Earlier in this blog I spoke about Philip Moroz and how he said to use sound creatively, I’m going to look at Oscar winning sound designer Ben Burtt, who I also posted about previously with his statement on grabbing opportunity with sound wherever you go, and how he demonstrates how to creatively record sound, constructing the most ingenious sounds, with his own developed recording techniques.
Ben is well known for many of the worlds most groundbreaking films such as the Star Wars saga, WALL-E, The re-instalment of the Star Trek franchise and the Indiana Jones saga. The films I’m going to more specifically look at will be the Star Wars saga and WALL-E.
Ben has by far earned himself the title, the godfather of sound design. How he approaches his work and how he customises his sounds to give them personality and diversity which has made Sound Design such an imperative role in Animation and Film.
Ben’s most notorious work is by far the original star wars trilogy closely followed by the rest of the star wars series, nobody can ever forget the iconic sounds of the blasters or lightsabers that are instantly recognisable, these ARE the sounds that make star wars… well, star wars. I’m going to look at a few techniques Ben has used to create such iconic sounds and outline the importance of as Philip Moroz stated ‘Being Creative’ with sound. Looking at the sounds produced in Star Wars more closely, what are the three most recognisable sound? Darth Vader’s mechanical breathing apparatus, the low frequency hum from the lightsaber, and the electrifying sound of the blaster guns. I’m going to look at a couple of interviews where Ben talks about how he created them, and outline the alternative methods which he used to form these iconic sounds. In the documentary about Ben Burtt’s sound design for WALL-E Building Sound from the World Up he talks about designing the laser gun for Eve’s arm, and references back to his work with Star Wars. He said “I discovered years ago, that if you strike a slinky like spring with any object, you don’t just get a clunk on the pick up mic or a ping, you get a ‘Peeyooo’.” (Ben Burtt, Building Sound from the World Up. Available from:https://youtu.be/NsfbXGDw_aA?t=2m22s)
He progresses on to explain how this works, he states that because the high frequencies travel faster than the low frequencies, and if you listen down the wire, the high frequencies get there first, then the mids and finally the lows, emulating a laser gun. So essentially you stretch out a long wire spring, attach a contact mic to one end of the stretched spring and hit the other end with a solid object, of course the tension of the spring will have to come into play, but it’s up for experimentation on how you want the laser to sound.
Here in an interview about designing the sounds for Star Wars the original trilogy, Ben talks about his first and one of his favourite sounds he ever created… the Lightsaber.
In this interview he speaks about how he constructed the sound for the lightsaber, using alternative techniques to create the sounds that he could hear in his head. Imagination is a key factor when trying to construct new sounds, combining and layering multiple layers to achieve each element of the sound that you’re trying to create.
Starting off with probably one of the greatest animation films of all time has to be WALL-E. Ben spoke in an interview on how he approached the job differently to most other pieces of work. A lot of sound design is done in the post-production phase of the film, but as WALL-E is a feature length film that is mostly based on the sound design itself Ben had to work for over two years “brainstorming, experimenting, crafting, and fine tuning both the image and the sound in order to make them work so well together.” (Randy – Film Sound Video’s – Blogger – Available From:http://filmsoundvideos.blogspot.co.uk/2008/10/wall-e.html )