Lucasfilm’s first sound designer wore multiple hats on The Phantom Menace and played a central role in crafting the first Star Wars prequel.
By Lucas Seastrom
Back in 1975, Ben Burtt had been hired as the sound designer for Star Wars: A New Hope (1977), becoming one of the first artists of any discipline to work on George Lucas’ space fantasy. Some two decades later, as Lucas began to lay the groundwork for his new prequel trilogy of Star Wars films, Burtt was recruited once again to join the upstart crew.
“I had been working on some project at the Technical Building at Skywalker Ranch,” Burtt tells StarWars.com, “and I got a call from Jane Bay, George’s executive assistant, and she said, ‘Ben, George wants to talk to you about something. Can you come up right now?’ [laughs] I knew that they always started this way.”…
Sci Fi Central got unprecedented access to Skywalker Ranch where we interviewed Matt Wood at Skywalker Sound. Here, he talks about voicing Star Wars characters.
It was Ben Burtt’s sound work–creating the voice of R2-D2, the hum and crash of lightsabers in battle, and the zooming rush of the speeder bike chase–that gave the original Star Wars an important element of reality. Now twenty years later, Burtt has been at work for six months on the Star Wars Trilogy Special Edition, re-mixing and re-editing sound effects, music and dialog from the original track. Burtt describes his biggest challenge in the Special Edition: “Re-mixing enormous laser battles for all three films for six continuous weeks.”
Born in Syracuse, New York, Burtt earned a college degree in Physics. In 1970, he won the National Student Film Festival with a war movie called “Yankee Squadron.” For his work on the special effects film “Genesis” he won a scholarship to USC, where he earned a Master’s Degree in Film Production. Burtt has been in the film business for 23 years as a sound designer, mixer, editor, writer, and director. Some of Burtt’s interests include “my kids, the history of film, mountain biking, skiing, reading history, astronomy, science.”
Burtt has worked for Lucas since 1975, and he remembers his first experience with the Star Wars films: “A year before the filming began, I was shown the artwork by Ralph McQuarrie–I realized then and there that working on Star Wars was going to fulfill a dream of working on a truly imaginative, innovative fantasy film.”
In Burtt’s 15 years as a sound designer for Lucasfilm, he won Academy Awards for Sound and Sound Effects Editing in four films: Star Wars, E.T., Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Burtt has also done sound design for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, Always, Willow, Alien, More American Graffiti, Howard the Duck, The Dark Crystal, Nutcracker the Motion Picture, The Dream is Alive, Alamo, and Niagara.
In 1990, Burtt became independent and started working as a director. He directed Second Unit for 20 episodes of the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, also serving as picture editor for four episodes of Young Indy, and occaisionally, sound designer. Burtt directed and co-wrote the Young Indy movie “Attack of the Hawkmen.” He directed the IMAX film “Blue Planet” and directed and co-wrote the IMAX film “Special Effects.” Burtt was also a writer on the Lucasfilm Droids television animation series, including the one-hour ABC Droids special called “The Great Heep.”
When asked to reflect on his favorite moment in the Star Wars films, Burtt mentions the moment when “Vader threw the Emperor into the Power Trench–it represents the resolution of the storyline in the first trilogy.” However, though this scene from Return of the Jedi is his favorite, Burtt believes that the first film has had the most impact on him. “The first film, New Hope, represents innocent fun and adventure that makes me enjoy film as I did as a child.”
Just as a FYI, to avoid old posts becoming one with the Force, this post has been republished so it can be a blue glowy thing, it was Originally posted 2023-01-26 00:05:55.
Get ready to learn a fact that will change the way you look at Star Wars’ Emperor Palpatine forever.
WhatCulture Star Wars is dedicated to all things Star Wars. We’ll have all the usual lists, features, and news, plus there’ll be Ups & Downs for all the latest shows and new Star Wars movies. The force is with us!
Even though Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny wasn’t everything I was personally hoping it would be, I still think James Mangold is an incredibly talented filmmaker. I have been listening to his interviews and going through his previous movies, and they got me thinking about what we might see in his film about the Dawn of the Jedi!
Jimmy Mac caught up with original STAR WARS sound designer Ben Burtt, along with Skywalker Sound’s Matthew Wood and David Acord, for a discussion about all things audio from A Galaxy Far, Far Away. We talk about our favorite STAR WARS sound effects and the origins the TIE Fighter engine sound. Plus, the Lightsaber, The Wilhelm Scream, “I am your father” and more with the Godfather of Star Wars sound design!
Skywalker Sound is George Lucas’s state of the art post production company located in Marin County, California. It is a part of Lucas Digital Ltd., a company that includes Industrial Light & Magic. The business of Lucas Digital Ltd. is to provide the ultimate in visual effects and movie sound design to the film industry.
Skywalker Sound began life as Sprockets Systems in 1980. Back then, it was the company responsible for creating the famous sound effects and soundtracks for the Star Wars movies. Star Wars sound designer Ben Burtt’s soundtracks established a new level of sophistication. Knowing that sound is more integral to the movie experience, George Lucas wanted to create better and more involving soundtracks. He hired Tomlinson Holman to investigate the film post production process and to design new and better ways to create movie soundtracks. Tom’s investigation into movie sound and its quality took several years, and the end result was the Technical Building at Skywalker Ranch. A happy by-product was the THX Sound System for movie theatres. Tom found that one of the weakest links in the movie soundtrack chain was the quality of the acoustics and the sound system in the dubbing, stage where soundtracks are mixed. The same high performance design approach found in mixing theatres can be found in the over 1000 THX movie auditoriums world-wide. All of the mixing theatres and screening rooms at Skywalker Sound are THX approved.
To better understand the importance of sound (and a high-resolution sound system) to the movie experience, let’s take a look at how a movie soundtrack is put together:
Dialogue
Dialogue is, perhaps, the most important element of a movie soundtrack. It communicates key information on the plot and the characters, and it serves to tie the whole narrative structure of a movie together. After all, modern films were first called “talkies”.
Dialogue is typically recorded on the set while the movie is being filmed using a variety of equipment (microphones and tape recorders). If the film is being shot on a sound stage, there is a very good likelihood that the dialogue recorded will be useable in the final film mix. However, if the scene is shot on location (high background noise) or the sound stage contains mechanical special effects (wind machines, etc.), the dialogue may become contaminated. At this point, the director or sound designer may require that the actor “loop” their lines.
Looping or ADR (automated dialogue replacement) is the process whereby an actor enters a sound studio and repeats their lines of dialogue in synchronization with the film action. The individual scene is usually shown on a loop of film (hence the term “looping”) so it can be repeated over and over. Good ADR is truly an art form. It requires actors to repeat, not only their lines, but their emotions days or even weeks after the scene is shot. During looping, a director may even change lines of dialogue, usually during scenes where the actor’s mouth is not fully visible. Quite a bit of time is spent during dialogue pre-mixing to ensure that the tonal quality of the ADR matches the dialogue recorded on the set. Any change in dialogue character or quality could distract an audience.
Sound Effects
While Dialogue serves to make a movie understandable, the purpose of a sound effect is to draw us into the action and to make us believe that we are a part of the movie experience. Sound effects fall into four basic groups:
Foley Designed Sounds Creature Sounds Ambience
The First Rule of Sound Design: See a sound; hear a sound. Every time you see some action on the screen, your mind expects there to be a complimentary sound. The support of sound effects helps you “willingly suspend your disbelief” and become immersed in the movie experience. This rule is the basis for the first two sound groups: Foley and Designed Sounds.
Foley
The film term Foley pays tribute forever to Jack Foley a film sound pioneer from the earliest days of talking pictures. It was discovered that simply having people talk on a screen without any supporting sound effects came across as unnatural. When you see people walking, you expect to hear the sound of their footsteps. Now it’s rather difficult to pick up the sound of an actor’s footsteps on the set and still keep a microphone out of the picture. He created a unique environment now called a “Foley Stage”. In it, artists can duplicate the sound of footsteps, prop handling, or body movement in sync with the picture.
While originally designed to reproduce footsteps on a variety of surfaces, a Foley artist’s responsibility now extends to creating everything from the softest sounds of clothes rustling to dinosaur dung. The Foley Stage at Skywalker Sound is extremely quiet (below NC-0) to allow the softest sounds to be recorded. It is also extremely dead acoustically so that no acoustical character is imparted to the sound. That will be added later on in the Foley pre-mix.
Designed Sounds
Frequently the sound of something in the film doesn’t exist in real life. It could be an Imperial Walker or the sound of a laser pistol. Because seeing an action without an accompanying sound can cause “cognitive dissonance” (two sensory inputs in conflict with each other – sight & hearing), the audience can be pulled out of the movie’s action. Since the state of the art in visual effects keeps expanding to meet the director’s imagination, the art of sound design has to keep up. In many instances, great sound design can even make a marginal visual effect seem more realistic.
Many times these sound designs are several different sounds, individually modified, and layered to provide complexity. The sound of the Imperial Walkers, shown here from The Empire Strikes Back, were created by modifying the sound of a machinist’s punch press. Added to this for complexity, were the sounds of bicycle chains being dropped on concrete.
Here Ben Burtt is capturing the sound of a hammer on an antenna tower guy wire, which will become the familiar sound of laser blasts in the Star Wars movies.
Creature Sounds
In many instances, alien life forms and even dinosaurs have become a staple of the modern action film. Because many stories now revolve around animals or aliens, it is important that the audience have an emotional connection to these important characters. Under these circumstances, each animal must have an “emotional language”. The audience must know intuitively when the creatures are sad, happy, or angry. To do this, the sound designer will record the voices of many real animals, and (in a process similar to Designed Sounds) alter them individually and then layer them to create an entirely new, but believable, creature voice.
On the right, Ben is using the confusion of these walruses (their pool has been drained for cleaning, and they’re not happy about it) to expand Chewbacca’s vocabulary.
Ambience
This is the greatest gift that surround sound has brought the film audience. Ambience is the sound of the movie’s world. If the scene calls for a storm, you hear rain. If the scene is in a cathedral, you experience the echoes of the characters’ voices or the sounds of their action, all around. By recreating a scene’s acoustical environment in front of and all around you, the sound designer draws you into the movie, and makes you feel a part of the action.
Music
So, in the world of a movie soundtrack, Dialogue provides the content and Sound Effects provide the realism. The final anchoring point of a movie soundtrack is the Music. Music provides an emotional bedrock for a film. Even before sound was married to picture, cinemas across the world had pianists, organists, and sometimes orchestras to provide emotional enhancement for films. The greatest directors of the day even commissioned great composers to score their films. The sheet music would be shipped along with the print to major markets. While well recorded music can provide dramatic emphasis, it can also make an audience happy or sad. Musical cues can even terrify, to which anyone who has seen Psycho or Jaws can testify.
The Scoring Stage at Skywalker Ranch enables a composer to conduct a suitable instrumental ensemble while watching the film projected on a screen. As with everything in film sound, the music must match the picture.
The Skywalker Scoring Stage not only can accommodate a full symphony orchestra, its acoustics can also be varied by adjusting hidden acoustical panels. These panels can be activated to cover all room surfaces and can reduce the room’s reverberation characteristics dramatically. This allows for the recording engineer to achieve the greatest fidelity, without resorting to artificial reverberation. The 48 track digital facility is also in high demand for pop, jazz, and classical recording sessions.
Editing
Once all of the sound elements are assembled, they must be edited, cut and spliced into the correct order to match each scene. At Skywalker Sound, this editing process is done on digital audio workstations. The editing process can be very complicated. The “T-Rex smashes the Explorer” scene alone in Jurassic Park contained thousands of edits.
Pre-Mixing
Once all of the sounds are edited to match the scenes, they are pre-mixed. Since there can be many hundreds of individual sound elements in a scene, it is best to group them together by content and mix them into “stems”. These stems often follow the basic elements of film sound; Dialogue, Music, and Sound Effects. Frequently, because of their complexity, Sound Effects are not limited to only one pre-mix, but are spread out according to their content: Effects A, Effects B, Ambience A, Ambience B and Foley.
Of course the complexity of film soundtracks sometimes means that you need a very large number of audio tracks. Unfortunately, no one makes a 100+ track audio recorder, so many machines are linked together to provide this capability.
As many machines as are required can be linked together and controlled from the mixing room. All machines are locked to the film projector located in the mixing stage. Skywalker Sound even pioneered the use of tie lines between the Skywalker Ranch facility and remote locations.
Final Sound Mix
Once the sound has been designed, edited, and pre-mixed it is brought together in a movie theatre environment for the final mix. Here, the director, sound designer, dialogue mixer, and music mixer determine the overall quality, character, and placement of each sound element.
The final mix of a film can take two weeks or more, as each scene is replayed over and over again allowing for subtle changes to be noted and made. It is here that the locations of sounds are married to the picture. Sound movement, or panning, is determined here. The level and character of the ambiences is determined. Dialogue levels and locations are set amidst the competition from sound effects and music. Here it all comes together in a controlled environment.
Even though all movie theatres conform to the same standards, it’s known that not all movie theatres are perfect. The Mixing Theatres at Skywalker Sound can simulate everything from noisy air conditioning to clipping amplifiers.
Final Checks
Once the quality of the soundtrack is judged (and the computer automation has recorded every adjustment of each fader, each tone control, and the location of each pan), the print mastering begins.
Master tapes are made for each scene. One set of masters is the LT/RT (Left Total/Right Total) containing the 4 channel encoded surround signal. Most films require a 6 or 8 track print master used for 70mm, Dolby SR-D, DTS, or Sony SDDS release. Frequently, a 6 track transfer is made directly to the digital encoder for these systems. Once all of the masters are completed, they must be checked to ensure that the final soundtrack is perfect.
The Stag Theatre located in the Technical Building at Skywalker Ranch is where a mixer, sound designer, or director can experience the final fruits of their work. The Stag Theatre can accommodate all commercial film formats from 35mm flat to 70mm, and it can reproduce all audio formats from mono optical to the latest digital systems. The Stag Theatre (named for the two stainless steel art deco stags framing the entrance) seats several hundred people and conforms to the high standards set by THX. It is quiet, acoustically dead, and there truly is no “bad seat” in the house. It is the site, not only for print master quality control checks, but for Lucasfilm company screenings and the Home THX Dealer Training seminars.
Skywalker Sound: The Future
Films mixed at Skywalker Sound, and its predecessor Sprockets Systems, have won 11 Academy Awards for movie sound or sound effects editing. This is a testament, not only to the facility, but to the hundreds of dedicated artists, technicians, and craftsmen who work there. Winner of 3 TEC Awards and acclaimed by Mix Magazine as the best Post Production Facility for 1992, 1993 and 1994, Skywalker Sound is a place, like its companion Industrial Light & Magic, where technology doesn’t limit the imagination of the filmmaker.
Skywalker Sound Film Mixes
Sprocket Systems
Star Wars (2 Academy Awards)
The Empire Strikes Back (Academy Award)
Spaceballs
Return of the Jedi (Academy Award Nomination)
Raiders of the Lost Ark (2 Academy Awards)
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Skywalker Sound
1988
Willow (Academy Award Nomination)
Tucker The Man and His Dream
Cocoon – the Return
Peggy Sue Got Married
Fletch II
Bridge to Silence
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
Deadlock
Daredreamer
Chattahootche Legacy
1989
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Academy Award)
Always
Driving Miss Daisy
Romero
Short Cut
Neon Empire
Matinee
Take One
1990
Wild At Heart
Avalon
The Hot Spot
The Godfather – Part III
Henry and June
Defenseless
1991
Terminator 2 – Judgement Day (2 Academy Awards)
Backdraft (Academy Award Nomination)
Bugsy
Rush
Soapdish
Five Hearts
FX II
Brief History of Time
1992
Toys
A River Runs Through It
Saint of Fort Washington
Single White Female
House of Cards
1993
Jurassic Park (2 Academy Awards)
Rising Sun
The Meteor Man
Mrs. Doubtfire
1994
Quiz Show
Baby’s Day Out
Forrest Gump (Academy Award Nomination)
Miracle on 34th Street
Radioland Murders
Disclosure (pre-mixed in the THX dubbing stage at EFX, final mix at Skywalker Sound)
October 19, 2000 — Episode II is now firmly in the post-production stage, as the digital footage shot in Australia, Tunisia, Spain and England is being edited together to form a rough cut of the film. During this process, Supervising Sound Editor Matthew Wood is hard at work gathering what will become the unique sounds heard in the new Star Wars movie.
“I’m actually going out and recording new sound effects,” explains Wood. “I’m taking the recording gear we used on the set and I’m going out into the field and recording various interesting sounds to apply to the film.”
Wood started this task while in Australia with the main production. “I was over in Australia for a couple a months. I was recording various sounds out there, after reading the script. Right now, I’m building up a library of organic, interesting, unique sounds. I’ve got a fairly big library that I’ve been accumulating over the past ten years that I can always dip into, but I want to try to go with a lot more new fresh sounds in this film.”
The local fauna of Australia provided Wood with an important ingredient in his sound recipe. “There was a trip that I took down to Melbourne while I was there,” he recounts. “I went to Phillip Island, and there were a bunch of penguins that migrate to this one spot down on the very south-eastern part of Australia. I was able to go out there and record. A lot of these penguins have really interesting sounding calls – they have three or four different calls. They just come up to shore around six o’clock at night, and they burrow in their nests. There’re hundreds of them. I was able to get rather distinct calls, because they call out to each other.”
The vociferous penguins are currently slated to lend their voices to a new alien species in Episode II.
Some of the greatest Star Wars stories are those from behind the scenes. In Saga Chronicles, Lucasfilm’s Lucas Seastrom tells those tales.
In a remote village, Obi-Wan Kenobi and young Princess Leia seek refuge in a hideout used for smuggling Jedi. But Darth Vader and his fearsome Inquisitors are on their trail. Arriving at the settlement, the ruthless Vader begins murdering innocents to coax his former master out of hiding. Sending Leia to escape, an unsettled Kenobi attempts to draw the villain away, confronting the vengeful Sith Lord with lightsaber in hand. The scene is from the last moments of Part III of Lucasfilm’s latest series, Obi-Wan Kenobi, with all episodes now streaming on Disney+.
“The input from [series director] Deborah Chow was to make it terrifying and dark,” recalls Danielle Dupre, re-recording mixer at Skywalker Sound. “The audience knows how evil Darth Vader is and the lengths he is willing to take, but the people in the story don’t. We had to capture the experience of everyone in the village realizing what was going to happen. It was shot brilliantly as well. You have these ominous close-ups of Vader with the strength of his body and pure determination, then you cut to Obi-Wan and he’s scared, confused, and feels the darkness of Vader’s presence.”…
Back in 1976, Ben Burtt coined the title “Sound Designer” with his award-winning work on Star Wars. Before that watershed, no one had pushed the creation and development of sound to the extremes explored by Burtt. His work gave birth to a whole aural universe, complete with characters expressing themselves almost exclusively through sound effects — and that earned Burtt a Special Achievement Award at the Oscars ceremony of 1978. He then refined his art through several major projects, including The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, and all three Indiana Jones movies. [Chewbacca growls]Since then, Burtt has gone on to explore much more than sound in the world of filmmaking, but fans will be glad to know that he is lending his special talent to Star Wars once more, as Sound Designer for Star Wars: Episode I.
Burtt left Lucasfilm in 1990 to pursue other interests as a freelancer: writing, directing, editing. Although he always kept in touch with his former colleagues — doing work on The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, for instance — he never really came back to Luke Skywalker’s universe until Producer Rick McCallum asked him to sit in the 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, McCallum made Burtt “an offer he couldn’t refuse” and so 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. “There are things we will reuse, of course,” he says. “We’ve got [Laser fight from Episode I]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.” Indeed, one of Burtt’s goals had always been 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.”
One of those distinct and memorable sounds is the voice of R2-D2. “R2 was, on the first film, the most difficult sound project,” Burtt recalls. “He appears again in this film, and he is very much in character, as he always is.” The old lightsaber sounds also appear in Episode I, though Burtt is reworking them to fit the faster fighting sequences that take place in the new movie. Each of the new lightsabers will also have its own signature sound, slightly different from the others. “I always try to match the sound of a unique weapon with the personality of the character who wields it,” Burtt says. “The Jedi lightsabers have a warm, almost musical sound, while the villain’s lightsaber sounds a lot more dangerous and nasty, a little like a buzz-saw. It sounds like the guy who uses this is truly evil.”
These sounds have been assembled into a rough mix to accompany the rough cut of Episode I. “We’ve already got all the basic ships and explosions and ambiances in it,” Burtt says. “It’s a continuation of the pre-visualization process achieved through animatics, except it’s done with sound. ‘Pre-auralization’, if you will.” At first, all of the effects are temporary. Then, as the final sounds are developed and perfected, the trial sound effects are slowly replaced by their permanent, official counterparts. “On the first movie, we had several experimental mixes of the picture. They were all temporary versions, of course, and some of them were rather sloppy. But we could sit down and run the picture from beginning to end and, with sound added, it would seem complete,” Burtt explains. This process allows everyone to critique the film’s sound based on a close approximation of the final version.
The digital revolution has made manipulating sound and sound mixes much easier than it was when Star Wars began twenty years ago. “Since we’re working with computer files now,” Burtt says, “it’s technically easier to manipulate the sounds and move them around. Adding sound to a movie that’s still being edited is just like applying paint to a house that’s being constantly modified and rebuilt. If someone adds a balcony or removes a wall, you have to start over, and that’s the way it was with sound back then.”
But with today’s technology, the computer can keep track of everything, which makes such dynamic sound designing and editing less of a headache. “Now we can build a very complex temporary mix, which is so much richer and deeper,” says Burtt. The translation from temporary sound tracks to final mix has also become less problematic. “It used to be that when the final cut of a movie was decided upon, you would scrap the temporary sound mix and start building the final tracks. But now, you get to keep everything, because it’s all digital and can be handled much more easily. So I’d say roughly 80% of the temp mix will end up in the final one.”
However, all of these technological advances don’t necessarily mean that sound work is easier now than it was twenty years ago. “The creative process is just as big and just as hard,” says Burtt, “but technology allows a smaller crew to tackle the challenge, and to do it in a more effective way. The sound crew on Episode I is about a third of what it was on Return of the Jedi, even though the task is just as complex.” The extensive use of new technology allows for more freedom in the exploration and creation of sound, enabling the crew to concentrate more on art than on technical considerations.
Much of Burtt’s time lately was spent finishing the sound mix for the Episode I teaser trailer. Despite the fact that it’s much shorter than an actual movie, a trailer presents unique and interesting sound challenges. “During the last few years, the trend has been to build trailers with very short shots, tightly linked together, maintaining a very quick pace,” Burtt says.
“This trend is hard on sound, because while the brain can process visuals this way — a quick succession of different images — it can’t do the same thing with sound. Short samples of sound take a longer time for the brain to decipher. If they’re bundled together too tightly, they don’t make any sense at all.” The sound can’t be as choppy as the stream of images, but at the same time it must follow the action and move at the same pace. Burtt and his team strive to get just the right balance of clarity and speed. “The team is new, and we’re still learning to work together. We’re getting a sense of what we can do, what we cannot do, and just how far we can push ourselves before our concerted efforts start losing effectiveness. So the work we did on the trailer is a great shakedown for us. We’re sort of gearing up for the final mix of the actual movie.”
George Lucas has often said that sound is 50% of the movie experience, and Ben Burtt fully intends to continue pushing sound development to the limit for Episode I. “This film is so filled with activity, people, and places,” he says. “There’s always something going on in the foreground, the middleground, the background — even off-screen. It’s a wonderful environment in which to let the sound go wild, expand, and completely fill all this world.”
