Ben Burtt

Ben Burtt
Ben Burtt (2nd from right)
Born	Benjamin Burtt, Jr. July 12, 1948 (1948-07-12) (age 60) Jamesville, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Sound desginer, Film director, Screenwriter, Film editor
Years active	1975–present

Benjamin "Ben" Burtt, Jr. (born July 12, 1948) is a four-time Academy Award-winning American sound designer for many famous and noteworthy films, including Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and WALL-E, as well as a film director, screenwriter, and editor. He is most notable for creating many of the iconic sound effects heard in the Star Wars films, including the "voice" of R2-D2, the lightsaber hum, and the heavy-breathing sound of Darth Vader.

Career

Early

Burtt earned a college degree in Physics from Allegheny College. In 1970, he won the National Student Film Festival with a war movie called Yankee Squadron, reputedly after following exposure to classic aviation drama through making an amateur film at Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome, under guidance from its founder, Cole Palen.^[1] For his work on the special effects film Genesis he won a scholarship to the University of Southern California, where he earned a Master's Degree in Film Production.

Sound Design

Burtt pioneered modern sound design, especially in the science fiction and fantasy genres. Before his work in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, science fiction movies tended to use electronic-sounding effects for futuristic devices. Burtt sought a more natural sound, blending in "found sounds" to create the effects. The lightsaber hum, for instance, was derived from a film projector idling combined with feedback from a broken television set, and the blaster effect started with the sound acquired from hitting a guide wire on a radio tower with a wrench.

He is personally responsible for some of the sounds heard in the movies. In the Star Wars series, part of R2-D2's beeps and whistles are Burtt's vocalizations, also made using an ARP 2600 synthesizer, as are some of the squawks made by the tiny holographic monsters on the Millennium Falcon, and in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith he provides the voice for Invisible Hand captain Lushros Dofine. The heavy-breathing of Darth Vader was created by recording his own breathing in an old Dacor scuba regulator. Burtt has also used a recording of his wife, who at the time was suffering from a minor cold and was sleeping in bed, for the film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. In 2008, Burtt created the "voice" of the title character and many other robots in Pixar's film WALL-E, about a lonely garbage compacting robot. Additionally, he is responsible for the sound effects in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and recently completed work on Star Trek.^[2]

Burtt has a reputation for including a sound effect dubbed "the Wilhelm scream" in many of the movies he's worked on. Taken from a character named "Wilhelm" in the film The Charge at Feather River, the sound can be heard in countless films: for instance, in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope when a stormtrooper falls into a chasm and in Raiders of the Lost Ark when a Nazi soldier falls off the back of a moving car.

One of Burtt's more subtle, but highly effective sound effects is the "audio black hole." In Attack of the Clones, Burtt's use of the audio black hole involved the insertion of a short interval of absolute silence in the audio track, just prior to the detonation of "seismic charges" fired at the escaping Jedi spaceship. The effect of this second or less of silence is to accentuate the resulting explosion in the mind of the listener. Burtt recalled the source of this idea as follows: "I think back to where that idea might have come to me...I remember in film school a talk I had with an old retired sound editor who said they used to leave a few frames of silence in the track just before a big explosion. In those days they would 'paint' out the optical sound with ink. Then I thought of the airlock entry sequence in 2001. I guess the seeds were there for me to nourish when it came to the seismic charges."

Burtt was among the golden ears that critically reviewed the various audio compression systems that were proposed for the ATSC digital television system.

A tongue-in-cheek homage to Ben Burtt appears in the 1997 Activision PC game Zork: Grand Inquisitor - the spell 'Beburtt', which 'creates the illusion of inclement weather', plays dramatic thunderclap and rainfall sounds when cast.

Director, Writer & Editor

Burtt directed several IMAX documentary films, including Blue Planet, Destiny in Space, and the Oscar-nominated Special Effects: Anything Can Happen.^[3] He edited the entire Star Wars prequel trilogy, and several episodes of "The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles". Burtt is also credited as the writer of several episodes of the 1980s Star Wars-based cartoon, "Droids".

He makes a cameo appearance in two of the Star Wars films as an extra. He appeared as Colonel Dyer in Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (the Imperial officer who yells "Freeze" before Han Solo knocks him off a balcony) and in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace as Ebenn Q3 Baobab (appears in the background near the end when Padmé Amidala congratulates Palpatine).

Awards

Academy Awards

• Sound Effects Editing in 1982 for E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
• Sound Effects Editing in 1989 for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
• Special Achievement for sound editing in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977)
• Special Achievement for sound editing in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
• Nominated for:

• Sound and Sound Effects Editing in 1983 for Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
• Sound Effects Editing in 1988 for Willow
• Sound in 1989 for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
• Documentary Short Subject in 1996 for directing Special Effects: Anything Can Happen
• Sound Effects Editing in 1999 for Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
• Sound and Sound Effects Editing in 2008 for WALL-E

Honorary Awards

Burtt was awarded the Doctor of Arts, honoris causa, by Allegheny College on May 9, 2004.

References

External links

• Ben Burtt at the Internet Movie Database
• Ben Burtt at Allmovie
• Site detailing the history of The Wilhelm Scream
• Interview with Ben Burtt on Silicon Valley Radio
• Interview with Ben Burtt on Studio 360 about his career
• CineSource Magazine - Ben Burtt and the Sound of WALL-E