Guys you didn’t know you knew: Ben Burtt

Okay. Ages ago, I gave some love to Stan Winston. Because he was awesome. And most folks don’t know who he was.

Now, I want to give it up for Ben Burtt, sound designer nonpareil. Because most folks don’t know who he is.

This is the guy who invented R2D2′s beeps and Wall-E’s interminable cuteness. He made TIE fighters scream like Tusken Raiders, made Darth Vader asthmatic before he was cartoonishly stupid,  put klaxons and bells into spaceships exploding… used WW2 aircraft engines for the Millenium Falcon.

My favourite story about Ben concerns Raiders of the Lost Ark. Story goes that he saw the rushes for the opening South America sequence and was stumped on the sound to put on the Forrestal’s skull turning towards Indy… what would be creepy enough? What would sound real?

Next morning, he found the answer in his breakfast; more specifically in a boiled egg. The cracking sound of  breaking the shell of a boiled egg – that’s Forrestal’s skull saying “hi” to Indy.

How awesome is that?

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 11th, 2009 at 7:06 pm and is filed under Fulltime Casual. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • Justin Gibson
    Snap!

    That was my first introduction to Burtt too.
  • fredonas
    I felt that the cries of "Wall*E!!" got a bit tedious toward the end of the movie. Love Ben's work since I saw him on a Star Wars doco tapping power pylons to get the Star Wars laser blaster sound effect.
  • Peter Wells
    Yeah, i helped a friend do foley for a fight scene once, and it was heaps of fun. Swinging round planks of wood, punching frozen chickens, smashing glass, etc. :)
  • Couple of years ago, I had a huge project of converting my dad's old Super8 family movies from the 60's and 70's over to DVD. As they had no sound on them, I thought I would add some, eg. waterfall, car zooming by.
    It's not the same as creating your own sound, but it made me think how much impact sound actually has in movies.
    All the family where impressed and it added new life to the movies.

    Some family members actually didn't even notice I had added the sounds, they just assumed, as is what most people think when watching a movie. Reminds me of that 80's movie with Travolta...
  • Peter
    Ben Burtt is amazing. I always think it would be an amazing job being a sound engineer... I think it'd be my dream job, but I've no idea how to get into that sort of career!

    But yeah, the stuff he did in Wall-E was incredible... and he came out of retirement for that I believe!
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