Ben Burtt - Sound Designer
“It’s an intimidating thing to introduce the man who invented your profession,” observed Andrew Plain, sound designer, in welcoming Ben Burtt of Lucasfilm fame to the stage. It was Burtt who developed the sound universes for the original Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies, among other classics. A master in his field. But he isn’t intimidating. Actually, Ben Burtt is funny. Self-deprecating. This, after all, is a fella who created the now famous blaster sounds in Star Wars by going round tapping the cables on flagpoles. Made Jabba The Hutt speak by mixing the stirring of cold mashed potato with sounds from his wife who had flu. Here’s a lateral thinker. And someone who knows the importance of play.
Ben started making his own films with friends when he was 10 to 15 years old. He called this little creative enterprise “The Thrill Factory”. By 1975 he was just finishing his Masters in Film Production at USC (George Lucas’s old film school) when Gary Kurtz called to ask if anyone there had an interest in Sound Design. They were looking for a replacement for Walter Murch. Ben Burtt’s name was put forward, and soon he was working on Star Wars. There was a great deal of angst that this movie would be too abstract to appeal- that no one would understand it- a feeling which lingered even after its release.
The idea of a single “Sound Designer” was new. Indeed, that title still isn’t officially recognised. Back in ’77 in Hollywood, Production Recordists would pass their stuff to Sound Editors who would then pass it on to the Sound Mixers without much communication. What Ben Burtt and Walter Murch did was combine the roles of editor and mixer, and record many new sounds for the project. They created the whine of the Tie Fighters by mixing an elephant scream with the swoosh of a car passing by on a very wet highway. Chewbacca was voiced by a cinnamon bear named “Pooh” left for a couple of days without food: they recorded him saying “I’m hungry” and mixed it with a few other animal sounds.
It isn’t arbitrary, though. Ben explains there’s “a language of sound effects,” a series of conventions you learn, as with pictures. “You can choose a wind that’s cold and lonely or one that’s warm and friendly” thus sound can emotionally spin a scene. Your sounds go in to make an impression, not to be realistic, so “distortion can be your friend.” For example, rocket engines sound more powerful when you add some overload distortion from a cheap microphone. There are styles to soundtracks, just as with painting. He keeps wishing he’d be asked to work on something subtle and quiet- but it never seems to happen.
The creation of a soundtrack begins with production recording. Performances tend to be better, more natural and spontaneous in the dialogue recorded on-set, and stray noises like footsteps can also be useful. However, they usually need to be re-recorded later to get it clean: looping for dialogue, foley for footsteps and other immediate sounds.
Next comes Ben’s main area of interest: the sound effects layer. The basis for any sound editor is a library of sound, whether you assemble it yourself (like Ben) or buy it (e.g. “Sound Ideas” which is huge). This is what you draw on. Most of his collection consists of real acoustic sounds recorded out in the field, and one of Lucas’s great projects was sending them out between movies to build up the library. It’s important to a sound where you record it, and for getting those great echoes on the gunshots in the Indiana Jones films, he goes to Lone Pine, California, which is his “acoustic playground.” Lately, his assistant has been walking round Sydney with a DAT recorder, picking up sounds like the tall ship Batavia creaking at dock. But only on the Star Wars and Indiana Jones series did Ben get the chance to go out and record sounds specifically, building up customised libraries just for those films. For each Star Wars, he undertakes 1,000 separate recording projects.
The original Star Wars took 3 months of sound editing, giving them finished but separate tracks. Mixing these into a unified whole took another 12 weeks. That’s a long time, but “it’s nothing that comes fast or easy.” However tight the deadline, Ben has found it always ends up taking 12 person-weeks to mix a movie right. If the timeline’s compressed down to 10 or 6 weeks, you end up simply working more hours, or needing to put on more people. So time must be set aside, things can’t be rushed: it requires careful changes to balance the effects against the music, which is such an important relationship. It’s a process of subtraction: you choose what to show on the soundtrack, what not to. An example of this is the soundscape in the opening of Raiders, with the crickets and the kookaburras swirling round the music. That was a nice opportunity for contours- quiet then loud. And if you want a sound to be loud and powerful (i.e. Indy’s first gunshot) you have to be quiet beforehand. Some big films forget that.
On Star Wars Episode One (The Phantom Menace) they did 6 or 7 temporary mixes, including one or two in stereo. These temp mixes (and music) are often more exciting than the finished mix, as more experimentation goes on. Naturally he consults with Johnny Williams re the music, but those big symphonic scores occasionally frustrate him by taking up so much of the spectrum. There was one scene where the punches Ben gave Indy were completely covered up by Williams’s cymbals crashing down on the same beats. He actually gaussed the great man’s timpani a bit to push it down! The relationship:
Sound is the Action e.g. A poison dart flies out.
Music is for the Reaction e.g. Harrison Ford’s surprise.
In the new Star Wars trilogy (Eps 1,2,3) they are making an effort to stay loyal to the sounds and design of Eps 4,5 & 6. That’s not hard, given Ben has a certain taste, certain style. Nevertheless, in this age of non-linear editing “when the tools I used to hold in my hand are now icons on a screen,” he thinks sound mixing is harder. The main problem: working with shorter grabs. You have less opportunity to build up a sound over time, which is what helps communicate it to the brain. For the Pod Race- the scene which consumed most of his work on Ep One- he’d planned out all these sounds with nice rising and falling perspectives, but as the cuts got shorter and shorter much was lost. It’s a danger with working on AVID’s: you overcut pictures because it’s so easy. Unlike the audience, you watch your scene 500 times on a small screen and keep adding shots to maintain your own interest. The more shots there are, the more work for the sound man. The ideal situation for mixing would be a few hours a day because you lose objectivity- “your hearing wears down”- but of course, that’s a dream world.
Today at Fox Studios, Ben spotted George’s old friend Francis Coppola having lunch. “Should’ve asked him how Walter Murch was doing- and what ever happened to that DVD remaster of Apocalypse Now.” Sydney seems to be making them welcome: since Ben and his family arrived here in June of 2000, he’s just found the people so friendly and helpful and obliging, he wanted to say thanks. And with that, the 400 of us who’d been so entertained and informed by this man gave a round of applause to thank him.
Reported by David Williams, August 2000