"From afar in the vastness of the palace drifted sounds of music, on a scale and out of instruments that had never been heard on Terra." (p. 280)
That would be a challenge for John Williams or any other composer of film music: to invent an alien scale and music that sounds as if it has come from extraterrestrial instruments.
Flandry's vocal organs cannot pronounce "Aycharaych" correctly. (p. 279) Aliens in films should not sound like human actors. In adaptations of Narnia, anthropomorphic animals and birds should sound as if their speech has emerged from the throat of a lion, owl etc. When, in CS Lewis's Perelandra, an "eldil," i.e., an inorganic intelligence, speaks, Lewis can tell that the sound has not emerged from a throat. It is as if the syllables had been played on an instrument or as if rock, crystal or light had spoken. A film sound track should convey Lewis's auditory experience.
There is quite a lot of work to be done about sounds in sf films.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
To say nothing, of course, of films making aliens LOOK like non humans, not humans in heavy make up! Any films based on the Nicholas van Rijn and Dominic Flandry stories needs to pay careful attention to Anderson's descriptions of aliens.
And to making aliens SOUND like non-humans! Alien music might be more difficult, tho.
Ad astra! Sean
CGI helps with the “humans in makeup” problem.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
It can, but not always. I was not happy with how Peter Jackson used CGI to depict Gollum in his awful HOBBIT and LORD OF THE RINGS movies. It did not fit the image I formed of Gollum from reading THE HOBBIT and LOTR.
Ad astra! Sean
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