Sound Effects
A variety of sound effects were used in the episodes, and played a major role. In addition to basic sounds, such as feet walking along a corridor or tunnel, more advanced effects were created, such as the mysterious haunting 'music' which is heard over the rocket's radio in many episodes of Operation Luna.
The most distinctive effect was the dramatic rocket take-off, which was played at the beginning of each episode, and whenever necessary during the episodes. This was actually a recording of a jet aircraft at Heathrow airport. Often, this would be followed by a slowly ascending tone (representing the rocket accelerating), which "was actually a recording of a thermionic valve played through an echo chamber down at the Physical Research Laboratory at Kingston". Other sound effects were created at Battersea Power Station, and the sound made by the televiewer on board Luna was actually a naval ASDIC.
The BBC had an echo chamber in the studio, which was greatly utilised during the episodes. Whenever the crew were in contact by radio with Earth control, or another distant location, the echo chamber would be applied to the voice of the remote character. Various sound effects were also created "live" in the studio. For example, in episode 8 of Journey to the Moon, the crew hear a mysterious tapping on the outside of the ship; this effect was created "by tapping the needle of the gramophone pickup head, and playing that through an echo chamber".
Read more about this topic: Journey Into Space
Famous quotes containing the words sound and/or effects:
“There was a sound of revelry by night,
And Belgium’s capital had gathered then
Her beauty and her chivalry, and bright
The lamps shone o’er fair women and brave men;
A thousand hearts beat happily; and when
Music arose with its voluptuous swell,
Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again,
And all went merry as a marriage-bell;
But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell!”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“Each of us, even the lowliest and most insignificant among us, was uprooted from his innermost existence by the almost constant volcanic upheavals visited upon our European soil and, as one of countless human beings, I can’t claim any special place for myself except that, as an Austrian, a Jew, writer, humanist and pacifist, I have always been precisely in those places where the effects of the thrusts were most violent.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)