The Delightful and Unexpected Origins of 16 Star Wars Sound Effects
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When my girlfriend Marta and I saw Lincoln in the theater, we stayed and watched all the credits, as is our wont. When I saw Ben Burtt got a "Sound Designer" credit, I was all "Ooh, Ben Burtt did that sound!" That's the kind of thing that makes me excited, even after the movie is over. I hadn't given much thought to the sound during the film, but that's also the point: Lincoln had an immersive soundscape, one that drew you into the film's world without calling attention to itself. That's just Ben Burtt doing his job -- and he got his start in the business on the original Star Wars.
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There's a great book called The Sounds of Star Wars -- available at the Main Branch of the San Francisco Public Library -- in which Burtt describes how he did the sounds for all the original trilogy, the prequel trilogy, and The Clone Wars. The real killer app is that it has an audio module doohickey which lets you listen to samples of each of the 256 sounds. It's kind of incredibly awesome, especially since the majority are isolated from the John Williams score, meaning you can appreciate them in a way that you can't from just watching the movies.
As is so often the case with chronological Star Wars history books -- the otherwise fascinating Star Wars Year by Year: A Visual Chronicle has the same problem -- it gets significantly less interesting once you get past the original trilogy, so I'm going to focus on his work on the first film. It's really astonishing what he achieved on such a small budget, all the moreso for how comparatively primitive his equipment was: Basically a few tape recorders, a few synthesizers, and a metric asstonne of ingenuity. It's no wonder that of the 256 sound clips in the book, 92 are from the original Star Wars. He'd already invented much of what needed to be invented.
All of the sound effects below are sourced directly from the sound module in the book, using the book's numbering and naming conventions, and I tried to match the screenshots as closely as I could to the book's graphics. (The main difference is that my screenshots are from the original theatrical cut of the film, 'cuz that's how I roll.)
001: Rebel Blockade Runner Fly-By.
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002: Star Destroyer Rumble.
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004: R2-D2 "Comments."
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006: Tractor Beam and Coupling.
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012: Leia Zapped by Stun Gun.
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021: Aunt Beru's Food Processor
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245: Old Obi Howl
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Whenever it was, Burtt recorded sound designers Matthew Wood and David Alcord screaming their heads off in parking lot. The recording is awesome in its sheer goofiness.
246: Raw Yells.
247: New Obi Howl.
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