'Star Wars' Video Series Showcases Over 40 Years Of Sound Design

The plot of the original Star Wars is simple. A farmboy leaves his home, saves the princess, and then saves the galaxy. The visual effects of Star Wars were decent when I saw the pre-Special Edition original trilogy on VHS in 1999 (the movie was made in the late 1970s after all). I would learn later how George Lucas revolutionized the field of film special effects because he had to invented a lot of techniques to achieve what he wanted to see in Star Wars. However, the sounds of Star Wars provided a solid foundation for other movie elements to build on. This was not your typical science fiction movie. Think back to the scene in Star Wars when Luke is staring off at the twin suns of Tatooine. The perfect crescendo of the orchestra still gives me chills every time. Filling in between the overall theme provided by maestro John Williams, we have Ben Burtt to thank for rounding out the rest of the Star Wars galaxy.

INDEPTH Sound Design created a video series on the sound effects of A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi. The videos meticulously compiled decades of interviews by Ben Burtt, the sound designer of Star Wars, as he discussed the creation of each iconic sounds from the Star Wars universe. These videos are very well made, with time stamps set up so that you can skip to the part when Burtt discusses a particular sound. Sound samples are seamlessly combined with the commentary. You would think these videos were Lucasfilm Blu-ray or DVD specials.

Today, we use computer programs to create sounds. Back then, Burtt would take a sound made by a random object, and put it together with another sound. The result was the new futuristic sounds for the galaxy far, far away. For the tell-tale hum of the lightsaber, the first sound Burtt created for the movies, he mixed the sound of an old 35mm theater film projector on standby with the sound of the feedback buzz created by a broken microphone cable on a tape recorder moving close to a television speaker. No one had ever heard this novel sound before. Burtt did not contend with the basic sound of a stationary lightsaber. For the moving lightsaber, he moved a microphone around the speaker, playing the base sound of the lightsaber, creating the sound of doppler effect. As Burtt whizzed the microphone through the air, you could hear and feel the lightsaber blade move over you.

Like how J.R.R. Tolkien created the written elvish language for his The Lord of the Rings series, Burtt created the languages for the non-Basic-speaking species of Star Wars. He would listen to recordings of world languages. Instead of just having the actor just say the lines, he would add to it, changing up the pitch, slowing it down, having them speak through a snout, etc. This created a really organic language as opposed to synthesized sounds. In the video, Burtt points out that he drew inspiration from Quechuan in creating the sounds of the Huttese language, and from Zulu in creating the sounds of the Jawa language. While he never made rigid rules like conjugation, Burtt was successful in making each alien language sound unique from each other.

In writing this article, I ended up watching all three Star Wars videos made by INDEPTH Sound Design (almost 3 hours altogether). Some might say that knowing the origins of the sounds takes the magic away from the films. I felt differently. Knowing made it more magical. I was in awe at how Burtt took a familiar mundane sound and made it into something totally out of this world. The Star Wars universe truly came to life because of Burtt's creative sound design.

Written By Apinya Wong

Source(s): ComicBook.com, INDEPTH Sound Design

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