close to the planes, recording the start ups, fly overs, fly bys, takeoffs and landings. A big thanks to spitfires.com for being super chill.

For this session I was recording with the Zoom F6 and a Sennheiser MKH416 in an old Rycote blimp. I like the F6 for this kinda recording session as I can record in 32bit float. Vehicles can often vary in loudness quite a bit so 32bit gives me the peace of mind that I have less chance accidentally clipping the recording. That being said, 32bit ain't the be all end all. You can still clip the microphone if the mics SPL cant handle it. 

I chose the Sennheiser MKH 416 for this session as I thought I’d be stood fairly far away from the plane. The shotgun polar pattern means it rejects a lot of sound from the sides and mainly focuses on the middle.

If you’re a photographer, you can kinda think of it a bit like a telephoto/zoom lens. If I used a microphone with a Cardioid polar pattern I’d pickup more ambient sounds from the airfield. I just wanted to focus on one source which was the Spitfire. 

The only issue with the Sennheiser 416 is that the max SPL (Sound Pressure Level) of this microphone isn’t super high (130 dB SPL). So standing very close to the plane would be too loud and cause the microphone's internal electronics to overload, making the sound distorted. To combat this, I made sure to stand at a reasonable distance while also being close enough that the mic was just picking up the sound of the Spitfire and nothing else. 

Spitfire Processing

To get the chugging sound I settled on, I sampled a small snippet of the spitfire engine starting up and set the sampler to loop. 

Then I played around with a transient shaper and saturation to remove some of the harsh attack. This rounded off the sound a little so it was less snappy and more gluggy. 

Next I added an EQ to try and match the EQ of the original along with Chorus, Delay and Vibrato to make the sound kinda wobble. As if the engine is so loud that it’s rattling the metal on the Podracer. 

Finally I added a pitch shifter, a frequency shifter and DopplerPro to give the illusion the sound was passing by you. This was also exemplified by automating the volume and panning the sound from left to right, relative to the movement of the Podracer on screen.

Other recordings of the Spitfire made their way into the edit too with heavy distortion and saturation. These kinda sounded like the Podracer was revving and helped with the movement. It's subtle but it's been added at the loudest point when Sebulba is closest to the camera.

VW Campervan Recording

Before I recorded the Spitfire the chug sound I created was made using a recording of an old VW T2 Campervan starting up. I did really like this sound but it was a bit more mechanical and sounded more like a metal impact rather than air escaping an exhaust and chugging like the original movie version. 

VW Campervan Processing

The sound processing for this was pretty similar to the Spitfire one. Starting off with a small combustion sound looping in a sampler. I used pitch shifting and a lot of EQ to try to match the tone to the original. 

Petrol Strimmer Recording

In one of the interviews with Ben Burtt he mentioned an outboard motor from a boat. I figured a petrol strimmer shared some similarities to one so I headed to the recycling centre to find a cheap broken one to tear apart and sample.

I settled on this one as it had the gluggiest sound. I recorded it with my mid side rig and placed the mic quite close to the tiny little exhaust pipe. What I was trying to capture was the air being sucked in and out of the engine when I pulled the pull cord. I recorded singular glugs and multiple glugs by changing the intensity of how hard I pulled the pull cord. 

Petrol Strimmer Processing

For the processing I tried two different techniques. Initially I was intending on using the pull cord sound for the chug chug chug sound of Sebulba’s racer but it didn’t quite work. So i thought I’d try out making a more engine idling/running sound. 

To create this I popped the recording into a granular synthesiser called Padshop. I think this synthesiser is Cubase specific but any granular synth will do.

A granular synthesiser works by chopping an audio sample into thousands of tiny little pieces called “grains” and scattering, overlapping or looping them to create new textures which you can perform on a small midi keyboard (mines the Akai MPK mini).

I fiddled around with the grain lengths, amount of grains, pitch and formant shifting. The final sound fitted well mixed with other sounds in the section where it looks like you’re riding onboard Sebulba’s Podracer.

Muscle Car Recording

I was really lucky with this one. There was a car meet dedicated to American muscle cars happening pretty close to me (Re:Fuel) which was the perfect opportunity to record some bigger engines. Most of the car recordings I had were race cars or vintage cars but these muscle cars have a lovely low grumbly rumble which I was missing.

To record these sounds I ideally needed a setup which can handle high SPL levels. I sent a message to Watson Wu, a fantastic recordist who suggested the Sennheiser 8000 series mics 8040 & 8030 which have a max SPL of 142dB & 139dB as opposed to my Rycote mics SC-08 & BD-10 which have a max SPL of 133dB & 135dB. Now that difference might not sound a lot but decibels aren’t rated the way you think.

Let's compare the Sennheiser 8040 (142dB SPL) to my Rycote SC-08 (133dB SPL). The difference in sound pressure levels (SPL) between 142dB and 133dB is far more significant than the 9dB numerical gap suggests because the decibel scale is logarithmic not linear. In acoustics every 3 dB increase represents a doubling of sound energy and a 6 dB increase represents a doubling of sound pressure.

A 9dB difference means the Sennheiser microphone can with stand 2.82 times more physical air pressure than the Rycote microphone before it begins to clip or distort. Allowing you to record louder sound sources or to get much closer to the sound source.

I don’t have the funds for the Sennheiser setup right now (hopefully soon) and couldn’t find a rental anywhere locally in time so I just headed out with the Rycote mics and hoped for the best! I think I got lucky again with these recordings. The vehicles were loud but not super loud so the recordings I got turned out sweet. I was intending on distorting and saturating the sounds anyway so it’d be alright. That’s one way I was able to justify it… 

Muscle Car Processing 

Not too much processing here, mainly just saturation, distortion and overdrive using the Kilohearts plug-ins. 

I’d not used these plug-ins much before this project, but I really like them. I can’t remember when I downloaded them but I have the whole collection and I love the simplicity of the UI. 

Here’s the collection of free ones I own (not an affiliate link): https://kilohearts.com/products/kilohearts_essentials

Sebulba final Mixing

A relatively straightforward process of balancing the levels in the mix so it matched the movement on screen. I added automation on volume, panning, distortion and saturation to the group channel that all of the Sebulba sounds were going to. This made the mix a little more cohesive. There was also a limiter on this channel to avoid any major clipping. Then it was just a matter of mixing it nicely with the other Podracers.

I wasn’t able to get exactly the same sound as the original Sebulba Podracer but I think it’s definitely in the same ball park. It has elements of that heavy clunky chug chug chug sound. Listen to my two versions below:

If you think you know how I can get closer to the original one, leave a comment at the bottom of this article and I'll try it out!

Mars Guo

For this Podracer I was really keen to take a more abstract approach and not use any vehicle recordings at all. In an interview about the original sound design Ben Burtt mentions using a toothbrush as source material for a Podracer flying past. So I decided to take that idea and run with something I’ve experimented with before. 

Vibrator & Filing Cabinet Recording

In the past I’ve used a vibrator and sheet metal to get fantastic source recordings for braams, drones and cinematic swells. Creating sounds that end up similar to the designed sounds in the Haunting Metal Library. 

I picked up a big metal filing cabinet from the recycling centre about 10 years ago to store tools in the garage but it’s also served as a fantastic sound prop. I’ve recorded impacts, slams, rattles, shakes, and scrapes all of which made their way into designed sounds for the Content Essentials Library. But for this project, what I really needed was a continuous drone. Something super consistent which sounded a little bit like an engine idling. That's where the vibrator comes in.

This particular vibrator is quite powerful with a few different modes and speeds. For one recording, I set it to max speed and held the end of it in my hand then gently pressed it against the sheet metal on the side of the filing cabinet. This gave me the resonating sound I was after, as it stopped the vibrator from bouncing around uncontrollably. 

By holding it in the end of my hand, I was able to apply more or less pressure on the metal, shifting the tonality. Another technique was lightly holding it so it bounced between my hand and the metal surface. I found it was easier to find the resonating pitch that way.

The main microphone setup for this recording session was my Rycote mid side rig (SC-08 & BD-10) pointing inside a hole on the opposite side of the filing cabinet and two Oaka instruments magnetic Tellus mics stuck on the front of the cabinet. I spaced them relatively far apart and panned them hard left and hard right. I’ve been enjoying contact mic recording in stereo lately as I feel it gives the sound some more depth. 

I exported these recordings as a full mix of mid side & contact mics, just mid side mics and just the contact mics. Have a listen below to the difference between the 3 exports. I recorded at 192kHz for these recordings so I would get a lot of flexibility when pitch shifting the sounds during the sound design stage.

Full Mix

Mid Side Mics Only

Contact Mics Only

Vibrator & Filing Cabinet Processing

I’ll be honest, the processing got a little messy on the section where Mars Guo is in front of Anakin. I basically dragged in a variety of different drones recorded with the vibrator and heavily manipulated them with volume automation, EQ filters, phase distortion and pitch shifting.

What I was trying to go for was a natural morphing of sounds like they were warping together. I didn’t want to think too technically about the ‘correct way’ of creating a sound, more about what was sonically interesting to me.

I automated filters to add movement and life to the sound and really liked how it turned out. I did a similar process with Anakin's on this section but mainly used vehicle recordings so the sound characteristics were different to Mars Guo’s.

To accentuate that morphing movement I used a stock plug-in called “MorphFilter” found in Cubase 12 to create the filter sweeps. Simple plug-ins like EQ and Filters can give the sound a lot of character. The following recordings of a vibrator on a tool cabinet only have pitch shifting and MorphFilter added to them. 

Vibrator Tool Cabinet & MorphFilter

For the Fly by section at the start I chose recordings that had a natural rise in volume and pitch then just exaggerated them more with automation and the DopplerPro plug-in. Nothing too hectic, just Distortion, Phase Distortion, Chorus and DopplerPro. These recordings were from when I was changing how much pressure I was putting on the vibrator when pressing it against the side of the filing cabinet. 

I almost forgot, I added a couple EMF recordings from the Games Console Electromagnetic Frequencies Library to make it a bit more synthy. Blended in with the other recordings it gave it quite a futuristic, static, buzzing sound. My thinking was that this buzzing sound was coming from the purple energy binder which connects the Podracer engines.

EMF Synthy Sound

Anakin

As I mentioned in the video, I had lots of great recordings already for Anakin's Podracer. One collection of recordings was from my trip to Lydden Hill race circuit with Rallycross driver Max Langmaid. You can watch that video below: