New STAR WARS SFX Revealed

(From Millimeter Sampler)

We continue our tribute to the STAR WARS sound effects team by looking at a few specific sounds from EPISODES I-III. Once again, BEN BURTT headed the FX team on all three of the new films. Can we let him do something else now with the rest of his career? By the time the most recent film, STAR WARS: EPISODE III -- REVENGE OF THE SITH, was ready for production, Burtt had amassed a library of some 7,000 sounds from the five previous films in the franchise on a FIREWIRE DRIVE.

[I think I may have just as many on my FireWire Drive!]

The information for this article has been shamelessly extricated from three different stories by LARRY BLAKE written for MIX MAGAZINE in May 1999, June 2002 and June 2005.

LIGHT SABERS FOR EPISODE I
Burtt went back to the 1/4 inch tapes that held the sounds used for the weapons in the original series. He says he "recombined them with different pitch and character [using a SYNCLAVIER] but so it still reads LIGHT SABER."

ZAM SPEEDERS IN EPISODE II
According to Burtt, the sound of these vehicles was made by combining the sound of several musical instruments, including electric guitar, cello, and viola and then, additionally, using a buzzing electric razor to vibrate viola, harp, and bass strings. "I was thinking (the speeder) was traveling magnetically," he explains. "It was being pulled along the streets with changing magnetic fields rather than self-propulsion."

THE BUZZ DROIDS IN EPISODE III
"I did a fair number of recordings at the AVID that were used in the final movie," Burtt says. "For the buzz droids that pop open and crawl around on the ships, while sitting at the AVID, I performed them on a trombone and later ring-modulated the sound in (AVID DIGIDESIGN'S) PRO TOOLS.

"I tend to work in a 'non-objective' sound design mode first -- I'll have a gut feeling about pieces of sound that I want and will lay them out on the (sampler) keyboard. I'll experiment and do a performance until I hit on a combination of sounds that I like. Then I can fine-tune by further working with the samples."

SOME NEW R2-D2 FOR EPISODE III
Burtt went back to one the main sources of the original "vocalizations" -- an ARP 2600 SYNTHESIZER that had literally been gathering dust (and mold) in Burtt's attic for more than 20 years. "I went back and got all of notes and paperwork as to how I had done a lot of it, including microphone selection. I got my patching diagrams out and with some practice I was able to re-create ARTOO. I did my best to make it match with the old stuff.