Sound designer Profile: Ben Burtt

At there core sound designers are responsible for creating all of the
sound effects that will be used in a film or other types of media. Weather
this is by using pre recorded sounds or creating them from scratch they
are the ones that in a way bring life to a film in terms of the sound effects
being used. Even common sounds such as rain are not necessarily
made by recording it but in the case of rain bacon is sizzled on a pan.
Service to say the job of creating sound effects is a very creative one
and the person I have chosen to talk about as is Ben Burtt who is
probably most well known for his work in the science fiction genre for
films such as Star Wars, E.T and Wall-e to name a few. While working on the Star Wars
sound effects he would start by finding the sounds which usually meant going outside
to record either random sounds or create them. Those sounds where then edited in
some way and put on his computer which allowed him to assign the sound to one of
the keys on an electronic piano keyboard for later.

It was his work on Star Wars that helped show that the sound effects for the droids,
aliens and of course the lightsabers come from the least likely of places. One of the
creatures he worked on was the wookie’s that he had to create a voice for from
scratch, the original sound used to create the voice came from Bears the he recorded
making sounds. Recording life animals let alone their noises isn’t an easy task as you
can’t force or ask them to them so it is lot about waiting for them to on there own
accord. To get from the bear noise to the wookie noise he slowed down most of the
recording while speeding some up to get the basic sounds. However, when chewie the
wookie talks, although he isn’t saying the same noise over again it feels like he is
speaking in his own language. I imagine he took the large variety of basic sounds he
made for the wookie and assigned some to basic human words. This sound would
mean yes and this one no for example. A similar approach was taken for the droid R2-
D2’s sounds which where also made by Ben Burtt and was probably on of the harder
characters to do. R2-D2 had to sound in a way like it was human which was the
problem. He started with using machines to make noises such as a hoover or
computer but these sounds didn’t have much life to them as they made R2-D2 sound
like it wasn’t alive and was just an inanimate object. In the end he made strange noises
himself which where then edited in with the mechanical sounds to create the sound
effects for the R2-D2 we know today.
Another alien creature he worked on that wasn’t from Star Wars was from E.T which
was made up of a lot of different sounds from multiple creatures. In fact, E.T voice is
made up from a composition of multiple animals and people. The animals included a
Asian sea otter and and raccoons. E.T starts out by not knowing any English and
making animalistic sounds which is why animals where used for this part. For the later
parts where E.T was starting to understand and say human words actual sounds and
speech made by people where used instead. When E.T was snoring the sounds the
where used was recorded from Ben
Burtt’s wife that had the flew at the time.
The human words E.T speaks where not
voiced by a professional voice actor.
Ben Burtt happened to be in a camera
store when he heard a women called Pat
Welsh that had a deep voice and he new
immediately that she would be perfect.
Some of the lines she said was mixed in
with the previously mentioned animal
sounds so they didn’t sound out of place
with the rest of the noises E.T makes.

If I have learnt anything from looking at Ben Burrt’s work it is that to make organic
sound for a character that needs to sound alive then recording noises made from
organic sources is essential. On there own or mixing them with other noises from other
sources makes a big difference. Also usually to get to that right sound effects requires
a large amount of sounds to be recorded by finding or creating them from scratch. Ben
Burrt went outside to find most of his or otherwise stand in front of a microphone and
hit random objects with different materials. Most importantly however to find sounds
like these requires a lot of creativity on my part.