Behind Alien: Romulus’ Awe-Inspiring Sound – a film sound deep-dive with Lee Gilmore and Will Files

As a sound designer, there are iconic film franchises that you dream of working on in your career: Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Jurassic Park, Batman, Indiana Jones, Terminator, and Alien to name a few. Getting just one opportunity to do so is a surreal experience. Getting to work on several is like winning the sound career lottery, as Supervising Sound Editor/Sound Designer Lee Gilmore and Supervising Sound Editor/Re-recording Mixer Will Files (at Pacific Standard Sound) can attest.

In his career, Gilmore has been a sound designer on The Batman and Terminator: Dark Fate, additional sound designer on Dune: Part Two, and sound effects editor on Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Dune: Part One, Prey, Blade Runner 2049, and even E.T. as an apprentice sound editor on the 2002 special version.

Files has been the supervising sound editor/re-recording mixer on The Batman (for which he earned a 2023 ‘Best Sound’ Oscar nomination), Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, supervising sound editor on Prey, sound designer/re-recording mixer on Blue Beetle, sound designer on Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens, and many more.

Gilmore and Files share more than just film credits; they also share a love of the Alien franchise. They are self-titled Alien nerds, in fact, and were surprised to find that Alien: Romulus director Fede Alvarez was a bigger fan of the franchise than even they were. This shared passion ignited a fruitful collaboration that resulted in the incredible Romulus soundtrack that pays homage to its 1979 Alien roots yet blazes its own sonic path.

In this in-depth interview, Gilmore and Files talk about creating new sounds for the Xenomorphs (in all of its lifestages), researching “legacy” Alien sounds to create new sounds for “old” tech like MU/TH/UR and Rook (based on the android Ash), creating sounds for clunky cargo ships and the higher-tech Renaissance station that has the electromagnetic feel of ‘future-tech’ from 40 years ago, creating a vintage vibe in the mix using tape emulation and warble processing while still making an immersive, cinematic experience fit for today’s playback formats of Dolby Atmos and IMAX, and much, much more!

Alien: Romulus | Teaser Trailer

This is Director Fede Alvarez’s first film for the Alien franchise. How did he want to honor what’s been done sonically for the franchise so far? And what did he want to bring to the franchise in terms of sound for his film?

Will Files (WF): The journey started the first time we met Fede. We went to his office in Hollywood and the room was completely filled with Alien memorabilia – Alien nerd stuff, basically.

We immediately knew that the right guy was making this movie because we were walking in as a couple of Alien nerds ourselves. We quickly realized this guy had probably out-nerded us in the Alien world, which is saying a lot because Lee is probably the biggest Alien nerd that I knew until that point.

We very much wanted to live inside that world, and as soon as we walked into Fede’s office, we realized that he obviously had the same mission.

Lee Gilmore (LG): We knew we had to pay homage to the ’79 film and try to recapture that same vibe. The very first thing I cut was the Corbelan take-off. That scene encapsulates a lot of the movie; there are these huge dynamic swings, and you get a good sense of the tech, the ships, and so on. We took that to the picture department and said, “Okay, what do you think about this?” Picture editor Jake Roberts and Fede said, “Okay, you guys get it.” And then they just left us to our own devices, so we took it from there.

WF: Exactly. So much of it was about realizing that we were on the same page with Fede, in particular, with wanting to be authentic to the world in those first Alien films, especially the original film from ’79. We talked extensively about the fact that this movie was going to take place between the first two films, and that was exciting.

… tech-wise this film was in the same kind of world as the first film, but heading towards the tech from the second film.

Fede very much wanted to embrace the idea that tech-wise this film was in the same kind of world as the first film, but heading towards the tech from the second film.

More than anything, that was our guidepost for making sure that everything we did fit within that world. Lee called it a “vibe check” – every single sound we put in the film, we always thought, “Is this world-appropriate? Does this fit in the reality that we have in our heads about what this world feels like?”

LG: If there were any second-thoughts about whether or not a sound belonged in this world, we’d toss it out immediately. We really had a target – a very small area – that we were trying to hit throughout the whole thing and we kept referencing the spirit of the original.

Watching ‘Alien’ (1979) on stage at Glenn Glenn

So, sonically, you’re bridging that gap of technology between the first two films. That’s so cool. The first ship sequence is so reminiscent of Alien (1979). Were there any “legacy” sounds from that original film? And how did you create/record new sounds to match the same tone of the original film?

WF: Yeah, it was a cool thought exercise. One of the best things about working with Fede is that rather than dictating what things should be, he’s setting the stage for us, defining the space that we can work in, and then letting us just run off into that space.

LG: The Nostromo boot-up sequence in Alien ’79 is my favorite sound moment in any movie, so I was super jazzed that we had a chance to do our spin on it with the Echo Probe waking up during that first scene. I focused on creating new sounds rather than recycling a lot of legacy material. The legacy sounds that our assistant, Smokey Cloud, found for us were more or less used as a roadmap. We didn’t want to get into some copy/paste situation because it would feel like we were cheating the audience, being too literal, too cute.

The Nostromo boot-up sequence in ‘Alien’ ’79 is my favorite sound moment in any movie, so I was super jazzed that we had a chance to do our spin on it with the Echo Probe waking up…

The Echo Probe boot-up, for example, is 99% new sounds. I tried to match the timing and flavors of the original. I used pitched-up modulated whistles to match the monitor turn ons, CRT tubes, and every relay I could find. My favorite sound in the original ’79 boot-up is this weird reverse, chopped up vocal thing that sounds like a probe droid on drugs. I had actually created my own version of that sound close to 10 years ago, just for fun, and I finally got to use it.

It’s been cool to get feedback because a lot of people think they’re hearing the original sounds, the boot-up, the pulse rifle, etc. and they actually aren’t. So, I think that means we did a good job as far as recreating the texture and vibe of ’79.

When we did use legacy sounds we tried to place them in fun areas for all the fellow nerds to pick up on. The iris doors on Renaissance station have some legacy layers to them. We used the servos of Kane’s chair for part of the cockpit chairs in the Corbelan. It was fun sneaking those moments in, but we tried not to be too heavy handed with it.

WF: Actually, we were surprised about how poorly archived the ’79 film was. We found that there were no stems available. Most modern films at the very least have separate dialogue, music, and effects stems. But all we could find for the ’79 film was a print master.

…we were able to go back to the production sound Nagra tapes from the set back in ’79…

There were a few elements from some of the films and we did find some bits and pieces in the 20th Century archives (as part of the Disney archives). That was super helpful in trying to dig up as much stuff as we could. In some cases, we were able to go back to the production sound Nagra tapes from the set back in ’79, which were invaluable when we recreated the voice of Ash, who in Alien: Romulus, is named Rook.

All along we had intended to just use the original material as sonic Easter eggs more than actual material for the film. We always knew that we were going to need to create our own versions of these things anyway. What we ended up doing more than anything was just studying the nature of the sounds and looking closely at the choices that were made in the mix and what created the feeling of that original film versus actually taking sounds from it. It was much more about Lee and sound designer Chris Terhune going through and trying to figure out how to recreate similar kinds of sounds – not only looking at the nature of the sounds, but also the rhythm of the sounds and the rhythm of the cutting.

… what Lee built for the Echo Probe turning on, it’s very much in that same world of having one weird sound, then another weird sound, and another weird sound…

We also focused on the mix. In the ‘79 film especially there are lots of weird sounds and interesting, weird choices. There’s usually one sound at a time. So when you hear what Lee built for the Echo Probe turning on, it’s very much in that same world of having one weird sound, then another weird sound, and another weird sound – one after another so it’s not this cacophony of sounds. It’s a clear progression of sounds that hopefully give you the same feeling that you got when you watched the first film.

LG: Yeah, we really tried to focus on doing elegant handoffs. As Will said, every sound gets its moment. We didn’t want to hit you over the head with a ton of layers where we’d lose specificity and clarity.

Fede was very interested in bathing the whole mix in a ’70s tape saturation sound.

WF: We wanted to have a sort of dioramic sound so we were playing a lot with depth. We wanted things to feel like they’re sitting in the world and not be popping out of the scenes. We played a lot with the idea of tape saturation and tape emulation. Fede was very interested in bathing the whole mix in a ’70s tape saturation sound. So the whole film on the mix side (in addition to all the sounds that we created) went through multiple layers of tape emulation. It gives it that feeling of being wrapped in a robe of “analog warmth.”

LG: That processing served as the glue. Once we applied it, we were like “Ooo, that’s sexy.” We knew it was the right direction.

WF: At a certain point as we were listening to the original film, we realized that there was quite a bit of frequency fluctuation – tape wow and flutter – that was just a reality of the technology at the time; there wasn’t as much speed regulation as there is with digital. So we introduced a certain amount of that, putting it across the entire mix bus, and as soon as we did that, Lee and I just looked at each other and we’re like, “That’s it!”

…nothing has a true pitch in this film. Nothing. Not even the music. The entire mix is going through essentially a warbly tape track.

So, on top of everything he’d already been doing to create these analog, warbly textures, putting a little bit of warbling across the entire mix made it feel like the first film. So nothing has a true pitch in this film. Nothing. Not even the music. The entire mix is going through essentially a warbly tape track. That gives the whole soundtrack an uneasiness that hopefully no one will ever be able to put their finger on, but it just feels like going back and seeing a movie from 40 years ago.

Director Fede Álvarez on set of ‘Alien: Romulus’

Speaking of music, the music from composer Benjamin Wallfisch is amazing, too. Shortly after the opening ship sequence, there’s this track with operatic spooky voices. Was that all score? Or was it score and sound design? Can you talk about working with composer Wallfisch’s music on the film?

LG: That’s all Mr. Wallfisch. I had worked with Ben before on Blade Runner 2049 and that guy is so good at blending the worlds of music and sound design and he brought that same energy to Romulus. Mark Paterson, our dialogue/music re-recording mixer, and Clint Bennett, our music editor, did a great job of handling Ben’s score.

There are a lot of great music/effects handoffs throughout the film. I especially loved our finale sequence between Rain and the Offspring. Ben had this bonkers musical pulse going on that went back and forth with an alarm I created and it turned out super intense.

Yes! When Kay gives birth to an alien (the Offspring, as you call it), there’s this COOL music that’s throbbing and ping-ponging. Was that in the music track from Ben, or was that something you decided to do with the music stems?

WF: It was a kind of a mix of both. Ben made this amazing creative decision that the final act would feel sonically completely different from everything else in the film.

…when Ben got to that final act, it took a hard left turn into a very avant garde, very minimalist synth-driven textural score.

The rest of the film is a pretty traditional orchestral score, very sweeping and melodic and thematic, much like the original Jerry Goldsmith score. But when Ben got to that final act, it took a hard left turn into a very avant garde, very minimalist synth-driven textural score.

In the mix, we ended up pairing it down even more. Ben had given us this amazing pulsing sound and Fede really latched onto that, saying, “What if we build the whole scene around that and this amazing alarm sound that Lee had made?”

We ended up crafting that entire last act around those two sounds really.

LG: I was so stoked on how that all turned out, because that whole reel came together very last minute. It was a really intense mix day. That whole pulsing thing that Ben did, it’s like you’re trapped on this roller coaster that you can’t get off of. As soon as it starts, you’re just squirming in your chair and you just want this birth scene to stop. You don’t know where it’s going and you haven’t heard anything like this before.

I love that scene because this is absolutely an Alien movie, but when you hit that last reel, you know that this is a Fede Alvarez film too. It’s nuts.

From L to R: Amy Byron, Will Files, Lee Gilmore, Fede Álvarez, Chris Terhune, Clint Bennett, Luis Galdames, Kristin Mann, Steve Neal, Smokey Cloud

What went into the sounds for the ‘Offspring’ (Kay’s alien baby)?

LG: My friend, sound designer Chris Terhune, was our Offspring guy. He’s one of my favorite creature designers, so the moment I first saw what the Offspring looked like I thought, “Oh man, it’s Chris time.”

I didn’t want the Offspring to be a traditional monster and emoting all over the place. He doesn’t even make a sound the first time his face is shown and I’ll always remember the audience gasping during that moment of silence.

One of the prevailing ideas over the course of the entire movie was that less is more. We found that with the Offspring (as with the facehuggers) it was best to be very surgical about where to put sounds because slathering in tons of vocals almost felt like it was taking away from the scariness of those moments.

Chris made the Offspring come alive through… his own vocals, a recording of my son when he was a day old, and a gagging hyena.

Chris made the Offspring come alive through a subtle combo platter of his own vocals, a recording of my son when he was a day old, and a gagging hyena.

The body movement was the real glue though. Chris did a great job of selling its weight and scale as it’s approaching Andy for the first time and that had nothing to do with creature vocals. It was all about using big metal hits and wronks.

When the Offspring is about to nurse on Kay, it puts it’s hand on the wall and you hear his claws tapping the metal. It’s so creepy and just a great detail. And there is the shot where the Offspring finally stands, revealing its full self with the tubes on his back crunching and leaking. I don’t know how Chris did that and I don’t want to know. It’s the grossest sounding thing in the movie in my opinion. I love it so much.

The Jackson’s Star Mining Colony – you made this location feel so alive, gritty, and like a place where joy is in short supply. Can talk about what went into the sounds for this location (the loop group for the busy thoroughfare, the old computers/old tech/personal devices like Rain’s ‘smart’ watch and the handheld game, clunky ships flying overhead, etc.)?

LG: It was really important to Fede that we sell Jackson’s Star as a totally miserable place that Rain had to escape at all costs. We stayed away from using a lot of BG beds and instead relied on spotted material, so the scene could feel very specific.

Polly McKinnon, our dialogue/ADR supervisor, put together some really angry, well-scripted loop group sections that we were able to pepper throughout.

We stayed away from using a lot of BG beds and instead relied on spotted material…

Luis Galdames (sound effects editor) made this really oppressive Atmosphere Processor track that serves as the backbone of that scene. It has a really cool industrial chugging to it and reminds me of something out of Peaky Blinders.

I finished the scene by sprinkling in some weird tonal stabs to fill dialogue holes, etc. I liked that you couldn’t tell if they were supposed to be ship sounds, distant work whistles, or broken machines.

What went into the sounds for the ships? They are made with big, chunky, clunky metal and all the doors and hatches sound beefy and industrial. Did you get to record big metal sounds? Were there any helpful indie libraries for sourcing raw sounds?

LG: Everything had to be broken, failing, and sound like it could come apart at any moment. Will loves to use the word “shiny.” We couldn’t have anything in there that was super “shiny,” super slick.

WF: We didn’t want it to sound too modern. We really did want to embrace the idea of “how would they have done this 40 years ago?” We went really deep into the research, watching old interviews with Ridley and trying to get back into his state of mind when he was making the first film. We found out that he was highly influenced by Star Wars and the “used future” that George Lucas and sound designer Ben Burtt imbued into those films.

Everything should sound electromechanical. Nothing should sound digital.

That had an influence on our approach as well, trying to think about what the future would sound like 40 years ago, through the lens of the technology at the time, which still used tubes and mechanisms. A word we used often was “electromechanical.” Everything should sound electromechanical. Nothing should sound digital. There is a relay behind every panel. There’s a switch. There’s electricity flowing through these devices and systems. We should be able to feel the nuts and bolts of what makes these ships tick. That was a big guidepost for us in terms of making sure everything in the world has character. Nothing is working like new. Everything is just holding together.

LG: I took care of all the tech interior/engine stuff and Dan Kenyon (sound effects editor) helped with the exterior -bys. We just kept saying, “truckers in space.” We can’t have a single, shiny, sexy sound in here. Broken sexy? Absolutely.

I would get a base layer down for those things and then try to add one single weird thing on top.

We tried really hard to make sure every door, hatch, etc. had a lot of personality. I would get a base layer down for those things and then try to add one single weird thing on top. Those weird sounds pile up over the course of the movie and that becomes, “Ok, hopefully we have a signature sound for this whole thing. Hopefully, we’ve really established this world and how it breathes.”

We tried to squeeze vibe into everything that we did and go absolutely nuts on detail work. We didn’t cut it just for coverage. Every sound needed to say something and have a reason for being there. Every morning I would start by telling myself, “Ok. Let’s get weird.” That was my motto. I’d go to source materials that were unconventional – super random stuff – and just kept trying it. Sometimes it wouldn’t work, but sometimes it absolutely did. This makes no sense, but I know it’s working.

The kids commandeer a ship to salvage valuable items from the Renaissance station. Their lift-off sequence was wonderfully intense; the ‘crush’ was powerful and scary and it’s followed by this quiet relief and awe of being in space. Can you talk about your sound work for this sequence?

LG: I kept thinking about how when you’re sitting on a plane while everyone is boarding, you hear the weirdest stuff coming from down below you. I tried to recreate that uneasy feeling. Every time you flip a chunky switch, something weird happens. It’s this call and response.

I featured an old leaf blower…that’s one of the main sounds you hear inside the cockpit when they’re turning everything on.

They’re activating all these different systems and everything is sorta failing. I featured an old leaf blower I had that was on its way out. It had a horrible dying motor and that’s one of the main sounds you hear inside the cockpit when they’re turning everything on.

We wanted that lift-off sequence to be our “express elevator to hell” moment. The chaos of that scene is amplified when you cut to these super calm wide-exterior shots where you finally get to catch your breath.

Crazy question, but are there whale sounds in space??? As the kids’ ship (the Corbelan) docks with the Renaissance station, I swear I heard some whales, lol…

LG: Space Whales exist if you believe they do.

Can you talk about some of the vocal processing for the film? For example, the kids’ helmets as they enter the Station, the voice of Rook coming through the comms in the control room and on the monitors elsewhere on the ship and inside the kids’ ship as he’s talking to Kay, etc.?

WF: Mark [Patterson, dialogue re-recording mixer] spent a lot of time (just like we did) analyzing that original film and trying to recreate those textures. There were tons and tons of comms in that first film. I can only speak a bit for Mark, but I know he was leaning on tools like Audio Ease’s Speakerphone, McDSP’s FutzBox, and things like that to not only create the band-pass nature of it but also the various different distortion characteristics.

When a character is screaming at the top of their lungs, the sound sort of clips; it fuzzes out in a way that is reminiscent of the ’79 film.

We were talking about adding tape emulation before, and Fede (a musician and sound designer in his own right) had this whole idea of embracing the imperfections of the original film. One of those was the way the voices distorted when they screamed. They clipped in this analog tape saturated way. We spent a lot of time in the mix trying to dial in that same kind of distortion in a way that, hopefully, the audience doesn’t consciously notice or think about, but they feel it. When a character is screaming at the top of their lungs, the sound sort of clips; it fuzzes out in a way that is reminiscent of the ’79 film. It gives the film just a little extra drama because it almost sounds like they’re screaming so loud that the tape can’t even hold the audio.

David Butler and Polly McKinnon

How did you handle the voice of Rook? Rook is the same type of robot as Ash from Alien, who was played by the late Ian Holm. How did you match the processing they used on Ash when he’s malfunctioning? What about the actual lines of Rook’s dialogue – where did those come from?

LG: Our dialogue supervisor, Polly McKinnon, spent a ton of time working with Respeecher. They needed quite a bit of target audio in order to train their voice model – something like two hours of raw material – but we were only able to initially salvage eight minutes.

WF: This was a wild goose chase because once we had our assistant Smokey go through the whole film and cut all the dialogue spoken by Ian Holm as Ash (only lines that didn’t overlap with other characters), and there just wasn’t enough material for our friends at Respeecher to work with. We needed to find more material. So, we got in touch with Disney archives and they found the original tape recordings from the set.

…all the dialogue spoken by Ian Holm as Ash…wasn’t enough material for our friends at Respeecher to work with.

We now had access to all the dailies but there were hundreds of tapes. We would basically have to go through by hand and just find the material, so we tried to figure out what tapes would likely have Ash on them. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a line script in the archive, so we decided to look at the original script and find what scenes he was in and then we could match those back to the takes they were using. We discovered that back in the ’70s in the UK, they used a completely different naming scheme for their takes than what we use in Hollywood now. Back then in the UK, they just started with the first shot that they shot in the movie and that was shot number one. The second shot was shot number two. There was no correlation whatsoever to what scene they were shooting. We had a moment of, “Oh no, what are we going to do?”

We ended up digitizing around 20 tapes… enough material of Ian Holm as Ash for Respeecher to create a viable model for Rook.

Luckily, our post coordinator Claire managed to find in this giant pile of archive material a videotape that had some unused alternate takes on it. The tape was apparently prepared for the marketing department back in the ’70s, and it had other takes of Ash on it that weren’t used in the film. Those takes had slates on them, and so based on that, we were able to roughly figure out the range of tapes that he may have been on (somewhere in the 250 to 270 range). We ended up digitizing around 20 tapes and we were able to piece together enough material of Ian Holm as Ash for Respeecher to create a viable model for Rook.

Once I found the right outboard, I then found a plugin that matched what I was doing with the hardware.

For the vocal processing, we had to reverse engineer how they treated Ash’s voice when he was damaged in the first film. To do that, I went down a deep rabbit hole of buying old 1970s outboard gear from eBay, trying to figure out exactly what they would have been using in 1979 to process his voice to make it sound messed up. There’s a heavy phasing element to it and eventually I found something that felt it had a very similar characteristic. Once I found the right outboard, I then found a plugin that matched what I was doing with the hardware.

We actually did this on the Ghostbusters films as well, where we spent a lot of time experimenting with period accurate hardware, finding a processing formula (parameters) that felt similar, and then taking that into the digital realm by finding a plugin recreation of that hardware to achieve a similar effect.

…putting your fingers on the actual dials…feels more creatively satisfying and was also very appropriate for this world.

There’s a lot to be said for getting your hands on the real hardware because you play with it in a different way than you do with plugins. You get your fingers on these knobs, turning them and pressing buttons. You interact with the device in a different way than you would a plugin. For me, it’s easier to noodle around and find a sound with hardware and that’s true for processing, synthesizers, and even sample granular synthesis (I have a couple of hardware boxes that do that). There’s just something about putting your fingers on the actual dials that feels more creatively satisfying and was also very appropriate for this world.

Reverse engineering the hardware processing into the digital world via a plugin makes it easier to manipulate and apply to multiple sounds or tracks at the same time. The problem with many of those boxes from the ’70s is that they’re mono and you have to try to figure out how to extrapolate that out to a Dolby Atmos mix.

Mark Paterson, Clint Bennett, Will Files at the end of the mix

How did all of that work with a Dolby Atmos mix?

WF: That was the trick, right? How do you keep that ’79 aesthetic but still embrace the 2024 technology to give the audience the best possible experience.

It was a bit of a magic trick in terms of riding the line between what felt modern and what felt vintage.

And so a lot of that was figuring out how to apply that sound to a 128 channel mix. Every stem had a little bit of a different treatment. We were tailoring the treatment not only stem by stem, but even sometimes scene by scene, where we were trying to find that happy medium between that lovely analog distortion that we all grew up listening to, but also still embracing a full fidelity, high-impact soundtrack. It was a bit of a magic trick in terms of riding the line between what felt modern and what felt vintage.

What went into the sound of the Gravity Purge/Gravity Generators?

LG: That went through the most trial and error. It was one of these things that, when you start, you think, “Oh my gosh, I’ve never cut a gravity purge. What do I do?”

…huge vocal wronks coming through the depths of the station, and then degaussing-type sounds for when the gravity is restored, plus…something weird as per the prevailing theme.

You’re freaking out and so you start just throwing layer after layer at this thing because you’re a little insecure about it. But our rule of “less is more” applied here. So we almost stripped it all the way back to what the original pass was, which was just huge vocal wronks coming through the depths of the station, and then degaussing-type sounds for when the gravity is restored, plus throwing in something weird as per the prevailing theme.

WF: Yeah, it was definitely a journey of exploration. At one point, I had way too much stuff in there and was trying to get a little too fancy with spatialization, treating things like it’s rippling through the metal and that kind of stuff.

At one point, I had way too much stuff in there and was trying to get a little too fancy with spatialization…

Much of it did end up playing, but at a certain point I realized it isn’t reading as well as it should, because I’m putting in too much. As Lee was saying, less is more – pare it back just like the original film. Try to find the one sound that really tells the story of what’s happening here and focus on that sound. The other sounds fell away to be more supporting characters. Lee made this really crazy sound for the approaching gravity wave and then the sound of the wave hitting the microphone. I have no idea what he did to make that sound, but it was very evocative.

LG: It was space whales.

Supervising Sound Editor/Sound Designer Lee Gilmore

What went into the sound of MU/TH/UR booting up, and the interface sounds on the Renaissance station?

LG: For MU/THU/UR, as well as all other screens, I tried to stay away from your classic sci-fi computer beeps. What can we find that isn’t a beep at all, but still gets the point across?

What can we find that isn’t a beep at all, but still gets the point across?

We looked at old relays, printers, scanners. A friend of mine has a synthwave band called Makeup & Vanity Set, and he hooked us up with a handful of retro beeps made with a Yamaha CS20m that we used for things like the temperature scanner or MU/TH/UR breathing. I used Kilohearts Bitcrush a fair amount to add some “nasty” to all these things and make them feel like they really lived inside the screen.

There are tons of facehuggers in Romulus. At one point, facehuggers are skittering all over the place as the kids try to exit the Remus area. How did you create the sound for a ‘herd’ of facehuggers? Also, what went into their movements, attack sounds, and vocals?

LG: Chris [Terhune, sound designer] handled all of our facehuggers. We recorded the tips of crab claws on different surfaces to serve as their feet. Chris ran all these through an arpeggiator to get different rhythms and speeds. He then took those and ran them through Sound Particles to get that stampede feel.

Their vocals came from a super pitched up recording of horses mating.

Their vocals came from a super pitched up recording of horses mating. We originally had a lot of vocals in there, but decided to save the vocals for the attack sequences, like in Cryo chamber.

For the “hide and seek” scene through the hallway – where the gang are trying to walk through without alerting the facehuggers – a lot of the scariness came from the fact that they weren’t emoting at all. You just heard these claws and tippy taps around you. It felt like they were listening and trying to lean in to see if they could hear Rain and Andy.

The ‘facehugger stampede’ in Remus was a really fun surround sound moment. Can you talk about your Atmos mix here?

WF: Oh yeah, that was total mayhem. We got to do a few things that hadn’t been done in previous Alien films and this was one of them. We’ve never seen, as you say, a stampede of facehuggers.

I really leaned on the sounds of them skittering across metal and anything creepy. I did quite a bit of room treatment on them too…

Lee and Chris created some really creepy sounds for the body movement, but the challenge for the mix was that it’s a very music-driven scene. So it’s about picking the sounds that really cut through and made a difference in terms of what’s going to read, but also what’s going to make the audience feel the way we want them to feel.

I really leaned on the sounds of them skittering across metal and anything creepy. I did quite a bit of room treatment on them too, just because we really wanted to feel the acoustic space that they were in.

As Navarro struggles with the Xenomorph trying to burst out of her, she accidentally crashes the Corbelan into the Renaissance station’s fuel storage tank. What was your approach to this explosion in space?

LG: From the first shot of the movie, we establish that our version of space is going to be really quiet.

That being said, we didn’t want to completely handcuff ourselves to that take, so when the moment calls for it, we’d pump up the space action a little bit. It doesn’t make a ton of sense, but I always kept thinking about a Ridley Scott interview where a journalist asked why it was raining in Brett’s death scene during Alien and he just answered “cause it looked cool.” That was kind of our approach to space and the explosions: hit it when it seemed cool.

Sound Effects Editors Dan Kenyon, Smokey Cloud, Luis Galdames, Jimmy Miller

The explosion violently launches the Corbelan into the Romulus hangar. There’s a huge crash and a rush of air before the area is locked down. Can you talk about your sound work here? How did you create that huge air rushing sound?

LG: Sound effects editors James ‘Jimmy’ Miller and Ken McGill worked on this sequence and each brought a different take on the wind. Jimmy did some great tonal violent wind and a really powerful door close. Ken brought in some heavy rocket sounds that really helped with the turbulence/scale. Chris [Terhune] came in later and added an ascending pitch layer that really put the bow on it.

Lee Gilmore doing a gore recording session

What went into the Xenomorph sounds? When it emerges from its cocoon, it does it one joint at a time. How did you design that? Also, what went into its breathing sounds and vocals?

LG: Cutting the Xeno cocoon was one of the most fun moments I had on the show. I didn’t want to rely too much on gore libraries and opted for the “fresh ingredients” approach, as the kids say. I went to the grocery store and asked them for any meat they were about to throw out. I came back with a 15lb sack of discarded meat bits, a few pumpkins, lobsters and crabs. Luis Galdames and I did a big gore record session in Jimmy Miller’s room (sorry, Jimmy).

WF: The smell is still in there.

LG: The smell of “fresh ingredients”!

Still, it was great that we were able to record some gross stuff.

Also, I had a recording of a tree that fell in our backyard that I broke apart and disemboweled. A lot of the xeno fingers crunching and popping came from this tree recording and also went into the chestburster.

I tried my best to make it as hyper-detailed, overtly sexual sounding, and as nasty as I could. Like, when it’s coming through these not-so-subtle flaps, I just kept thinking, “How can I make this so gross that my mom is going to be disappointed in me?”

…when it’s coming through these not-so-subtle flaps, I just kept thinking, ‘How can I make this so gross that my mom is going to be disappointed in me?’

The xeno vocals were interesting because you couldn’t just slap on a scream and call it good. The puppeteers did an amazing job at giving them a real performance. They were constantly doing subtle moments that were calling for detail. A lot of the hissing sounds originated with bird and reptile hisses. I’d use things like gators to help give size and weight to the close up puppets. But you had to be really careful because if you added too much low end growly stuff it just became a generic monster. At the end of the day, a xeno still needs to sound like a xeno.

I also liked the idea of trying to incorporate insect sounds to tie them into being xeno drones. We used some non-traditional insect sounds to give them a really rad chitter when their mouths are closed and they’re just boiling over about to do a hero scream. I added some pumpkin and leather stretches for their jaws and that seemed to tie the whole thing together.

Kay is stuck in the Romulus side with the Xenomorph and Rain, Tyler, and Andy are on the other side of the door. On Kay’s side, there are the sounds of rushing water, blaring warning sounds, and ‘Access Denied’ vox. On Rain’s side, it’s quiet. I love the contrast and the POV shifts between the two sides of the door. Can you talk about your sound edit and mix here?

WF: For the whole film, we tried to approach everything with maximum contrast in mind. Luckily, the way this scene was staged it was designed for maximum contrast.

I was…cutting hard on the reverb tails when we cut back and forth so they wouldn’t bleed over from one side to another.

From a mix perspective, I was not only trying to vary the sounds themselves but also working with the treatments, like cutting hard on the reverb tails when we cut back and forth so they wouldn’t bleed over from one side to another. That sounds obvious, but it’s one of those things that honestly we don’t always have time to finesse. So it was really nice to be able to get that right on a scene like this. Cutting the reverbs tails helps put the audience in that space and gives you the feeling that you’re now you’re behind this door and it’s sealed tight. No sound is getting through; there’s no sound bleeding over.

LG: On the editorial side, we keep going back to the idea, like Will said, of contrast. That was such a big deal in the original movie. Will and I talked at length about the Nostromo landing on LV-426. When it cuts outside, it felt so oppressive that you just wanted it to stop. It’s anxiety-inducing and stressful. So we brought those ideas into this scene. When you’re on Kay’s side, there are super crazy alarms blaring.

…we can’t hear Andy explaining why he won’t open the door to save her. That makes it so anxiety-inducing…

In the tram room with Andy and the gang, it goes to silence. Mark and Will did a great job there. When we’re with Kay, the glass she is behind is so thick that we can’t hear Andy explaining why he won’t open the door to save her. That makes it so anxiety-inducing that we can’t understand Andy and it’s one of the most emotional scenes for me.

WF: For that dialogue, Mark not only had to muffle the shit out of it, but he also had to create contrast between Kay’s screaming and Rain’s screaming because they are basically two young women yelling at each other through this door. Mark spent some time using a little bit of pitching to create some sonic distinction between their voices. We used a bit of panning and, of course, EQ for the acoustic treatment.

Polly did an amazing job of cleaning up the dialogue so we didn’t have to do much technical ADR.

That was all production dialogue. In fact, I’d say there was very little ADR in this film. It was very well recorded. The performances were great, so there wasn’t really any need to replace the performances. Polly did an amazing job of cleaning up the dialogue so we didn’t have to do much technical ADR.

We were in touch with the production sound mixer before they started shooting because we actually created a bunch of sounds for Fede to play on set. That’s something that came out of our initial meeting with him.

…we actually created a bunch of sounds for Fede to play on set.

We talked about the idea of creating sounds for him to be able to play the actors to give them some sense of how intense the environments were going to be, and also the scale of them and the energy level, so that they would be able to calibrate their performance to what he wanted it to feel like when it was finished.

They would actually play these sounds in between takes just to give the actors a sense of space and a sense of energy.

Can you share some examples of sounds you had created for set?

LG: I sent about 20 or 25 different background tracks right when the shoot was starting. We had read the script, but we didn’t have any idea what the locations were really going to look like.

So in a weird way, a lot of the background work for the movie was already done before we even saw picture.

I knew we were going down the ’79 route, so I just created sounds from scratch that I thought might be appropriate: chuggy industrial hallways, creepy breathing labs, a frozen cryo chamber. The crazy thing is that a lot of that stuff ended up living on all the way through the final mix. So in a weird way, a lot of the background work for the movie was already done before we even saw picture.

Andy and the kids ride the shuttle elevator through the ship to get to the Romulus lab. What went into the sounds for the shuttle elevator?

LG: Dan [Kenyon] worked on this scene and it consisted mostly of cargo hold rattles and various interior train sounds. He made it all very calming which I thought was great as we’ve just left a very emotionally tense scene beforehand. Luis added tonal whooshes for the lights we see going by and that helped sell that we were traveling at a fast speed.

What went into the sounds for Andy? He gets a chip replacement/removal a few times in the film. What went into his sounds?

LG: Everyone had a hand in working on Andy. Andy’s flash drive consisted of some real detailed work from our foley team at Post Creations. Ken did some really interesting vocals using iZotope’s Stutter Edit for when Andy is glitchy and having his seizures. Chris came up with a really great “Andy modem” sound for anytime he is processing or receiving a new directive.

What went into the sound of the ‘Impact Event’? There’s a fun POV shift back inside the station to Rook and we get to hear the ‘Impact Event’ from his perspective. Can you talk about creating the Impact Event sound from these two perspectives?

LG: This is another great example of contrast, of quiet vs. big. Everything in space is appropriately muted and then we really let it rip when we get back inside the lab with Rook. Everything for this entire movie has sounded like it’s about to fall apart, and now it really is.

Everything for this entire movie has sounded like it’s about to fall apart, and now it really is.

It was a big contrast shift because when we cut back to this asteroid field that Ken and Jimmy had worked on, it’s big and powerful, but also very contained and somehow calming.

WF: We also got a series of gifts from Fede in that he was always looking for where we can take music out of this film. One of the places he decided to take music out is here on the station crashing into the asteroid field. We were able to do a very minimalist musical approach. It was almost beautiful sounding in a strange way. It’s very spare. There’s not a lot of sound happening there. It’s just a couple of things happening at once. It was cool that Fede trusted us to fill the space without music and just go with a very elegant minimalist approach.

LG: It was great to have these serene, beautiful moments and then book-ending them with just absolute hell.

Director Fede Álvarez and Cailee Spaeny on the set of ‘ALIEN: ROMULUS’ Photo by Murray Close

I loved the ‘cargo hold blowing out into space’ scene with Rain and the Offspring. What went into the sounds of the air being sucked through the ever-widening hole in the cargo hold’s floor?

LG: So I’m trying my best to get this hull breach sound to work, and it’s just a mess. Now Chris [Terhune] loves him some Aztec death whistles and he keeps coming into my room asking, “Did you try the death whistle yet?”

“No I did not, please leave.”

Then I finally tried the death whistle and, of course, it worked and now I have to live with Chris being right.

Can you talk about your approach to the mix here, Will? About going to silence after Rain gets sucked out into space?

WF: Part of it is subverting expectations, right? You expect it to be this big, loud event and then suddenly it just goes to silence and the audience is like, “Whoa, what?”

We saw it at the Chinese Theater in IMAX for the premiere, and it really felt like the bottom of the theater had just fallen out. That was a very satisfying moment.

LG: Going to silence (at least for me) automatically fuels all this tension. I just get all this anxiety, thinking, “Is the room broken? Did something happen?” I love how that works with the silence in the movie because it just freaks you out every time. It can be really unnerving and effective if used properly.

Amy Byron, Lee Gilmore, Fede Álvarez

Will did such a great job with that, with the suck out, and then slowly incorporating the sounds of this sand that’s pouring out of the hopper. It’s such a pretty sound and it really lulls you into this false sense of safety. Plus, you’ve got Ben’s score that sounds hopeful. This leads into a final jump scare just when you think it’s all over…

WF: There was some conversation on the stage as to whether or not it was too cruel to the audience to introduce the sound of the happy music and creating this feeling that, “Oh, she’s going to be okay.” Then, we hit the jump scare there and everyone literally jumped at that moment. Me included! I was not expecting it. You’re led into this false sense of security that she’s going to be okay after all this horrible stuff.

LG: We had so much fun with that on stage. We all started evil laughing, talking about, “If we did this, is that too mean?”

WF: Literally, we were like, “People are going to hate us for this.”

Fede is a jump scare master and shared his whole philosophy about the mechanics of jump scares with us.

We learned a lot about jump scares on this. Fede is a jump scare master and shared his whole philosophy about the mechanics of jump scares with us. We learned a lot about how to best craft a jump scare psychologically. I’ve worked on a lot of horror movies and had some kind of sense of what makes a good jump scare, but Fede is such a smart guy and thinks about everything deeply. One of those things he had thought about deeply was the mechanics of what makes a good jump scare.

From L to R: Polly McKinnon, Amy Byron, Clint Bennet, Jake Roberts, Mark Paterson, Fede Álvarez, Lee Gilmore, Will Files, Steve Neal, Claire Truman, Mark McCoy

What have you learned while working on Alien: Romulus? What lessons are you carrying forward in your approach to film sound?

LG: The big lesson for me was the reminder to not be scared. Don’t be scared of taking big swings. Don’t be scared of getting weird. Fede was great when it came to this because he just had so much confidence in his choices. He had all these ideas about when to strip out sound, when to go big, when to go nuts. In the moment you might be thinking, “Oh man I don’t know about this.” But then his idea would totally work.

Don’t be scared of taking big swings. Don’t be scared of getting weird.

This started a confidence chain reaction throughout the whole crew where we just started going, “Well, what if we did this, or did that?” All ideas were on the table.

I would also like to give a shout out to our crew. I’m really proud of how Romulus turned out and there is zero chance of it getting there without our team. We were very lucky to have Mark Paterson, Polly McKinnon, David Butler, Jake Riehle, Ryan Cole, Ailene Roberts, Chris Terhune, Dan Kenyon, Luis Galdames, Ken McGill, James Miller, Smokey Cloud, Clint Bennett, Steve Neal, Sam Munoz/Post Creations, Kristin Mann, and Moksha Bruno.

A big thanks to Lee Gilmore and Will Files for giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the sound of Alien: Romulus and to Jennifer Walden for the interview!

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