Sony Pixel Power calrec Sony

How do you create the sound of Mars?

24/11/2022

Mark Mangini, sound designer on documentary Good Night Oppy, talks to TVBEurope about creating believable sounds for the Mars Opportunity rover, including when it developed arthritis

By Jenny Priestley

Published: November 24, 2022

Mark Mangini, sound designer on documentary Good Night Oppy, talks to TVBEurope about creating believable sounds for the Mars Opportunity rover, including when it developed arthritis

target=_blank title=Share on LinkedIn class=share-linkedin>

Sound designer Mark Mangini is no stranger to working on major sci-fi movies having won Oscars for his work on Mad Max: Fury Road and Dune. He's also credited with recording and editing a new sound for Leo the Lion, MGM's mascot.

Mangini's latest project takes him literally out of this world. He talks to TVBEurope about creating the sound for a new documentary that charts the story of Opportunity, a NASA exploration rover that was sent to Mars for a 90-day mission but ended up surviving for 15 years.

How did you get involved with Good Night Oppy? The OPPY filmmakers had approached my studio about doing the post production sound work. They had me at the top of their wish list as the sound designer they most wanted but were afraid I wouldn't be interested in anything but feature films. To the contrary, when I saw the teaser and spoke with Ryan White, the director, I knew this was something I had to do. I loved the film, I loved the message and I relished the opportunity to work with and at NASA and JPL to capture authentic sounds.

What exactly was your role on the project and what does that involve? My role was that of sound designer. I am the person responsible for creating everything that the audience hears except the music. The musical score, which is amazing, was written by Blake Neely.

Movies are made up of three major components: dialogue, sound effects and music. My team and I recorded hundreds of authentic sounds at NASA and Jet Propulsion Library like the rovers and the control rooms, designed sounds that have never been heard before like the sound of landing on Mars or Martian wind, edited thousands of incidental sounds like footsteps and computer keyboards and then mixed them together to create the final soundtrack.

Remember that 30 minutes of the film take place on Mars and there were no microphones to capture any of Oppy's journey. ILM created stunning photorealistic VFX for all of Oppy's adventures on Mars but, of course, they are made in a computer and have no sound at all. It was our job to record, create and edit a realistic audio soundscape for everything the audience sees, but from scratch!

How did working on Good Night Oppy differ to working on a project like Dune? Dune is a narrative film in the science-fiction genre. This means that we see many things we've never seen before and, as such, we have licence to invent sound for those things we've never heard before. Oppy is a documentary. In documentaruies we feel a deep and abiding responsibility to present the audience with sound that is authentic, to give them as realistic experience as possible. This made work complex because much of the film utilises archival footage that had no sound with it. Our team had to reconstruct these sounds, sometimes finding modern equivalencies. For example, when NASA was testing the balloons that would cushion Oppy's landing on Mars, the footage had no sound so I re-imagined it by bouncing a beach ball on the dirt in my backyard and slowing it down to give it size and weight.

What technology did you use? I used digital mobile sound recorders to capture new sounds at NASA and JPL. When I designed and edited the voice of Oppy and made the sounds of the rovers, I used digital audio workstations on desktop computers, in this case Avid's Pro Tools and hosts of plugins that allowed me to alter the original sounds into something new. When all the sounds were recorded and designed and edited, I mixed them together in a recording studio using a large frame digital mixing console while watching a digital projection on the screen.

How do you create the sound of both the rover and Mars? The rover was made out of many components but mostly the actual sounds of the rover prototypes of Oppy and Perseverance at JPL. We drove them on a fake Mars landscape built on the campus at JPL in Pasadena that included the same type of terrain that Oppy might encounter. This gave us many of the motors and mechanical sounds we needed as well as the unique sound of Oppy's aluminum wheels rolling on hard rock.

We made the voice of Oppy, the electronic chittering it makes when it communicates with NASA, out of hard disk chatter modulated with my voice speaking what Oppy would have said in English if it could speak.

Mark Mangini The coolest sounds were the ambiences on Mars. When I began the project, I started creating sounds for what I thought Mars would sound like based on my imagination. We knew from NASA footage that there was wind on the planet so I started imagining what those winds might sound like in a sterile and lonely landscape. A couple of months into the work, NASA released to me the first-ever recordings made on another planet! They had put a single microphone on Perseverance and it had captured Martian wind! A very short, monoaural snippet, I might add. I think only 10 seconds long. I took this sound, extended it and weaved it into a fully immersive Dolby Atmos ambience and used it whenever we were on the surface of the planet. In fact, the very first sound you hear in the film are those winds captured on the Martian surface, captured by the rover!

How much collaboration did you have with the director and the film editors? There was a great deal of collaboration with the director, producer and film editors. These are critical relationships on every film. From the first day
LINK: https://www.tvbeurope.com/audio/how-do-you-create-the-sound-of-mars...
See more stories from tvb

Most recent headlines

05/01/2027

Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be demoed at CES 2026

Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...

07/10/2026

Dalet Flex LTS Delivers Smarter Media Operations from Ingest to Distribution

Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, today announced the latest Long-Term Supported (LTS) release of Dalet Flex. Build...

06/09/2026

Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA World Cup 2026 in Germany with Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos

June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...

04/08/2026

Dalet Announces Commercial Availability of Dalia, Bringing Media-Aware Agentic AI to Enterprise Productions

Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...

29/07/2026

Brightline Unveils Compact, Suspended MOD1 LED Light

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

29/07/2026

NAB Meets With Trusty on Ownership Caps

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

29/07/2026

QuickLink To Feature New StudioPro AnywhereTally At IBC 2026

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

29/07/2026

HBO Max Launches Vertical Shorts to Improve Content Discovery

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

29/07/2026

New Tool Identifies Sources Of Fake Videos

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

29/07/2026

DNEG Migrates Editorial Workflows to Foundrys Hiero

Foundry today announced that Academy Award-winning creative studio DNEG has implemented Hiero to support its editorial workflows. Part of the Nuke product famil...

29/07/2026

QuickLink Unveils New StudioPro AnywhereTally Remote Tall...

The Latest Addition to the Brand's StudioPro Ecosystem Combines Simple Deployment, Cloud Control and Professional Grade Wireless Reliability QuickLink, a l...

29/07/2026

The Secret Master Adjustment Layer Hack in After Effects

The Secret Master Adjustment Layer Hack in After Effects Graham Quince July 28, 2026 0 Comments Trish Meyer (who literally beta-tested the original Af...

29/07/2026

Post Completed with Blackmagic Cloud for Shane Kosugi's Feature Film SEEK

Post Completed with Blackmagic Cloud for Shane Kosugi's Feature Film SEEK Brie Clayton July 28, 2026 0 Comments Cannes Indie International Film Fe...

29/07/2026

Isabeau Miller Named Chair of Berklee Songwriting Department

Isabeau Miller Named Chair of Berklee Songwriting Department The Berklee alumna, who previously served on the Songwriting faculty, will begin her new role on ...

28/07/2026

LiveUs World Cup Record: 1,700 Units Support Wide Range of Transmission Needs

LiveU, the pioneer in IP-video transmission and cloud-based remote production, today detailed its historic performance records set during the 2026 FIFA World Cu...

28/07/2026

Case Study: How the Dallas Cowboys Removed Bottlenecks in Off-site Content Production

The NFL franchise rebuilt their off-site content operation for an era when teams...

28/07/2026

A New Way To Watch': How Formula 1 and Sky Sports Are Pushing Race Coverage Into a New Era

Longtime partners expand viewer choice, data-driven analysis, access, immersive ...

28/07/2026

Grass Valley Op Ed: Seven Paradoxes Shaping the Next Era of Media Production

There is a unique moment before every major production. The audience never sees it. The cameras are ready. The talent is preparing. Directors review the final...

28/07/2026

The CW Network, ESPN Ink Streaming Agreement With Launch on Aug. 4

The CW Network and ESPN have announced their highly anticipated streaming agreement to bring CW Sports' live events to the ESPN App will officially launch o...

28/07/2026

Lawo Delivers Audio Excellence for Europes Largest Classical Open-Air Concert on Bastille Day

As more than tens of thousands of spectators filled Paris' Champ de Mars and...

28/07/2026

Appear Assists Chile's First Large-Scale 4K FIFA World Cup Viewing Experience

Appear's X Platform played a central role in Chile's first large-scale c...

28/07/2026

IBC 2026: Solid State Logic Highlights Transition to Software-Defined Production

Responding to the broadcast industry's shift to embrace more flexible production platforms, Solid State Logic (SSL) is evolving its comprehensive System T p...

28/07/2026

TNT Sports Goes to Greater Heights With New DUNKMAN League

Production leverages innovative camera technologies, AI, and data to capture the action in four-week inaugural competition The first-ever professional dunking ...

28/07/2026

Rogers, Prime Video Ink 12-Year Sublicensing Deal for NHL Rights in Canada

Prime Video to exclusively broadcast Wednesday night national NHL regular-season games in Canada...

28/07/2026

CBS Sports Snags U.S. English-Language Rights for CONCACAF Champions Cup

Every match will stream live on Paramount+ beginning in February,...

28/07/2026

TK Audio unveil the TK-Lizer 3

Baxandall-inspired hardware EQ overhauled TK Audio's Baxandall-inspired hardware EQ unit has just made a return, bringing the popular unit back into the...

28/07/2026

Asparion reveal the D700 Rack

D700 system gains new live-focused rackmount surface Asparion have just announced an expansion of their D700 control surface range, introducing a new model ...

28/07/2026

Six NFVF Presidential Employment Stimulus Programme (PESP)-Funded Films Selected for the 47th Durban International Film Festival (DIFF)

27 July 2026, Johannesburg - The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an a...

28/07/2026

Nielsen Launches Ad Intel AI: the Only Product of its Kind that Transforms Fragmented Ad Data into Actionable Intelligence

Ad Intel AI is Nielsen's first in a new generation of AI products built to t...

28/07/2026

aconnic is ramping up supply for the new ACCEED 1444 fiber migration

Contribution to Europe's technological autonomy in the key industry telecommunications aconnic AG (ISIN: DE000A0LBKW6), Munich, starts commercial shipments...

28/07/2026

The Tow Foundation Awards PMVP $400,000 Grant

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

28/07/2026

LiveU's World Cup Support Breaks Company Records

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

28/07/2026

Encompass Selected by Channel 4 to Deliver Managed Linear...

Encompass Digital Media has been selected by Channel 4, one of the UK's public service broadcasters, to deliver managed linear playout services as part of a...

28/07/2026

Cinegy partners with SAMA Digital Media Solutions to sati...

Cinegy GmbH, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has confirmed a new partnership with leading Korean systems integrator and distribu...

28/07/2026

Limecraft Adds Multicam Player and Audio Fingerprint-Base...

Limecraft today announces version 2026.5 of its AI-powered production platform. Limecraft 2026.5 https://(www.limecraft.com/limecraft-2026-5-multicam-quad-view-...

28/07/2026

Appear powers first large-scale 4k FIFA World Cup viewing...

X Platform technology enabled a premium UHD viewing experience through a hybrid ground-to-cloud architecture developed with Chilevisi n, ClaroVTR and Pixop App...

28/07/2026

LiveU Delivers Record-Breaking LIQ and Cloud Service Depl...

LiveU, the pioneer in IP-video transmission and cloud-based remote production, today announced it has set historic performance records during the 2026 World Foo...

28/07/2026

DHD Releases New Firmware and Options for its Audio Produ...

dhd.audio announces that its latest generation firmware, Version 10.4, is now available to DHD customers. Version 10.4 introduces expanded configuration capabil...

28/07/2026

Study: TV Operating Systems Gain Influence Over Viewing

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

28/07/2026

Maryland Public Television Promotes Ling Ling Sun to CTO

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

28/07/2026

NUGEN Audio Helps Mix Technician Blake Bunzel Deliver Rel...

Brand's Intuitive Metering and Dialogue Tools Improve Efficiency and Maintain Clarity Across Projects Ranging from Sitcoms to Effects Heavy Fantasy Series ...

28/07/2026

TAG Video Systems Accelerates the Move to Cloud and Virtu...

TAG Video Systems, a leader in 100% software-based realtime media monitoring, multiviewing and quality control (QC), today announced the latest innovations to i...

28/07/2026

Harvard Athletics Transforms Collegiate Sports Storytelling with AJA Gear

Harvard Athletics Transforms Collegiate Sports Storytelling with AJA Gear Brie Clayton July 27, 2026 0 Comments Between the maturation of IP and remot...

28/07/2026

New Live Action Projection Mapping Film Captured with URSA Cine 12K LF

New Live Action Projection Mapping Film Captured with URSA Cine 12K LF Brie Clayton July 27, 2026 0 Comments Large format sensor allows Texas Legacy ...

28/07/2026

NVIDIA Agent Toolkit Expands With New Omniverse Libraries, Putting AI Agents to Work Building Simulation-Ready Worlds

NVIDIA Agent Toolkit Expands With New Omniverse Libraries, Putting AI Agents to ...

28/07/2026

AI Agents Expand Creative Tools to Millions

AI Agents Expand Creative Tools to Millions Brie Clayton July 27, 2026 0 Comments Hero image courtesy of Epic Games Leading creative applications are...

28/07/2026

How Rick Aggeler Built a Music Community for Boston Teens

How Rick Aggeler Built a Music Community for Boston Teens When he was a Berklee student, Aggeler volunteered at the Boys & Girls Clubs of Boston, where he hel...

28/07/2026

Football is back on Sky Sports following its most watched Premier League season ever

Tuesday 28 July 2026 Football is back on Sky Sports following its most watched ...

28/07/2026

Powerful Compute So Compact, It's Clutch - Build AI in Your Hand With NVIDIA Jetson

As a discerning AI investor who values style and substance, Sarah Guo knows this...

28/07/2026

Are you coming to the Fleadh? RT will be there

RT Raidi na Gaeltachta, RT Radio 1, RT One and RT Player to showcase the best of the reels, rhymes and rambles from Comhaltas Fleadh Cheoil na h ireann 202...