Boing Boing: Ben Burtt, sound designer for Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope, reveals the secrets behind the fantastic zaps, beeps, and growls in that first film in the series. His first task was to figure out Chewbacca's voice that, ultimately, came from a pet bear on a farm in Tehachapi, California.
2 comments:
Wow. This video reminds me of why I find sound design so intriguing and inspired me to go out into the world. Sound, is a special element of design in which we can take real things from the real world, and manipulate them in so many different ways to support our work of creating our playing of the imaginary. I love being able to walk around and really use my ears, and see what I can make. So many sounds that are randomly created can become important to us, if paired with the right visual device. Hearing things like combining noises of mules with mule impersonators makes me laugh and feel invigorated; the careful practice of editing can transform our entire perceptions of our environments, while defining it as well. We can bring attention to things we take for granted in our world, as well as define what things which don’t exist sound like. What are they made of? What makes sense? I was also excited to hear that the sound designer themself practiced whistling and singing along with a keyboard. Tuning themselves and using the most basic of sound, they created a language of emotion, through noise. That sort of living expression is so incredible, and I hope to be able to create more. This designer uses many basic tools that we all have, but forget to use.
I listened to about half of this video, and it was so interesting what this man’s process was to create these sounds for Star Wars. It fascinates me how sound designers can take samples of sounds and mix and develop them into the sounds they imagine or need. It is funny to me that the light saber is a mix of sounds that the designer was familiar with and enjoyed, or that the laser blaster noise was inspired by the twang of a backpack on a wire while hiking. I assume that these funny and interesting ways of creating and collecting sounds are developed by a designer over time with experience. It makes me wonder, however, how much time is given to a designer on a film like this to create these noises. Do they start as soon as they get hired, or do they wait for a scene to be directed or do they wait until they see the final shot? How much linear time is that? Burtt says that he came across that laser noise while hiking in PA just after the movie process began. What freedoms are sound designers given in order to discover the sounds they need?
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