Use Of Sound in Film: Star Wars Saga

When i was coming up with the basis of my project and i wanted to look at sound in film, i knew that i wanted to at least touch upon the sound used in Star Wars as some of these sounds have been come as iconic as the films themselves.

Where did these sounds come from?

They all come from Ben Burtt but where did he come from. 

During a student job cataloguing sounds,which had been donated to the University of Southern California's film school which he was attending, a call by Star Wars producer Gary Kurtz to U.S.C. led to a successful interview for Burtt.

 He spent a year recording anything that could be turned upside down and backwards to make Lucas world come alive. Burtt played a massive role in how the world of Star Wars was created "In my first discussion with George Lucas about the film, he - and I concurred with him - that he wanted an 'organic', as opposed to the electronic and artificial soundtrack. Since we were going to design a visual world that had rust and dents and dirt, we wanted a sound which had Squeaks and motors that may not be the smooth-sounding or quite. Therefor we wanted to draw upon raw material from the real world: real motors, real squeaky door, real insects; this sort of thing....basic thing in all films is to create something that sounds believable to everyone, because it's composed of familiar things that you can not quite recognize immediately" 

So How were some of these iconic sounds created?

• Imperial Walkers  

The sound of the Imperial Walkers were created by modifying the sound of a machinist's punch press. Added to this for complexity, were the sounds of bicycle chains being dropped on concrete 

• TIE fighter  

 The screech of a TIE Fighter is a drastically altered elephant bellow

• Chewbacca  

Wookie sounds are constructed out of pieces of walruses and other animal sounds. 

• Laser blasts  

The sound of a hammer on an antenna tower guy wire 

• The sound of battle.

Burtt said the noise was there from the beginning: “Oddly enough, it was the first sound I ever made for Star Wars. When I read the script, I immediately had something in mind. It was an old motor on a projector at the USC Cinema Department. I went and recorded it right away. The humming sound was partly based on that motor.”

• Podracers.

Each vehicle was different because Burtt gave each of them a personality. His team used the sound of actual engines from cars such as Porches and Mustangs and tools such as the Kyma (a sound synthesizer) and wave-table chopper to make the podracers come to life.

More sounds add how they were made can be found here: http://filmsound.org/starwars/