(Warning! High level of nostalgic content) In the 6:05 mark of this video, you can see three great minutes of sound designer master Ben Burtt showcasing some of the source material he used the layering of a sound for Star Wars.

The video is a part of a rare documentary about John Williams and the music of Star Wars published between 1989-1990. You can see the rest of the parts on YouTube.

Via The Sonic Spread

“Think outside the box. That’s why sound is fun. You keep your ears open, and if you hear something accidental, you can try to work it into the film. It happens all the time.”

-Ben Burtt

UNLEASH THE KRAKEN

In Star Wars: The Force Unleashed we were working with two physics middleware packages: Havok Physics, and Pixelux’s Digital Molecular Matter (DMM). In addition to the simulation data that each provided, we also needed to manage the relationship between both. While Havok has become a popular choice for runtime physics simulations, the use of DMM spoke to the core of materials and provided each object physical properties enabling – in addition to collision’s – physically modeled dynamic fractures and bending. In some ways tackling the sound for both systems was a monumental undertaking, but there was enough overlap to make the process more pleasure than pain.

Before Jumping into the fray, I just wanted to take a moment to echo a couple of things that were touched on in the companion this article; specifically, that collaboration and iteration are the cornerstones of a quality production when it comes to systems design. Collaboration, because the stakeholders involved usually include people across all disciplines; from programmers to sound designers, modelers to texture artists, build engineer’s to game designers. Iteration, because the initial vision is always a approximation at best and until things get moving, it’s difficult to know what the eventual shape things will take.

While simultaneously reigning in and letting loose the flow of creativity ebbing and flowing across the development team, there is nothing more important than the support of your colleges. Leveraging the specialties of different people helps to bring new idea’s to situations in need of a solution. Your greatest asset as a team member is to recognize and respect the uniqueness of your co-workers and stay open to the constantly shifting requirements of the game. Good listening and better communication will improve the productivity of meetings, and reinforce the fundamental desire of everyone – to craft the best player experience possible.

DIGITAL MOLECULAR MAGIC

Starting with Digital Molecular Matter, Audio Lead David Collins worked closely with Pixelux to identify the core components that could be utilized in bringing sound to the simulations. Prototypes were created offline in pre-production driving toward the best way to score the sounds of the dynamic physically modeled objects being created by the art team. With a list of over 300 types of DMM materials, we chose to abstract a group of about 30 that would cover all of the sound types and object sizes. These DMM Sound Materials were added as a “Sound Material” property to the meta data for each DMM Material type. This was the first step in defining the sound an object would make when calculations regarding collisions, fractures, and bending where concerned.

Behind each of these Sound Materials were a set of parameters for speed (fast/slow), size (small/medium/large), and quantity (one/few/many) – in addition to specifications of sound interaction between surface types – that enabled us to specify different thresholds for each and scale sample content across the different values. The content itself – abstracted Sound Cues (or Events) – were defined for use by the DMM Sound System using “Sound Buckets” which essentially specified the sound content that would be used for a given parameter’s action when triggered.

In this way we were able to appropriately employ the sound of different sized collisions and fractures based on the number and type of actions requested by the system. Behind the Sound Cue referenced in the Bucket for each sound type we had the usual control over file, pitch, and volume randomization in addition to 3D propagation min/max distances and priority – which became crucial to reigning in the number of instances of a Sound Cue during a given request from the system.

We also had bending information to deal with; specifically for metal, wood, cables, and organic vines. When the system determined that bending of a DMM object had begun, it would start a loop that would continue as long as a minimum threshold of force was being applied to the object. While looping, the system also played several single element bend “sweeteners” when spikes in the amount of bending occurred. The best example of this can be heard when wrestling one of the giant doors between area’s in a level.

For an addition summary of the DMM audio system, check out Jesse Harlin’s fantastic overview in Game Developer Magazine from September 2008.

BRING IT TO THE TABLE

We adopted a different approach to handle data coming from the Havok side of the physics simulation – where we had a greater level of detail between objects that were throw-able and caused impacts, across the different environmental material types.

One of the often used audio techniques of Physics integration in the current and previous generations is the look-up table or matrix that is used to define material actions and their interactions. Using a spreadsheet format as the starting point for the system, surface materials can be arranged along the top and far left side of the sheet. At the point where a row and column intersect the Source Material to Destination Material sound interaction can be specified, usually as an audio file or an abstracted reference to a group of files with additional properties for randomizing pitch and volume values – what we were calling a Sound Cue.

We took this methodology one step further by enabling the additional layering of Sound Cues for the Source and Destination objects. This allowed us to not only specify a Sound Cue for the specific interaction between materials, but also a default sound for the inherent object or material type. In this way, a single collision between a metal barrel and the dirt of a forest floor could incur the following impacts: 1. Metal Generic (Source Layer) 2. Dirt Generic (Destination Layer) 3. Metal Barrel on Dirt Explicit (Source + Desination Layer)

Let’s take a step back and look at how each of those things are handled within the lookup table.

MATERIAL 1 & MATERIAL 2

“Material 1” (Column A) is used to define the material type of the actor being used. (ex. A metal object would be tagged with the “metal” material) The material name is defined at the top of each material section. The size of the material selection can be adjusted using the modifier adjustment in the top left corner cell (A1). “Material 2” (Row1) is used to define any other material types used within the game environment.

SOURCE LAYER

The “Source_Layer” (Column B) is used to define a set of sound content that will play every time an object – with “Material 1” defined as it’s material – impacts a surface with any “Material 2” in the game. The “Source_Layer” has a multifunction ability: If there is an entry in the first row of a material type (ex. phy_imp_dirt) then all levels of impact will register as the same “size” and “weight”; otherwise. If the first entry in a row is left blank, you can then slot 3 sounds that will react to the size and weight of an impact as specified in the Threshold tab (sm/md/lg).

DESTINATION LAYER

The “Dest_Layer” (Row 2) is used to define a set of sound content that will play every time an object whose material is defined in the “Material 2” (Row 1) is impacted by an actor with any “Material 1” (Column 1) in the game. The “Dest_Layer” has a multifunction ability: If there is an entry in the first row of the “Dest_Layer” then all levels of impact will register as the same “size” and “weight”, If the first entry in a row is left blank, you can then slot 3 sounds that will react to the size and weight of an impact as specified in the Threshold tab. (sm, md, lg)

SOURCE + DESTINATION LAYER

The source_layer + dest_layer provides a look-up table where a sound is played specifically between a “material 1” and “material 2” impact. In the following example, when an actor with a material of dirt impacts a concrete surface the phy_imp_dirt_concrete content will play.

COLLISION’S COMBINED

In this example we are playing a combination of the 3 sounds when an actor with a material of dirt impacts a concrete surface.

MODIFIER AND EXPORT

The modifier defines the number of rows between each material as a way to prepare the values to be exported into game ready data. The export button is used to convert the spreadsheet to an efficient XML file that will be used by the game engine at runtime.

THRESHOLD

Threshold is used to define the “size” and “weight” values that are used to transition between the 3 slots defined for an object with sm, md, lg.

BODYFALL

We were able to extend the use of our matrix system to incorporate our player and non-player character (NPC) bodyfall collision’s which were handled using a combination of Havok Physics and Natural Motion’s Euphoria.

INTO THE FUTURE

While there has been some laboratory work done in the area of Synthesizing Contact Sounds Between Textured Objects by the GAMMA research group at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, this approach has yet to cross over to games at runtime. In place of true synthesis, the industry is currently invested in a sample playback methodology which requires a multitude of discreet sound files that are used as a representation of a given visual. Whereas once upon a time the game industry was embroiled in the hardcore synthesis detailed at length in Karen Collin’s excellent “Games Sound”, the change to sample playback has caused the synthetic muscle of game audio to atrophy. On the horizon is mounting a recombination of the power and flexibility of synthesis and procedural audio techniques, and the fidelity of linear sound content. Beginning in 2008 with the release of Sound Seed Impact and their Sound Seed Air suite of tools, Audiokinetic is leading the charge in audio middleware towards a return to synthesis that aims to add creative options that leverage the increased CPU and reduces the dependency on predetermined sound content stored in RAM.

With everyone in game audio engaged in battle for the resources needed to achieve an exponential level of quality in the current generation, we need all of the creative tools and tricks at our disposal to accomplish this goal. I’m a fan of anything that expands upon the growing possibilities of interactive audio in a way that puts control in the hands of people who are actively looking to push the boundaries of what is possible. Where it goes from here is up to the people making choices about how we move forward as an industry and where the focus continues to be.

Until next time!

Art © Aaron Armstrong

Written by Damian Kastbauer for Designing Sound.

Damian is a freelance Technical Sound Designer working with the Bay Area Sound Department pulling off cool implementation tricks and spreading the word about interactive audio. Please send all private comments, feedback, and suggestions for future articles to info[at]lostchocolatelab[dot]com.

Cool video with the foley process of “Star Wars: Republic Commando“.

Damian Kastbauer has sent a lot of good information about audio implementation on Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and Conan, with detailed videos and info about the technical aspects and process he used on that games.

He directed a presentation at Austin Game Developers Conference with David Collins, on the physics sounds and systems implemented on Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. You can download the presentation slides, and if you want to go more deep… check this fantastic article by Jesse Harlin on Game Developer giving a great overview of the Physics sound where he outlines each of the systems, and some of the challenges we faced. Damian shared several videos showing the process with different types of sounds, environments, etc.

More videos on Vimeo Album

Damian Notes:

For the uninitiated, Conan is a brutal hack and slash combat game that combines scalable abilities upgrades with strategized battle interactions. You can get an overview of the gameplay in this article: Edge Review – Conan

I’m attempting an overview of the melee specific weapon system we implemented using FMOD Designer and other Nihilistic proprietary in-house tools. Throughout the process, the overarching goal was to add diversity and brutality to what is the main focus of the game. The use of content level variation, pitch and volume randomization, and elemental layering allowed us tomake the sounds of combat non-repetitive over the course of the game.

In the system that we built, weapons were able to perform the following actions:

• Blocked Break
• Blocked Heavy
• Blocked Light
• Deflect
• Hit Heavy
• Hit Light
• Parried
• Swing

In a game so heavily focused on combat where you spend each level mowing down enemies from start to finish, we knew that we had to make a combat system that reflected the core gameplay objective of giving the player diversity while making the sound varied enough to prevent fatigue.

Hit’s are defined as actions that impact an NPC and cause damage, and we were tracking both Light and Heavy hits.

We used a game parameter for surface type that was passed from the games collision detection to FMOD in order to track what surface was being impacted. The FMOD Event that was triggered was based on the weapon type being used by either the player or NPC and whether the hit was Heavy or Light or Deflected, it then received it’s material type parameter and jumped to it’s correct position within the FMOD event where it then layered the impact sound depending on weapon and material type.

Check the rest of the article at LostChocolateLab (Damian’s Blog)

There are a lot of videos showing the audio implementation process on Conan too, let’s see:

More videos on Vimeo Album

The last part of the Ben Burtt – Star Wars Special. This time with Episode II: Attack of The Clones. I have two interesting articles to share to you. First article is from Film Sound, a really interesting interview with Ben Burtt talking about the sound of Episode II:

It sounds like an enormous undertaking.

The thing about any ‘Star Wars’ film, especially the ones that we’re doing now, is that post-production is almost like making two feature films at the same time. You’re doing a live-action feature film, with all the necessary logging and storytelling-through-editing, and all the data that needs to be managed for a regular feature film. You’re also really doing a full-length cartoon because almost every shot in the movie involves animation, which has a different approach to how you design a shot and where the images come from. In the end, every shot becomes a special effects shot — and there are thousands of them. So anyone coming on in post-production on this picture side is faced with managing these three huge areas: normal feature, fully animated feature, and then the two of them being interlaced with one another in complicated ways.

When did this whole process begin for you?

We’ve been on the film for two years. In March of 2000, I started previsualizing sequences. I would get a verbal description from George of a sequence, like the “Speeder Chase,” and then begin creating images for it and cutting things together prior to going to Australia so that he could react to it. We did a lot of editing up front that helped George to design the sequence, to pick out camera angles and to develop the action in the sequences. By the time we got to filming in Sydney, there were three or four pieces already edited as what’s called a “videomatic version” of a sequence, which was a good reference for George while he was shooting. A lot of decisions had to be made ahead of time about what angles, what coverage, and what kind of motion would make the sequence work the best. George traditionally likes to work out as much of that as possible before he gets on the set. [...]

About how many layers of video were you dealing with for each shot?

On the average, we probably had five or six layers of video for every shot of the movie, and sometimes many more. You very rarely had everything in front of the camera. The whole movie was shot in pieces. So the editing room activity for me became a great deal of constructing images, as well as cutting together the story with those images. Also, you could cut a scene together and see what worked and didn’t work. Then, to make corrections, you could start altering the image and changing the timing, changing the location of a character or actor on the screen, cutting them out and moving them over a little bit, shrinking the whole frame so they could paint a bigger set around it, or adding and subtracting characters. It became a very complicated editorial process.

When you do see something differently, how do you communicate that?

I’m diplomatic. I’m tactful. I’m honest. Generally, I will say something to the effect of, ‘What do you think if…?’ or ‘How about trying…?’ He’s willing to listen to a lot of that and go with it. I never pound my fists and leave in anger. That never happens. As I say, he has a certain viewpoint. There are obviously ideas he’ll have that I’ll initially think aren’t going to work. He’ll be persistent, and quite often it’ll eventually work! There are also things in the film I would do differently if I were the director.

I learned years ago, when I was doing sound design for George, not to take the rejections of things too deeply. There isn’t an artist or a person in this company — an animator or a composer, or anybody — that doesn’t have to submit to his judgment, because this is his movie. He created it, he’s responsible for it, and he’s very opinionated about it. For me, his management style is mild. He never insists on something; he just gets his way because he’s the boss.

What was one of the most difficult aspects of working on “Attack of the Clones”?

I think the hard part about ‘Star Wars’ is that, as an editor, you basically sit in judgment every day. You have to look at and critique what’s put on the screen in front of you. Is it good? Does this tell the story? Is this clear? Can you see it? I don’t like that eye-twitch. Why was the movement not good enough? You’re always critiquing it. You’re paid to be a judge, to sit there and pick it apart and make it better. After a long, long time with this film and these scenes, you’ve picked it apart so much that sometimes, all you can do is look at it and see what you thought it might have been, but it isn’t. It’s a long time to be on a project, I have to say. It’s the amount of work of doing at least two feature films. It’s like having two jobs.

What scene in the film was the most fun to edit?

Until it’s done, I can’t tell you that. But I’ve learned that it’s not the end result for the filmmaker; it’s the journey along the way. There were a lot of things in this film that were really fun to shoot and to edit. Many of them were changed as we went along. In ‘Phantom Menace,’ we had a 25-minute pod race, but we could only put a seven- or eight-minute pod race in the movie or it would be out of proportion. We had to lose 15 minutes of fantastic action. There are things like that in this film that would have been nice to include, but they’ll be on the DVD. (laughs) You have this other venue now where you can have the outtakes and other things that you couldn’t tolerate in a regular movie. There are things I liked as the sound designer because they allowed me to really express myself with the sound effects — things like the asteroid chase.

Read the Full Interview here.

Second is from Mix Magazine. An article talking about the Sound of Episode II: Attack of the Clones.

Sound Editing

Burtt started work in early 2000, and when he finished in mid-April 2002, he had been on the film for 26 months. In addition to picture editing and sound design, he also had his hands full directing second-unit photography. As early as the previsualization in early 2000, shooting and putting sequences together on videotape, Burtt was “always thinking of sound. There was a period of about a few weeks prior to going to Sydney when I put together a library that I wanted to use. I went there with a few CDs of sounds, and even back then there were a few scenes that I cut back in Sydney to which I added music and sound effects. Being a Star Wars film, it was best to evaluate it as a movie. Sound was never out of the picture.”

Eventually, Burtt turned his attention full-time to creating the sound, though he admits that he did less sound editing personally than on previous movies, giving more latitude to his editors on the spotting of scenes. “In the past, I might have really specified to the editors each laser hit and each explosion; here, I tended to work more on giving them menus to choose what they liked from this set of materials. They would then go through the library and make choices that they would audition for me.”

Throughout his 27-year involvement with the Star Wars films, Burtt has been depicted to the public recording sound effects, from striking high-tension wires in the mid-‘70s to moving an electric razor in a bowl for Episode I on the TV show 60 Minutes. He says that “those examples are harder to come by on this film because I didn’t record or create as many things that were relatively simple examples of what you can do at home in your kitchen! Much of what I made was complicated composites on the [Symbolic Sound] Kyma and on the [SampleCell] keyboard–techno-based rather than the old tabletop of sound effects devices.” (See “Ben Burtt on Sound Design,” below.)

Having said this, Burtt does note that much of the Zam speeders, in the reel 1 chase in nighttime Coruscant, were made from musical instruments, including electric guitars, cellos and violas. The infamous electric razor was also brought into play to vibrate viola, harp and bass strings. “I was thinking that it was traveling magnetically, it was being pulled along the streets with changing magnetic fields rather than by self-propulsion.”

Because Burtt was in the “danger zone” of making tonal sound effects for the speeders, he had to be careful of the interplay with John Williams’ music. “I originally did a temp version of that mix, using nothing but musical sounds for the speeders. My thought was that the music score would be percussion-based, along with tones for the ships. I temped it that way, but John Williams didn’t quite do that, and his heavy orchestral piece necessitated rethinking the tonal aspects of the vehicles. In some cases, the musical tones that I made conflicted with the orchestra. Which was a disappointment for me, because I wasn’t able to push it into a new area. My reasoning was that we’ve done an awful lot of high-energy chase scenes, and I wanted this to be offbeat and strange. But it didn’t really happen.”

During this project, Burtt went back to original Star Wars library and redigitized some of it yet again, this time at 24-bit resolution. Although Skywalker Sound has upgraded the facility to a shared FibreChannel system in which sounds are pulled from a centralized server both in edit rooms and on mix stages, Wood and Burtt organized Episode II editorial around “sneakernet” local drives, primarily for security purposes.

Continue reading the full article at Mix Online.

Episode II: Attack of the Clones at IMDb

Star Wars Official Website

Tim Prebble from music of sound has published an interesting article talking about the role of breaths in Film Sound.

Having suffered a nasty respiratory virus for the last while I’ve joked to a few people that my new hobby is ‘trying to breath normally” and its not far from the truth. Now I dislike ADR as much as most people, but when I meet someone who says they want absolutely no ADR in their film I always bite my lip, because there is almost always some ADR even if they aren’t words. I’m not only talking about breaths, there are also “efforts” and/or non-dialogue reactions that it simply may not have been possible to capture during the shoot (eg when a stuntmen is doubling for the hero) but breaths are interesting & I’d like to discuss them more…

Full Article Here.

The Star Wars Special continues with our featured sound designer Ben Burtt. Let’s talk about the sound desgin of Episode I: Phantom Menace.

Ben Burtt left Lucasfilm in 1990 to pursue other interests as a freelancer: writing, directing, editing. He went back to Sound Designer’s chair again for the Star Wars Trilogy Special Edition.

“I was the only one who could remember where most of the stuff was, where the tapes were, what we had done,” he says with a smile.

“It was exciting to go back and get in touch with the picture again, the old friends who were there. R2-D2, and the lightsabers.”

Following the Special Edition project, Ben Burtt stayed on board for Episode I. Even though he could draw from an extensive library of sounds, including those used in the Star Wars and Indiana Jones trilogies, for the Episode I project Burtt went out to record new samples.

He also drew upon the large collection of sounds he has recorded during the last decade. In all his travels, from his back yard to the far reaches of an exotic country, Burtt has carried his recording equipment with him, capturing everything and anything on digital tape.

“You have to be constantly ready,” he says, “because good sounds often come to you by accident: lightning storms, strange vehicle noises, glaciers breaking apart…it can happen anywhere.” These recordings, most of them never used before, have provided Burtt with fresh raw material to mold into new Star Wars sounds.

While creating innovative atmospheres, Burtt takes great care to stay true to the original Star Wars ambiance.

“We’ve got lightsabers, we’ve got lasers, we’ve got so many signature effects which reoccur in this movie, and I think it’s only appropriate to touch on those because they’re familiar to the fans.”

One of Burtt’s goals are to establish a set of sounds which could stand the test of time.

“I think we’ve achieved that with Star Wars,” he says. “We’ve created a ‘world of sounds’ that’s coherent and can endure the passage of time…it’s been over 20 years, and Star Wars still has a distinct sound to it.”

Continue reading at Film Sound | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

And… I can’t pass this Article/Interview by Maria L. Chang talking with Ben Burtt about the sound of Star Wars. Very interesting!

HOW DO YOU CREATE SOUNDS FOR A FANTASTIC UNIVERSE?

A sneak moment from this summer’s blockbuster movie The Phantom Menace, the latest installation in the Star Wars saga: Jedi knight Obi-Wan Kenobi duels with the evil Darth Maul. Their sword-like lightsabers flash and sizzle as they clash. The warriors lunge at each other, yet their footfalls are barely audible on the metal floor.

Now imagine the same scene–but instead of the lethal buzz of lightsabers, you hear cracking wooden sticks. Instead of the thud of fighters’ leaps on metal, you hear thumps on a creaky wooden stage set. Sound like a big yawn?

Just as dazzling visual effects turn a sci-fi fantasy movie into near-reality, sound effects add the finishing notes. In the past few years, powerful computers, advanced software, and synthesizers (keyboard-like instruments that produce electronic sound signals) have elevated sound effects to new heights. After all, how believable is a computer-generated invading army of androids when you don’t hear a single stomp or whir?

MAY THE SOUND BE WITH YOU

Whether or not you’re aware of it, sound plays a key role in how you perceive reality. Picture a scene where a solitary car races down a stretch of empty highway. But what you hear is the churn of a motorcycle. Your brain instantly alerts you to the fact that what you hear doesn’t match what you see. In other words, your senses are in conflict–a phenomenon called cognitive dissonance. In a movie, this would immediately distract a viewer. Popcorn time?

Directors know that realistic sound is vital to hooking an audience. But what do laser cannons or a mobbed alien marketplace sound like? This was the challenge faced by The Phantom Menace’s sound designer Ben Burtt.

SOUND BYTES

Burtt and his crew created up to 1,300 new sound effects for The Phantom Menace. “Each sound is for a specific weapon or a particular robot’s head revolving around,” Burtt says.

You might think the best way to create extraterrestrial sounds would be to invent them on synthesizers and computers. But Burtt’s most essential tool is the common tape recorder. “The style of Star Wars has always been to use an organic soundtrack,” says Burtt. “That means we collect real sounds that exist out there in the real world. We’ll go out and record racing sports cars or a roaring aircraft.”

Burtt’s secret trick is to alter recorded sounds so they’re not recognizable. How? After recording the thrust of a speeding plane, for instance, Burtt rerecords the sound into a synthesizer, which converts the sound signal into a digital signal of 1s and 0s. A plane engine’s sound is normally high-pitched and whiny. Pitch is how high or deep a sound is and depends on the frequency (the number of complete vibrations of a wave in one second). The higher the frequency, the higher the pitch.

Using the synthesizer, Burtt lowers the frequency and deepens the engine’s pitch. “It still sounds powerful, like a vehicle roaring along, but you don’t recognize it as a World War II fighter plane,” he says. Add an explosion or thunder to the sound, and you’ve got a booming spaceship.

BACK TO BASICS

Say the spaceship accelerates across the screen to jump into hyperspace. Would it maintain a steady sound? Not really.

Think of a wailing fire truck speeding by. As the fire truck approaches, the siren’s frequency increases and its pitch rises. As it passes, the frequency decreases and the pitch drops. This phenomenon is known as the Doppler effect (see below). New computer software easily simulates the Doppler effect. Programs alter the pitch so you get the sensation of an object flying by at breakneck speed.

But there are more imaginative ways to create the same effect. Take the motion of Star Wars’ lightsaber, for instance. Believe it or not, its sound came from the motor of an old movie projector and a sputtering TV picture tube. Combining the two sounds produced the humming tone of a steady lightsaber. But to simulate a swinging lightsaber in a duel, Burtt played the original sound over a speaker, whipped a microphone past the speaker, and rerecorded the resulting whish. “You get a big Doppler shift in the sound, as if it’s a sword swinging through air,” Burtt says.

Creating all the sounds necessary for The Phantom Menace has taken Burtt and his crew about three years to complete. Was it worth it? The audience’s ovations will tell.

COMING SOON TO THEATERS: 3-D SOUND

Sound designers Ben Burtt and Gary Rydstrom labored for more than three years to create the fantastic sounds in The Phantom Menace. To ensure that the soundtrack doesn’t sound flat in theaters, LucasFilm THX and Dolby Laboratories created Dolby Digital-Surround EX, a new movie sound format (see right).

Surround EX, which will debut in theaters at the same time as The Phantom Menace, adds extra speakers and a rear sound channel on the back wall. (Current Surround Sound systems separate sound into left and right channels, so you hear sounds move from one side of the screen to the other.) “I wanted to develop a format that would place sounds exactly where you would hear them in the real world,” Rydstrom says. With Surround EX, audiences can actually hear a plane, for example, fly around them.

Will the new system make movies even louder? No, says Kurt Schwenk, director of THX. “Surround EX just allows more precise placement of the sound.”

Q&A

What exactly does a sound designer do?

I create a “library” of sounds for everything you see and don’t see in a film. I have to create sounds that are totally believable. And the sounds need to orchestrate well together. You fool the audience into thinking everything is real.

How did you get interested in sound effects?

When I was 6 in Syracuse, New York, my father gave me a tape recorder. My friends and I filmed little dramas and I’d create music and sound effects to go with the movie. It was just a hobby.

What did you want to be?

I really wanted to be an astronaut. I have a physics degree from Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania. But in college I made a few amateur films that won national awards. Then I studied film production in graduate school at the University of Southern California.

How did you get a job as a sound designer?

I got a job as a sound recordist because there weren’t too many people in the field. I made the sounds for the very first Star Wars film. LucasFilms asked me to come back for The Phantom Menace.

What’s one of the most unusual sounds we’ll hear on The Phantom Menace?

There’s an underwater monster with a big roar, which is the voice of my 18-month-old daughter. At one point she had a growl in her voice when she was crying. So I recorded that and then lowered the pitch way down in the computer.

Any advice for kids who’d like to work on movies?

Filmmaking is a combination of practically every subject you can study–art, writing, history, music, etc. To be original and creative, major in a subject other than filmmaking.

What do sound designers earn?

You can earn up to $100 an hour in a major film.

Ben Burtt, 50. Movie Sound Designer at Skywalker Ranch, California.

Star Wars Official Website

Star Wars – Phantom Menace at IMDB

Ben Burtt doesn’t have a large list of films, but when he made the sound design of Star Wars, he created a new wave of sound making, introducing new techniques and certainly a new world of sounds.

I’ll divide the information about Star Wars Sound into five parts:

• The Sounds [Part 1]
• The Sounds [Part 2]
• Phantom Menace
• Attack of the Clones

Let`s begin with the first part: The Sounds. Ben Burtt revolutionized sound design with these creations. Take a look of the main sounds created for Star Wars.

The lightsabers

“The lightsabers are one of my favorite sounds, and in fact it was the very first sound I made for the whole series. For some reason after I read the script even though my assignment was to find a voice for Chewbacca, and then a voice for Artoo, and then, well maybe come up with some sounds of laser guns and other things. The lightsaber fascinated me at the time when the script had first come out, they had some paintings that Ralph McQuarrie had done. So that there were some concepts visually of what some of these things would look like, and those pictures were very inspiring because they gave an idea of the direction we were trying to go in the look of the film and it was inspiring to me to therefore think of sounds that might fit that kind of visual style.

I could kind of hear the sound in my head of the lightsabers even though it was just a painting of a lightsaber. I could really just sort of hear the sound maybe somewhere in my subconscious I had seen a lightsaber before. I went to, at that time I was still a graduate student at USC, and I was a projectionist and we had a projection booth with some very, very old simplex projectors in them. They had an interlock motor which connected them to the system when they just sat there and idled and made a wonderful humming sound. It would slowly change in pitch, and it would beat against another motor, there were two motors, and they would harmonize with each other. It was kind of that inspiration, the sound was the inspiration for the lightsaber for the lightsaber and I went and recorded that sound, but it wasn’t quite enough. It was just a humming sound, what was missing was a buzzy sort of sparkling sound, the scintillating which I was looking for, and I found it one day by accident.

I was carrying a microphone across the room between recording something over here and I walked over here when the microphone passeda television set which was on the floor which was on at the time without the sound turned up, but the microphone passed right behind the picture tube and as it did, this particular produced an unusual hum. It picked up a transmission from the television set and a signal was induced into it’s sound reproducing mechanism, and that was a great buzz, actually. So I took that buzz and recorded it and combined it with the projector motor sound and that fifty-fifty kind of combination of those two sounds became the basic lightsaber tone, which was then, once we had established this tone of the lightsaber of course you had to get the sense of the lightsaber moving because characters would carry it around, they would whip it through the air , they would thrust and slash at each other in fights, and to achieve this addtional sense of movement I played the sound over a speaker in a room.

Just the humming sound, the humming and the buzzing combined as an endless sound, and then took another microphone and waved in the air next to that speaker so that it would come close to the speaker and go away and you could whip it by, and what happens when you do that by recording with a moving microphone is you geta Doppler’s shift, you get a pitch shift in the sound and therefore you can produce a very authentic facsimilie of a moving sound. And therefore give the lightsaber a sense of movement and it worked well on the screen at that point.” (Vía).

Laser Blasts

“Tapped with a wedding ring, it produces that lovely recoiling sound as the impact zaps up and down the metal. Recorded using a contact microphone.” (Vía)

We climbed to the top of a hill where there was a small radio tower in the hopes that the wind would make some interesting sounds in the tower or the support cables.  I picked up a rock and banged on the cable just for fun and Ben said,  “That sounds like the imaginary laser gun ought to sound!”

SO he recorded the sounds there and later in California he looked around for other towers and finally found one that he especially liked in the Mohave desert in California. There was a broken brace hanging on the cable that added a special quality to the sound and that was the one he used in combination with some other sounds to create the sound of the laser gun. (Full history here)

Speeder Bike

Sound of an Speeder Bike was achieved by mixing together the recorded sounds of a P-5 Mustang ariplane, a P-38 Lockheed Interceptor, and then record them

Luke Skywalker’s landspeeder

The whoosh of Luke Skywalker’s landspeeder was achieved by recording the roar the Los Angeles Harbor Freeway through a vacuum-cleaner pipe.

Star Wars Official Website

Ben Burtt at IMDB

Second Part Soon!

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