The Soundman First Feature To Have Full Soundtrack Beamed 7,500 Light‑Years Into Space

According to Caviar, the production company behind such titles as The Soundman, Sound of Metal and War Pony, it marks the first time an entire movie soundtrack has been broadcast as one coherent digital radio signal beyond our planet. The full transmission coincides with the start of the Palm Springs International Film Festival on January 2. It also marks a milestone moment for the 400 engineering students involved.

The soundtrack of the film was crafted over ten months and includes more than 1,620 audio tracks and 12,460 individually recorded sounds.

Sending cultural artifacts into space has a storied history. NASA’s Voyager Golden Record, launched in 1977, carried music, natural sounds and human voices as a time capsule for potential extraterrestrial listeners. In 2008, NASA also beamed The Beatles’ “Across the Universe” toward the North Star. But the The Soundman project stands apart in scale and ambition: its soundtrack was crafted over ten months and includes more than 1,620 audio tracks and 12,460 individually recorded sounds.

The idea didn’t originate in a lab but in the film’s own storyline. In The Soundman, the protagonist becomes obsessed with sending a sound composition into the ether, convinced that audio can outlive its creator. What began as a poetic narrative device has now been transformed into a real‑world experiment by a team of 400 engineering students, turning fiction into a bold scientific gesture.

"If anyone or anything intercepts this signal in 7,500 years, they’ll hear an auditory portrait of our world in the 21st Century. We’re sending the soundtrack to a place where stars are born. ‘Heart’ and ‘Soul’ also reflect the relationship between our main characters, Berre and Elza." - Frank Van Passel

“If anyone or anything intercepts this signal in 7,500 years, they’ll hear an auditory portrait of our world in the 21st Century,” says director Frank Van Passel. The transmission is aimed at the Heart and Soul Nebula in the constellation Cassiopeia, a symbolic choice for the filmmaker. “We’re sending the soundtrack to a place where stars are born. ‘Heart’ and ‘Soul’ also reflect the relationship between our main characters, Berre and Elza,” he explains.

In the film, a young, gifted but shy soundman and a defiant actress fall in love, just as war begins to darken the airwaves of 1940s Europe. Two souls, connected by one frequency.

Van Passel has described The Soundman as an ode to radio, his favorite medium, and the space broadcast is his way of honoring both the art and the science behind it. “We assumed sending the idea of our film into space would require massive antennas and complex hardware,” he says. “But in the end, it came down to mathematics.”

To bring the concept to life, Van Passel partnered with KUL’s Faculty of Engineering. As part of a major academic assignment, second‑year students were tasked with calculating the transmission parameters needed to beam the soundtrack into space. The project is overseen by Professor Sofie Pollin, a leading expert in wireless communication. Final‑year student Catherine Mertens executed the technical implementation and handled the transmission itself.

“It’s a way of saying that sound - our stories, our emotions - can travel farther than we ever will.” - Frank Van Passel

The soundtrack was broadcast using a software‑defined radio system with OFDM modulation, the same technology that powers Wi‑Fi and 4G/5G networks. The team operated within regulated frequency bands and used limited transmission power, ensuring the experiment complied with international communication standards.

For Van Passel, the experiment is both a tribute and a leap of imagination. “It’s a way of saying that sound - our stories, our emotions - can travel farther than we ever will,” he says.

The Soundman is sold internationally by LevelK.

Christian De Schutter

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