Behind the Creation of “Podracer Talk Radio” with the Skywalker Sound Team

As night falls on this side of Malastare, we’re one rotation away from the semifinal race…

Thanks to the combined teams of artists at Skywalker Sound and Industrial Light & Magic, fans of the galaxy far, far away can now enjoy a piece of audio immersion straight from the mixed reality playset, Star Wars: Beyond Victory. Originally created to echo in the halls of Sornah’s garage, this slice of in-story talk radio packs everything from interviews with hotshot racers to custom-made commercials.

The idea for the radio program was hatched early in the playset’s development. ILM art director Stephen Zavala and colleagues in the ILM Art Department included a radio in their designs for the podracer’s garage. The possibilities were too much for the Skysound team to resist. 

“We immediately started brainstorming ways that we could utilize that radio, both for music and for storytelling,” explains supervising sound editor Kevin Bolen, who has worked on a number of interactive productions from ILM. “Podracing is a major part of the story, of course, so you could have sports commentary, radio interviews, and that kind of thing. For fans, the discussions around the celebrities of their given sport is really fascinating. So we wanted to give our players the opportunity to become fans of this fictional podracing world.”

With an extensive background crafting soundscapes for Star Wars series, films, theme park attractions, and video games, sound designer David W. Collins led the creation of an initial proof-of-concept back in 2023. “It’s a great opportunity to do world-building with audio, which everyone loves to do,” notes Collins. “It’s so effective story-wise.” The early version utilized the talents of Skysound’s “loop group” of Star Wars voice actors, who often contribute background dialogue and other needs to various productions. 

After receiving the greenlight from ILM director Jose Perez III, the Skysound team partnered with writer Ross Beeley to create a final version of the radio broadcast in tandem with the development of the game’s overall story. Bolen would step into the lead sound editing role with the help of fellow editor Nathan Moody, while Collins remained on the acting side, voicing the radio station’s professional DJ. They’d already gained valuable experience creating similar atmospheric soundscapes for projects like Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at the Disney Parks and the cantina from the land’s interactive counterpart created by ILM, Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge.

Beyond Victory’s experience design helped determine the specific placement of the radio loop exclusively in the racer’s garage, a locale players would revisit throughout the story. That presented an opportunity for the artists to showcase distinct pieces of the broadcast spread across the gameplay, many of which correspond to moments in the narrative. “Certain interviews make sense earlier or later in the experience,” Bolen adds. “Commercials could be placed at different moments.” It’s something that makes Beyond Victory’s radio feature different from other, earlier video games that often sported non-specific music tracks and related material in a more arbitrary fashion.

Among the interview subjects who speak with Collins’ DJ character are Volo and their friend, Pyya, as well as twin racers Staka and Raka, among others. “There’s an ongoing joke in the game that one of the racers has been ‘disappeared’ by the Hutts for speaking poorly about them,” says Collins. “That character, Paghee’Dhe, is being interviewed and they start to say things that might upset the Hutts, so part of their entourage breaks down the door of the recording studio and hauls them out.”

In the case of the interview with Staka and Raka, Collins recorded the scene live with fellow actors and members of the loop group, Shelby Young and Matthew Wood. “Doing this loop group kind of work, you’re constantly improvising,” Collins explains. “So many great moments come out of these sessions. This is already a really fun game. There are so many interesting characters.” Keeping in the spirit of his DJ character, Collins would even perform physical actions as described in the broadcast script, like pouring drinks from a tea set and opening the radio station door by using the one in his own recording booth away from the mic, all to give it a sense of realism.

Among the radio broadcast’s commercials is one for a cantina operated by the memorable Seezelslak, a character who first appeared in Tales and is voiced by comedian Bobby Moynihan, who had already joined the Beyond Victory cast as the voice of a new character, Grakkus the Hutt. Moynihan would reprise his earlier role, albeit in a much younger form, considering that Beyond Victory is set decades before Tales.

“These are almost like radio plays, where even if you didn’t play the game, if you listen to them, you’ll get a sense of the narrative arcs involving the different characters,” Bolen explains. “There are callbacks, such as some commercials for a company called Sorbee Manufacturing. Volo is unwillingly forced to become a getaway driver during a theft at that facility. So we thought it’d be funny to have commercials about that place.” The callback even goes so far as to reference a gag line from the character Trizz, who eagerly tells Volo about his side hustle selling submarine parts. So naturally the commercial makes a point to highlight Sorbee’s line of submersible equipment!

And of course, what’s a radio broadcast without music? While Star Wars: A New Hope (1977) features the iconic band in the Mos Eiseley Cantina, diegetic music has remained unusual in Star Wars productions. But one recent story, Lucasfilm Animation’s Star Wars: The Bad Batch (2021-24), did include a number of punk rock-infused tracks composed by Kevin, Deana, and Sean Kiner. Because the interactive story takes place at roughly the same time, the Beyond Victory team chose to include a number of those tracks into the broadcast that players experience. Additionally, Beyond Victory composers Clark Rhee and Joseph Trapanese were inspired by a piece of the Kevin Kiner and Sarah Tudzin’s score from Ahsoka (2023-present), “Igyah Kah,” and created multiple versions of a song called “Punk Racer.”

“Beyond Victory takes place at an earlier time than a lot of other Star Wars music that we’re familiar with, so how can we make it seem like it’s from earlier in time?” Bolen explains. “Generations of music build off each other, and earlier generations are not usually as technically sophisticated. We wanted something more raw and stripped down. It also had to feel like someday it could evolve into the later types of music that you know. Because it’s the same era as The Bad Batch, we thought it made sense some of those songs would be circulated on the radio. One of the soundtrack releases had songs that had a sort of rock, grungy, or punk feel. Those worked out very well with the vibe of the music that Jose and I settled on. 

“For Jose, rockabilly seemed to make sense,” Bolen continues. “Joseph and Clark produced original music cues. Ahsoka also came out while we were working on this and it included a great, punk-rock style of song when Sabine has her speeder bike chase. We wanted that kind of energy, because we’re dealing with podracing. So what if it’s rockabilly in the Star Wars galaxy and it takes place on the spectrum with some of this other music that you might’ve heard in The Bad Batch? Then Joseph and Clark wrote ‘Punk Racer.’ There’s another version called ‘Synth Racer’ with a lot of synthesizer, and there’s also a score version. You hear it in different permutations throughout the game. We also used one of the guitar riffs for intro and outro tags on the radio.”

For the Skysound artists, interactive projects like Beyond Victory present a distinct creative opportunity to combine roles and skillsets usually split between multiple people on a traditional feature film or series. It’s also an entirely different way of telling a story with sound. “We have to think about how everything works or doesn’t work in different contexts based on the user experience, based on things they knowingly choose to do, or some other randomization factor,” says Bolen. “How do we use that variability to empower the players, propel the narrative, or to create replayability? Most times when you rewatch a film or a show, you’re not re-experiencing it in a different way, but with these interactive experiences, it’ll always be very different than it was before. Nothing happens in exactly the same way again.”

This special offering of the radio broadcast on YouTube is a selection from what Bolen calls the “hero path” with select moments brought together into a more compact amount of time. And you can listen to it now by clicking here.

On Meta Quest, dive into three unforgettable adventures with Vader Immortal, Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge and Star Wars: Beyond Victory – A Mixed Reality Playset, each 50% off, or get all three together for $30 from April 28 to May 5.

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