Gary Rydstrom was born in 1959 in Chicago, IL. He graduated from the University of Southern California – School of Cinematic Arts in 1981. He began his career at Sprocket Systems, formerly Skywalker Sound, in 1983. Offered the job by a college professor, Gary received the opportunity to work with his mentor, Star Wars sound designer Ben Burtt. He created sound for numerous successful films including Backdraft, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Jurassic Park, Titanic, Saving Private Ryan, Minority Report and Finding Nemo. Through this work he has won 7 Academy Awards.

Rydstrom did his first work for Pixar on the short film Luxo Jr.. John Lasseter has said it was Rydstrom’s work on Luxo Jr., such as creating the lamp’s voice from the squeak of a lightbulb being screwed in, that taught him how sound can be a partner in the storytelling of a film. In 2006 he has made his directorial debut with the Pixar animated short Lifted. He recently jumped again into the director’s chair to create his second animated short Hawaiian Vacation, set to play in front of Cars 2.

(A tribute to Gary Rydstrom, by Matteo Milani)

Full interview here.

The busiest man in Hollywood (North), John Lasseter returns to the Directors chair in Cars 2 as Lighting McQueen and tow truck Mater head overseas to compete in the first-ever World Grand Prix.

Helping to bring to life the sound and music of this international espionage adventure include Composer Michael Giacchino, Re-recording Mixer and Sound Designer Tom Myers, and Sound Effects Editor Al Nelson. Git-R-Done!

SoundWorks Collection

Thanks go out to Tom Myers, Michael Semanick, and Al Nelson from TOY STORY 3 for taking time out to answer few questions about their work on the film!

TM = Sound Designer/ Sound Re-Recording Mixer Tom Myers
MS = Sound Re-Recording Mixer Michael Semanick
AL = Sound Editor Al Nelson

JAKE: “Day & Night” the short film that played before “Toy Story 3″ was so creative in the way it used sound. Were there discussions early on about how sound design would drive the story? Pixar has a rich tradition of selecting short film ideas from fellow Pixar employees’ pitches. Who does sound for these short films at Skywalker?

TM: The sound duties for Pixar’s shorts are split between Skywalker and Pixar. For some of the earlier shorts, we did all the work at Skywalker, but over the last few years Pixar has developed a small staff of very talented sound folk. On “Day and Night” the sound design was done by Barney Jones at Pixar with guidance from Sound God Gary Rydstrom who splits time between the two companies. I did the mix here at Skywalker with the director Teddy Newton and Barney present.

MIGUEL: When did you guys start on “Toy Story 3″? How did Lee Unkrich interact with the sound department and what was his take on how sound would be utilized in the film?

TM: We saw a storyboarded version of the film in early 2009 and then had preliminary spotting sessions with Lee and composer Randy Newman. I started sound design in late 2009 and the rest of the crew started in January of 2010. Lee was very involved in the process and knew the library very well having been the editor on the first film and codirector on the second. He is very detail oriented, even spending time with the foley crew. His first concern sound-wise was that we make the third film a continuation of the world created in the first two. All three films needed to feel organically part of the same aural universe, just as they were visually.

AN: I came on the show for the first temp mix in the fall of ’09. This was a great broad stroke introduction to how Lee intended the film to sound. We walked away with some great notes to think about for the final, though, I didn’t actually start cutting effects on the film until late February. So, I’d like to acknowledge Dustin Cawood, Terry Eckton and Tim Nielsen who fortunately did all the hard work before I jumped in.

JAKE: How much sound did the animators request before you guys started sound editorial in earnest?

TM: The animators had much of the toy movement sound library from Toy Story 1 and 2 for the returning characters, Buzz, Woody, the Potato Heads, etc. The only new character for which they really asked new material was Big Baby. We gave them a larger palette of vocals for Big Baby that Lee was quite particular about.

MIGUEL: Given the toys’ size in relation to the human world, how important was the sound POV of our heroes? What realistic sounds had to be embellished to convey their size or perspective?

TM: With Gary Rydstrom we continued the conceit that when the toys are interacting with humans, (when they are inanimate objects), they should sound smaller in scale compared to the human “real” world. But when they are interacting with each other, and walking and talking, they have a larger, almost human scale to their sounds. We always embellished sound when a threat was implied, especially in the finale scenes with the garbage truck, bulldozers, conveyor belt, shredder, claw, etc.

AL: We had creative license during certain toy POV scenes to even go over the top a bit. For example when Big Baby is doing that creepy march towards Woody, Bullseye and the aliens, we added low end sweeteners to his footsteps. We also added some rumble and actual diesel truck sounds to some of the RC trucks patrolling to add a sense of tension and danger.

JAKE: Did sounds for reoccurring characters established in the first two films carry over to “Toy Story 3″? Were they cut from libraries built for the first two films and or what new sounds, were recorded or expanded on for these classic characters?

TM: We used all the sounds from the first two movies for the recurring characters. This was part of our mandate from Lee about making all three films an extension of the same world. We developed new material for Buzz when he went through his transformations, first to what we called “Militaristic Buzz”, (when Buzz gets reset and does the bidding of Lotso); Here we sharpened his movements making them more precise, more clipped and less rattley toy plastic . And then for Buzz in “spanish mode” we made him more fluid and romantic adding swishes, castanets and whip cracks.

MS: An interesting problem came up with voice futz’s from the original films to this one. Both Woody and Buzz have sayings or dialog built into them when a child pulls Woody’s chord or pushes Buzz’s buttons. These original futzes were done by Gary Summers. He used what we call a analog futz box. It is an inclosed box, with a set of speakers in them and a microphone. You route the dialog to this box , pick the speaker you want the dialog to come out of (might be an old am radio speaker, a telephone speaker, or a speaker taken out of an old toy) the microphone picks up the sound coming out of the speaker and comes back to the console to be mixed. Well, back on TS 1 AND TS 2 , They only futzed what they needed to, with no addtional lines. TS 3 Had new Woody and Buzz lines. Lee wanted the same effect or futz from the other films… no problem, right? Theoretically, we just pull out the old futz box and do it. Unfortunately, that old futz box had been thrown away. We tried every protools plug in, but we could not match the futz. Howie Hammerman, an engineer at skywalker who built the orginal futz box, is still working there. I asked him to rebuild it. With the new futz box and some tweaking we were able to match the futz’s very, very close, though still slightly different. I would say about-ten-years-or-so-of-wear -and-tear-from-Andy-playing-with-the-toys difference. Ha!

AN: Tom was very thorough about providing us with notes and references to the previous Toy Story films as well as providing us with new material that was consistent. For example, Ken’s neck and arm squeaks which complimented Barbie’s elements from TS2. I think those Ken squeaks are some of the funniest moments in the whole movie. Gary would also come in and review our material. He could recall verbatim sounds he had made ten years ago. Also, kudos to our foley artists, Jana and Dennie who performed many of the signature sounds for the original Toy Story and Toy Story 2.

MIGUEL: How did you distinguish what toy sounds needed to be foley and what would be recorded and cut as effects? Did you start with using the actual toys for their sounds? What toy sounds are designed using sounds that the actual toys don’t or can’t make?

TM: Generally, all the footsteps for all the characters were foley. The movement for all the characters may have been half foley and half effects. Specific character trait sounds like the Potato Head pops and hits, Rex chicken squawk head turns, and Barbie and Ken squeaks were effects. We don’t always start with the actual toys as often times they sound too small. We look for something that is slightly larger in scale. For example, of Stretch the Octopus we used a rubber bath mat with suctions cups on one side.

JAKE: How did the tradition of using Skywalker sounds from previous films (Rex’s “Jurassic Park” roar) in Pixar films come to pass? Does Pixar request using these specific sounds in their films during their spotting sessions?

TM: It has more to do with what is dramatically correct for a given scene rather then paying homage to a given sound or film. They will use other films as a reference but rarely request a specific sound, unless it is something they have used in the guide track and it works perfectly, both dramatically and emotionally.

MIGUEL: I love the playful relationship between music and effects in these films, especially when music seemingly acts as Foley for on-screen action (like classic Disney cartoons). How was featuring music or effects for specific sequences decided on?

TM: This all came from Lee and his work with Randy Newman and with us. One example was the scene of Woody’s first escape from Sunnyside when he flies over the wall on the kite and then gets blown up into the sky, the kite breaks and he falls down into the tree where Bonnie finds him. Lee specifically asked for Randy to give that scene the “Carl Stallings treatment” in which he hits all the movements with musical beats and the we support it with sound effects.

MS : Lee was always the one making these final choices. We would experiment from time to time, like: “Try dipping music here”, or “Shift it slightly so that some of the sound effects can live with it” or “Lets clean out all sounds and only add what we need”. The music was very fun to mix; it had a real throwback vibe to it, like you said, very “playful”, playing the action. Lee and Randy had designed it to be that way. I think it fits the film perfectly. It did make it hard at times for sound fx and music to live together, but Lee was very clear and decisive about what was to drive the scene. One of my favorites is the music when Woody gets up in Bonnie’s bed and walks across it. It’s just great. Listen to the arrangement and watch Woodys fingers.

AN: Lee was very specific about how certain sounds felt rhythmically relative to the music. Ambient elements like the crows during Chuckle’s flashback as well as specific hard effects like that last horn honk as Ken and Barbie arrive during the credit roll were all placed in time according to how Lee felt they would sit against the music.

JAKE: With all dialog for the film recorded on a ADR stage, how much of it has to be “placed” in the scenes with reverb and/ or delay? What other creative ways are you able to use dialog when it’s as controlled and clean as it is in an animated film?

TM: Michael can speak more directly to this but every scene and locale had a specific treatment of reverb, e.g., inside the toy box, in the garbage bag, inside the box and outside the box. One of the trickiest scenes was inside the candy machine. The voice treatment had to evolve as Buzz got closer. Lee was keen on all this and playing all perspectives. Also, as all the dialog is clean there is a tradition of panning all dialog in Pixar’s movies.

MS: Every scene had to have a specific treatment on it to fit the scene. It was mostly reverbs. I love the Lexicon 960, so I used it the most. I also used the tc6000 as well as the Lexicon 480. When Dialog is as controlled and clean as in ADR, it does allow you, at times, to get very quiet. When you do not have heavy background noise to fight through, (as you sometimes do with production dialog) it helps the music and sound effects give depth to the film. One of the fun moments of dialog effects, is when Mrs. Potato head sees with her other eye. I had to reach back to my days in the recording studio. I took her dialog, made a copy, advanced it several frames, put it in reverb, recorded only the reverb return, took that and reversed it or played it backwards, like taking analog tape and flipping it upside down and playing it. This effect proceeds her actual dialog slightly, so it had a type of “ghosting” sound. I then added a couple delays and reverb to her original dialog to help fill the room and surround the audience, and the sound effects from Tom helped the dialog sit in there. I think we got a fun “time warp” feel.

MIGUEL: How does the new dolby 7.1 standard allow you to do in the mix that 5.1 didn’t? Is this new channel layout addressed from predubs to printmaster?

TM: It allows you to be more precise in placing things in the acoustic space, pulling things, music, backrounds and effects off the screen and into the room which has the added benefit of clearing up dialog on the screen. We premixed all the effects in the 7.1 format and carried it all the way through to printmaster.

JAKE: Since filmmakers may change a cut to allow some breathing room after a big laugh in a comedic film, was there any attention paid to the potential of sniffles from the audience mucking up your mix during some of the movie’s sadder scenes?

TM: We were very clear where the big emotional moments were and worked hard, mostly through a process of elimination to not undermine or cut short any of these spots. The same goes for the jokes, though those are more precise and rhythm dependent where as the emotional moments are longer and more fluid. It’s a tribute to Lee and the story that there are so many of both kinds of spots in the film. I think of the film as being so funny but much of the feedback I get is of the emotional wallop the film has at the end.

I went to the theater yesterday to see “Toy Story 3″, and all can I say is that you will have a lot of fun. What a fantastic adventure. The sound was great. If you want to know about it, let’s check the new profile of SoundWorks Collection:

Join Skywalker Sound’s Re-Recording Mixer and Sound Designer Tom Myers, Sound Re-Recording Mixer Michael Semanick, Director Lee Unkrich, and Stuart Bowling, Technical Marketing Manager at Dolby Laboratories as they take you behind-the-scene and discuss the sound of Toy Story 3.

Toy Story 3 will be released in Dolby Surround 7.1 in 12 languages in select cinema chains throughout Australia, France, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Korea, Latin America, New Zealand, North America, Singapore, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom.

And stay tuned for our interview soon ;-)

SFGate has published an article talking about the Dolby Surround 7.1 Mix on Toy Story 3, the future of sound for 3D films, and how the people could take this new sonic adventure.

Walt Disney Co.’s Pixar made the latest installment of its “Toy Story” franchise in 3-D to satisfy the growing appetite for immersive visual effects.

Its next challenge: getting the sound effects to match.

The current setup in most theaters, known as 5.1, couldn’t direct sounds precisely enough to specific parts of the theater, says Paul Cichocki, post-production supervisor at Pixar. The audio didn’t feel like it was putting the viewer in the middle of the action, he says.

“We really wanted to take sound to the next level, and we just weren’t able to do much in 5.1,” Cichocki said. “If we could put sound in the right places, it helps your brain look in the right place.”

That’s why Pixar urged Dolby Laboratories Inc. to develop a new version of its sound system, the dominant audio technology in theaters. The resulting Dolby Surround 7.1 standard lets movies deliver sounds through seven speakers, plus one subwoofer, which handles bass. For Dolby, the technology helps the company keep pace with other cinema improvements — from crisper digital images to reclining seats — and give audiences a reason to keep coming back.

Sound technology alone doesn’t compel people to see a movie, says Paul Dergarabedian, president of Hollywood.com’s box-office tracking division. It’s just a subtle part of improving the experience, he says.

Continue reading…

A Bug’s Life at IMDb

Let’s check this four videos of a 30 mins demonstration on how Ben Burtt brought Wall-E to life and he answered a ton of questions from all the visiting journalists.

Part 1

Original Videos By Collider

And another video… Chuck the Movieguy interviews Ben Burtt for the DVD of Wall-E:

“WALL•E” Sound for Film Profile with Ben Burtt from Michael Coleman on Vimeo.

When nobody thought that Ben Burtt could return with his robots and laserguns, He strikes back (and even stronger) with WALL-E, an amazing animation film with the perfect dose of sound design that groups all the incredible knowledge, experience and talent of Ben Burtt in one place.

Is well as I did with Star Wars, I’m gonna divide the WALL-E Special in three parts:

1. The Definitive Interview
2. Sound Design – Making Of
3. Animation Sound Design Revolution.

I called this “The Definitive Interview” because I made a mixture of the best videos, interviews, questions and information out there about WALL-E, all in one place. Below each part, you will find all references and links to all the complete interviews

Wait! Another film of robots!?

“I went to this meeting and said, ‘What is the movie about?’ ‘Robots!’ ” Burtt says. “At first I was a little frightened. I thought, ‘Is there another new voice that I could come up with, much less the half-dozen robot voices?’ ”
But he appreciated the fact that the Pixar filmmakers wanted him involved very early in development – much like George Lucas had done with “Star Wars.” Burtt became an employee of Pixar, working on a movie with more sound than any he had completed before. By the time it was over, he would also provide the voices for WALL-E and M-O, a cleaning robot who arrives later in the film. (Vía)

How long did you work on WALL•E? That’s a lot more sound work than you normally do.

For about nine months out of the year I spent time trying to create. I started creating the WALL•E voice, the EVE voice, the AutoPilot, MO and the others. What were the humans going to sound like in their gelatinous condition? Originally they were almost completely Jell-O. We made Jell-O voices that had shimmering, funny, shaking in the voices and stuff. That concept of the voices for the humans was eventually dropped as the sounds developed.

Out of these improvisations of taking sounds from both the real world and some synthesizations, I will fashion what you will hear in the movie. There are like 2600 sound files made for WALL•E, which is a lot; more than I made for any other movie. A Star Wars movie, which is huge, usually takes about 1,000 new sounds. Indiana Jones movies, maybe 700 or 800. So this was gigantic, partly because it just needed so much detail in the sound. Obviously nothing is recorded while you are making the movie. Everything has to be added after the fact. (Vía)

How did you come up with the sounds for WALL•E? I mean, he doesn’t speak, so you have to sort of make him sound unique.

Sometimes, most often, good sounds are just discovered when you are looking for one sound and you suddenly discover another. The sound we used for his treads, that is an army tank. Obvious choice; just go out and record something with treads. But it has been sped up so that it sounds a little tinnier. He does lots of movements in the film; lots of little driving this way, driving that way. We try to put a sound with everything and convince the audience that this character really exists; this illusion.

I needed some soft motors, something we could tailor to shape WALL•E’s movements. I was watching on Turner Classic Movies an old John Wayne movie and there was this army private cranking a generator. I said, “That is a great sound for WALL•E. How can I get one of those WW2 generators?” Well I got this on eBay. That’s what we used. (Vía)

How did you come up with WALL·E’s voice?

Well honestly I’m guided by Andrew, being the director. I would audition things for him, sets of sounds that might have initially just been motors and beeps and tones. Something I’ve never told him in fact, and now it relates to musical theatre, when he first showed me maybe 10 minutes or so of the storyboards cut together, and the opening of the movie, it had some music and some sound effects in it. That was kind of a way of enticing me into understanding the project. It was that opening song, the vocal in that song that appealed to me in a way that I sort of connected that with the WALL·E character.

There’s a feeling about that, so to some extent maybe the pitch of the voice started out that way, that kind of innocent feeling, that was a thread that I picked up on in that. As you know we went through lots of experiments trying WALL·E as just motor sounds only, some that were beeps and whistles, a little bit more in the R2D2 realm. Although We extracted bits from all of those experiments, when it came down to some of the more expressive vocals it was a little bit in that tone, from that singing voice. I’m not sure why, there was obviously something very charming and appealing about that song. I couldn’t quite pin it down. (Vía)

What are some of the sources of the sounds?

Well there are thousands of sounds. There were more sound files in Wall-E then any single feature film I’ve ever worked on, about 2500, because every character has a set of sounds and there are lots of movement and lots of dense activity. Stories of sounds, well let’s see – Wall-E’s treads, he drives around, he goes different speeds. When he’s going slowly, he makes a little whirring sound and that is the sound I heard it actually in a John Wayne movie called Island in the Sky on Turner Classic Movies. There was a guy turning a little generator, a soldier generating power. I said I like that generator sound, that is cool, and so where can I get one? I found one on eBay. I bought it. It came in its original 1949 box so we could take that into the studio and perform with it to tailor it to the speed of Wall-E. But that’s only good for when Wall-E is going slow.

When Wall-E is going fast, he needed something higher pitched and more energetic. Once again, I went back through my memory of things. I had recorded bi-planes a long time ago for Raiders of the Lost Ark. The old 1930s bi-planes have an inertia starter. It’s a mechanical crank that cranks the engine up. You do it by hand and then clutch – you connect it and it makes a wonderful whirring sound. So I thought I want to get that and do more with it. I couldn’t bring a bi-plane into the studio but on eBay I found an inertia starter, bought that again, and brought it in. So we built these props for many things. You know, it’s a tradition in animation to have sound effects machines. This goes back to the earliest days of Disney cartoons — like wind machines and blowing machines and things like that. We actually built several things so we could perform Wall-E sounds that way.(Vía)

Did you have a favorite robot or a favorite sound in WALL•E?

My favorite sound in WALL•E? Well I don’t know. I don’t know. I kind of fell in love with this character. [sound] Moe. I don’t know why. Someone I identify with Moe. Not that I am a good cleaner or anything, but I think that sort of feisty sort of sidekick character that he was appealing to me, and the fact that he has a big character change in the movie. He goes from a robot governed by his duties to a free thinker. That was part of the theme of the movie. (Vía)

Were Eve’s sounds more modern then?

Well, Eve is a very high-tech robot and so, unlike the motors and squeaks and metallic sounds you’ve got with Wall-E, Eve is held together with some sort of force fields and magnetism. A great deal of her sound is purely synthesized musical type of tones that I could make in a music synthesizer and treat it various ways, because her whole character was supposed to be graceful and ethereal, so she always has an electronic noise associated with her floating around. Sometimes she sounds angry if it’s a scene where she needs to be aggressive. Sometimes she’s very enchanting if it’s a more romantic moment. (Vía)

What about the interplay between the animators? Typically the voices are recorded before and the sound bytes are afterwards. How did it work with this?

You’re right. Normally in animation the dialogue is recorded and locked down, takes are selected, and the animators then use those as references for timing and performance. We did actually kind of the same thing here. I started working three years ago on the dialogue for this film and auditioning voices. At first I would make up sets of sounds as auditions for Andrew. I would play a voice and some motors and I’d say, “What do you think of this? Could this be Wall-E?” He might pick out the things he likes the most and we would keep that collection aside and I would string together little montages and then we started giving them to animators and animators would just freely animate to the sounds. Wall-E could come in and play with a ball, slip and fall, or do something, and we had numerous tests, and I could see immediately of course the huge input in a performance that the animation had.

In fact, you would think I would know better, but I was really surprised. They could do amazing things with just a pose, a little movement of the head and the sound seemed so much more authentic when it was sunc up so perfectly. So we went back and forth and developed a sound and picture together and so therefore we ended up with these little character studies. You could play it like a little audition tape. The character would come in, introduce himself and talk and show off their functions so you would hear it and see it. We got confident after awhile that this is what Eve should be and this is what Wall-E should be and then they could move ahead and start animating the movie itself and put it in the story so it was a back and forth process. (Vía)

How important is it to go back to the original sources of the sounds? I would imagine there is high tech equipment now that can be used to recreate those sounds.

Well, people think in this age of computers and digitization that we can now do anything, the way we see how visual effects have leaped to a much higher quantum level and it isn’t quite the same with sound. Sound is a really different creative dimension. The digital technology allows us to manipulate things and you can work quicker and you can practically do the sound for a movie on your laptop computer with a few additional pieces of equipment, whereas 25 years ago it required a huge studio with all kinds of engineers and many people. So, it’s a very personal tool now to do sound because it is digital.

The films that I worked on so much you’re always trying to create this illusion that in a fantasy world things are real, and the style I’ve always followed is to go out into the real world, get real sounds, and impose them into this fantasy world to convince people that these fantasy objects are credible. That has been successful to go out and gather real sounds.

I also love the history of sound effects and there is a great opportunity working for Pixar and Disney because you’re in touch there with a legacy of sound effects creativity that goes back into the 1930s. They used to build all kinds of machines. There is a machine that does flying insects, there is a machine that does a talking clock spring. They’ve got an archive of these machines out there in Burbank and I love that and I look at what a sound effects man does and I love the table top props and things like that. It’s the style.(Vía)

What’s your favourite moment from the film?

What’s the biggest explosion in the film? I really love the scene where they’re out in space together with the fire extinguisher, I think it’s the lyrical nature of that, the calm in the middle of the storm. That moment, there’s something about putting those two characters out there dancing in space that really takes me back to Peter Pan when I was a kid. I love that film, I think I was five years old when I saw it. I made my mother take me two or three times in one week which was unheard of in those days. It’s that wonderful ability to be transported to a wonderful place where you feel warm and completely secure. Where it occurs in the movie it feels that way to me, it’s great. (Vía)

When you talk about bringing the reality to the fantasy, do you find that as films have become more reliant on CG effects and things that aren’t actually there in camera your job has become much more important to ground us in terms of what we are seeing?

Certainly. As I said, in a fantasy film the sound is usually the thing – sound acts on people more invisibly because we are not asking you to be so aware of the process. I still think you can be a bit more of a magician being a sound person because people just aren’t aware of what you can do. It is a compliment when people look at a film and they stop and think “I guess that’s just what it sounded like.” Like there’s a mike hanging out there in the scene and they got it when in fact every sound, every footstep, every explosion – somebody had to decide what it was going to be and create it. (Vía)

That’s all folks! I hope you like it!

WALL-E Official Website
WALL-E at IMDB

I was waiting for this… For September I’m gonna make an special of Ben Burtt, one of the most renowed sound designers, and known to many as  “the father of the modern sound design”.

Bio (wiki)

Benjamin “Ben” Burtt, Jr. (born July 12, 1948) is a four-time Academy Award-winning American sound designer for many famous and noteworthy films, including Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and WALL-E, as well as a film director, screenwriter, editor and voice actor. He is most notable for creating many of the iconic sound effects heard in the Star Wars films, including the “voice” of R2-D2, the lightsaber hum, and the heavy-breathing sound of Darth Vader.

Burtt earned a college degree in Physics from Allegheny College. In 1970, he won the National Student Film Festival with a war movie called Yankee Squadron, reputedly after following exposure to classic aviation drama through making an amateur film at Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome, under guidance from its founder, Cole Palen.[1] For his work on the special effects film Genesis he won a scholarship to the University of Southern California, where he earned a Master’s Degree in Film Production.

Burtt pioneered modern sound design, especially in the science fiction and fantasy genres. Before his work in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, science fiction movies tended to use electronic-sounding effects for futuristic devices. Burtt sought a more natural sound, blending in “found sounds” to create the effects. The lightsaber hum, for instance, was derived from a film projector idling combined with feedback from a broken television set, and the blaster effect started with the sound acquired from hitting a guide wire on a radio tower with a wrench.

Burtt has a reputation for including a sound effect dubbed “the Wilhelm scream” in many of the movies he’s worked on. Taken from a character named “Wilhelm” in the film The Charge at Feather River, the sound can be heard in countless films: for instance, in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope when a stormtrooper falls into a chasm and in Raiders of the Lost Ark when a Nazi soldier falls off the back of a moving car.

One of Burtt’s more subtle, but highly effective sound effects is the “audio black hole.” In Attack of the Clones, Burtt’s use of the audio black hole involved the insertion of a short interval of absolute silence in the audio track, just prior to the detonation of “seismic charges” fired at the escaping Jedi spaceship. The effect of this second or less of silence is to accentuate the resulting explosion in the mind of the listener. Burtt recalled the source of this idea as follows: “I think back to where that idea might have come to me…I remember in film school a talk I had with an old retired sound editor who said they used to leave a few frames of silence in the track just before a big explosion. In those days they would ‘paint’ out the optical sound with ink. Then I thought of the airlock entry sequence in 2001. I guess the seeds were there for me to nourish when it came to the seismic charges.”

Some Awards & Nominations

• Academy Award for Sound Effects Editing – E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
• Academy Award for Sound Effects Editing – Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
• Special Achievement Award (Academy) for Sound Editing – Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
• Special Achievement Award (Academy) for sound editing – Raiders of the Lost Ark
• Academy Award Nomination for Best Sound and Sound Effects Editing - Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
• Academy Award Nomination for Sound Effects Editing – Willow
• Academy Award Nomination for Best Sound – Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
• Academy Award Nomination for Best Documentary, Short Subjects - Special Effects: Anything Can Happen
• Academy Award Nomination for Best Effects, Sound Effects Editing – Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
• Academy Award Nomination for Best Sound and Sound Effects Editing – WALL-E
• Golden Reel Award for Best Sound Editing, Sound Effects, Foley, Dialogue and ADR Animation in a Feature Film – WALL-E
• BAFTA Film Award for Best Sound – Star Wars

Featured Work

• Star Trek (2009) – Sound designer and Sound editor
• WALL-E (2008) – Character voice designer, Sound designer, Sound re-recording mixer and Supervising sound editor
• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) – Sound designer and Supervising sound editor
• Munich (2005) – Sound designer and Supervising sound editor
• Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (2005) – Sound designer and Supervising sound editor
• Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (2002) – Sound designer and Supervising sound editor
• Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) – Sound designer and Supervising sound editor
• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) – Re-recording mixer Sound designer
• Howard the Duck (1986) – Sound effects editor and Sound re-recording mixer
• The Dream Is Alive (1985) – Sound designer
• Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) – Re-recording mixer and Sound designer
• The Adventures of André and Wally B. (1984) – Sound designer
• Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi (1983) – Sound designer and Sound re-recording mixer
• The Dark Crystal (1982) – Sound designer and Special sound effects
• Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) – Sound designer
• Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back (1980) – Sound designer and Supervising sound effects editor
• Star Wars (1977) – Sound designer, special dialogue and sound effects
• Death Race 2000 (1975) – Sound designer (uncredited)

Ben Burtt at IMDB
Ben Burtt at Wikipedia

As you know, Randy Thom is the June’s featured Sound designer. Let’s talk about Ratatouille, an animated movie produced by Pixar and distributed by Disney Pictures and whose sound design was done by Randy Thom. Ratatouille was nominated for five Academy Awards, 13 Annie Awards, and won the Best Animated Feature Award from multiple associations.

Well, let’s talk about our part: The Sound.

• Sound Designer: Randy Thom
• Supervising Sound Editors: Randy Thom and Michael Silvers
• Re-recording Mixers: Randy Thom (FX) and Michael Semanick (DX/MX)
• Original Dialog Mixer: Doc Kane
• Sound Mix: SDDS | Dolby Digital EX | DTS-ES
• Studios: Skywalker Sound

“Ratatouille” Sound for Film Profile with Randy Thom from Michael Coleman on Vimeo.

Also, you can read an interview we have with Randy on Ratatouille here.

Ratatouille Official Website