Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back sound design explained by Ben Burtt
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- Опубліковано 13 лип 2024
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The sound design of Star Wars Episode V The Empire Strikes Back explained by the father of Skywalker Sound, Ben Burtt!
INDEPTH Sound Design created, researched, and edited by Mike James Gallagher
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#sounddesign #benburtt #filmsound
Special Thanks to Michael Coleman, Carolyn Croce, Gracie Hartmann, Brett Noborikawa, and Ivan Power-Kronick
00:00 AT-AT WALKERS
02:10 C-3PO
02:38 TAUNTAUN
03:31 SNOW
04:40 SNOWSPEEDERS
06:11 EXPLOSIONS
07:06 WEAPONS
07:33 EMPEROR
08:47 DAGOBAH
12:35 R2-D2
13:08 YODA
16:26 DARTH VADER
18:52 MILLENNIUM FALCON
22:49 ELECTRICITY
23:28 MYNOCKS
25:11 BOSSK
25:26 BOBA FETT
26:16 SCAN GRID
26:48 CARBON FREEZE CHAMBER
28:51 SLAVE I
29:21 2-1B DROID
30:00 WIND
31:26 SOUND FX ALONE
32:50 WORKFLOW MILESTONES
34:55 EMPIRE LEGACY
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► Let me know below what you learned from the video!
00:00 AT-AT WALKERS
02:10 C-3PO
02:38 TAUNTAUN
03:31 SNOW
04:40 SNOWSPEEDERS
06:11 EXPLOSIONS
07:06 WEAPONS
07:33 EMPEROR
08:47 DAGOBAH
12:35 R2-D2
13:08 YODA
16:26 DARTH VADER
18:52 MILLENNIUM FALCON
22:49 ELECTRICITY
23:28 MYNOCKS
25:11 BOSSK
25:26 BOBA FETT
26:16 SCAN GRID
26:48 CARBON FREEZE CHAMBER
28:51 SLAVE I
29:21 2-1B DROID
30:00 WIND
31:26 SOUND FX ALONE (Ben speaks on the power of SFX without music)
32:50 WORKFLOW MILESTONES (Ben speaks on fascinating moments for him during the filmmaking process)
34:55 EMPIRE LEGACY (Ben speaks on the audience reaction of the film when it was released, and how we feel about it decades later)
I could listen to Ben Burtt for hours. I love how detailed he thinks. Pure genius
+MaK.Audio Agreed- Just wait until my overstuffed RoTJ video!
Lucas put him in charge of editing _The Phantom Menace,_ and in the behind-the-scenes he seems to be the only one who could speak his mind and be considered a peer to him, like his director-friends he showed Star Wars to back in the day. Unfortunately by that time it was too late. Still I wish he had removed the line by Obi-Wan saying "We've picked up another pathetic life form," which tells us not to like Jar Jar and Anakin.
I've always pointed out that the sound design is what's responsible for half of Star Wars' creative impact on cinema...or at least a third considering William's score as well. It gave what we were seeing a heartbeat and life, it helped us accept it as real and tangible, it can manipulate the subconscious or deepen context, and it actually inspired me more than the visual effects to follow a career path in film production and post production. Sound design is the completing touch for immersing the viewer.
One of those crafts that when it's well done, nobody notices. And Star Wars nailed it!
Wow, I could not have said this better myself. Hat tipped.
@@INDEPTHSoundDesign I like how you have a couple Pixar vids too, and with Toy Story and Rydstrom....again, hand-in-hand as to how crucial it was giving the world onscreen 'credibility' as Burtt puts it here, but also establishing it as a creative milestone. It was also interesting when Randy Thom took over as Supervising Editor (IIRC) for Incredibles...I think a lot of us had gotten very used to Rydstrom's 'voice' on a lot of sound designs it was interesting to get a slightly different one....to me a bit punchier and more aggressive, if that makes any sense.
I've always felt that a movie's audio contributes about 80% of its overall impact. Specifically…
40% Soundtrack
40% Sound design
10% Editing/cutting/timing of the shots
10% Everything else (script, cinematography, directing, acting, sets, wardrobe, visual effects, etc)
Well put!
Kershner: Alright mate, we need to make Yoda's world feel alive, so I was thinking..
Burtt: *QUICK! CHUCK A RACCOON IN THIS BATHTUB AND SLOW DOWN THE SOUND!*
Genius
+____ Haha, I love how he had to point out that they had to be trapped in a bathtub
hahaha classic.
25:58 Don't get me wrong, I really like Morrison's voice and it goes along with Boba fett very well... BUT WINGREEN... No sir. That was disrespectful to remove him out. Wingreen sounds wayyyyy more menacing and and just down right scary.
Agreed, just the delivery with his accent doesn't make it menacing at all. Love him in Mandalorian though.
@Kid Buu You're 'kid'ing right? Because if you're being serious we have a lot to talk about young man. Watch that part again where the sound of spurs come into play and why it was important to "A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away" have an actual MENACING AND SCARY voice for a bounty hunter. 😉
The voice that I do for Boba Fett is half Morrison and Half Windgreen.
My Fett voice is deep and gravelly like Windgreens but I channel Morrison’s Māori accent.
Man, Burtt lives in a different world than most people. Same can be said for anyone in the sound design biz for that matter.
Sound designer's ears and mind must constantly be hearing things that most of us just tune out. Not only hearing things, but thinking of how a random sound could be useful to punctuate a visual on a film.
Hear a door slam? Gunshot.
Hear rustling papers? Fireplace.
Kinda cool.
I understand for continuity sake changing Boba Fetts voice to the new actor, but the original voice is still my favorite. It’s much more menacing.
Without a doubt! Yeah, the original voice for Boba Fett by Jason Wingreen was such a stand out voice for me growing up watching Empire. I thought the voice was almost as important as Vader's actually. So later on to not hire an actor that could better come close to the original voice was a huge mistake and almost seems lazy imo. Boba Fett is an interesting character that more thought and time could have been invested in making that "menacing" voice more honorable to the original which was perfect.
In _Raiders of the Lost Ark_ we see a French archeologist who is the nearly amoral version of Indiana Jones; he even says as much. Boba Fett is like the wicked, clever version of Han Solo, if he became a ruthless bounty hunter. It's too bad he got roughed up (punked) by a blind Han Solo. He should have said to Jabba, "He may be a Jedi; Darth Vader wanted him for the Emperor." And when Jabba doesn't take his advice, he should get out of there before the skiff battle.
Occasionally, I get to tell a story through sound. It's the best part of my job.
Truly creative projects can be few and far between, but it's great when it happens!
How they produced the sound of Vader's helmet closing is fascinating.
I know right? Definitely a familiar sound from when I played with my parents' vacuum cleaner as a kid.
BTW, right after that part, I painstakingly edited in David Prowse's original onset dialogue track into the scene instead of James Earl Jones. I don't explain why... I just though it was amusing ha
@@INDEPTHSoundDesign Yes, it is. Also, your edit of his original onset dialogue felt completely in line with the overall pacing. And it's always interesting to see how movie magic works, where and what sounds Ben Burtt recorded. Just incredible!
AWESOME!!😃🙌 Never would’ve thought these sounds came from something real. I thought these were all synthesized straight from a computer. Surf made snow?! That’s so cool!
Yeah… This was early 80s. Literally no available computer could compute sampled audio at that time. When you think, they couldn’t press a key to get a sample playback. They had to un-pause tape at the right moment to get it on to the master tape. By the time of Jedi, there were digital audio recording tools, but i don;t believe they had any for Empire. Crazy right!
Yoda sounded like a high-pitch Borat
Haha, it's definitely really interesting to hear his first take on the character.
It is understandable now why George Lucas didn't immediately pick Frank Oz to do the final voice. But it all worked out in the end!
Fascinating stuff, as usual. Another reminder of how important recording good source material is.
Amazing! Incredible!
These videos are ridiculous thank you so much for doing all this 🏆 As a professional sound designer, Burtt is my hero. What he did, just with *tape* .. it’s just crazy. Such a treat.
Anyone else noticed how the sounds of lasers and other things are worse in the recent movies? Much more quiet and non-distinct.
The production quality in general does not compare to episodes 1-6.
I love how he remembers EVERY. SINGLE. SOUND. he ever made
3:10 lol
The technique of creating Wind sounds at 31:00 with a machine filled with washers reminds me of the way in which the Sound of the tornadoes in Twister (1996) was created.
Sound Designer Gary Rydstrom (the same guy who did Jurassic Park) took a Cardboard Box, cut a hole in it, covered the hole with a few layers of Chicken Wire, placed a microphone inside, then taped the box to the hood of his car, and drove around with it. The Microphone recorded the air passing through the chicken wire and those recordings were the basis for all the Tornadoes seen in the film.
Fascinating. Thank you so much for sharing these!
This is wonderful! Thanks for including the original Jason Wingreen voice track for Boba Fett. Any more information for how Bossk’s voice was made? He really didn’t provide that much detail and I’m a Bossk freak. I just finished reading The Prize Pelt!
"They were cutting a scene upstairs in the editing room," Burtt says. "The editor, Paul Hirsch, was up there and he just called down, 'Quick! I need something for a scene, just for a temp. Can you send something up?' So I very quickly grabbed a microphone and made a funny sound, a growl. I hit a note, which I was never able to do a second time. But sometimes those instinctive sounds work well enough that everybody falls in love with them, and they never get changed."
All this is pure gold.
And the fight in between Yoda and R2 is on of the best moments in all three episodes.
This work full of beauty 💫
Love how near the end Ben mentions how Empire's genius and quality was only truly recognized when people looked back on it as the act 2 of a larger story. Now, post-Disney's Star wars, we can undeniably say that about all the three original movies.
Ben Burtt is just brilliant. And this assemblage of material is so well done. Thank you.
Love this. Going to see the empire strikes back in dolby atmos this Sunday. Now I know what to listen to :)
This channel is absolute gem 💡🔮
The original voice for Boba Fett by Jason Wingreen was such a stand out voice for me growing up watching Empire. I thought the voice was almost as important as Vader's actually. So later on to not hire an actor that could better come close to the original voice was a huge mistake and almost seems lazy imo. Boba Fett is an interesting character that more thought and time could have been invested in making that "menacing" voice more honorable to the original which was perfect.
Yep, Temuera Morrison's voice isn't the least bit menacing. I don't know why, even if he was cast as Django Fett, Boba Fett's voice had to be re-dubbed. The character's father dies when he is very young - his accent could quite easily have changed between being a boy and a man (when you hear him speak in Empire).
I never understood the need to have the storyline of the clones being based on Boba Fett's father in the first place. But then, in the prequels everyone had to be linked to each other. Like Anakin randomly building C3PO for some reason.
Have recently read an in depth analysis of Ben Burtts Sound Design in the context of science fiction as a genre, and analyzed the progression and refinement of the star wars sonic brand identity from New Hope to Jedi: Fallen Order (a game that utilized some of the classic iconic SFX in really interesting subtle ways) but for whatever reason I'm only now listening to Ben Burtt himself.
Thanks for the videos 🔊
I remember seeing this movie in the theater when it came out. The lack of resolution is what really reduced my appreciation of it since it would be three years before the next movie would come out. The other thing that many forget about is that the first movie ended with a big victory of the good guys and you left the theater happy and on a high. I remember feeling a bit frustrated as I left "Empire".
These videos are amazing. Keep up the good work!
+Cody Sean Thank you so much!
This guy deserves to be on Mount Rushmore..his sound design is beyond amazing
This is great stuff! But I still wonder about the sounds of the wampa and the probe droid. I know wampa was an animal and the probe was a distorted radio chatter, but still.
"The wampa scream is an elephant Randy Thom recorded at the Oakland Zoo. On top of the elephant bellow is the squawk of a seal lion which was taped at Marineland of the Pacific."
"For the moment when the probe droid levitates from its pod that has smashed into the surface of the ice planet Hoth, Burtt recycled the same source material created on the ARP keyboard he'd used for the torture droid in Episode IV."
"The voice of the probot droid came from the shortwave recordings from the ham radio set of Burtt's grandfather. "I mixed it with some outtakes of weird transmission noises I'd created for a warning signal that beckons the spaceship Nostromo to a ghostly planet in Alien,' explains Burtt. But its alarm signal was the voice of a well-known Shakespearean actor totally transformed electronically. 'I generally don't use sound from other sources, but on occasion I like to throw fun things in,' Burtt says. 'I don't think anybody could figure out who it was originally.'"
@@INDEPTHSoundDesign Wow, I did not expect to receive an actual, detailed answer. Thank you! Now that I think about it... the elephant and the sea lion totally makes sense. Though I never would have guessed the Alien part or the Shakespearean actor. :D Thanks again, and keep up the good work! :)
Ben Burtt is just a genius, man.
Again, you're a bloody legend! Thank you for making these lovely videos
Thanks so much and you're welcome always!
I'm one of the few Star Wars fans who favors Return of the Jedi over Empire. Empire is definitely great in every way. The Hoth battle, meeting Yoda on Dagobah and Yoda making Luke confront Vader, escaping Cloud City and the Vader duel and iconic line, all one of kind parts of Empire. Jedi for me has a lot of the exciting and character changing moments, but I love the space battles and the whole operation of destroying the Death Star while Luke confronts Vader AND the Empire and Vader has a complete character change. All of those things connect me more to Jedi than Empire. So I like to hear how mixed the reviews were when Empire first came out because it was a rather sad Star Wars film that needed closure.
Another very cool sound design commentary! Ben Burtt never ceases to amaze me. The work of sound designers is truly underrated.
You're right, I do have a lot of good memories of RoTJ from watching it as a kid. It's definitely the most fun of the 3 films.
Rest assured, I'm already working on an RoTJ video and it's even bigger than this one!
INDEPTH Sound Design Very exciting! Looking forward to it!
I still prefer Empire because it was the movie that completely expanded the SW lore and had terrific interactions between the characters, but I agree that ROTJ gets way more crap than it deserves. The Luke/Vader moments are indeed amazing, the whole intro rescue is great as well, in fact, everything is amazing except for the middle part which is a little slow and corny. It's an amazing film and conclusion to the OT nonetheless!
Luke's character development in Jedi is definitely the best as he learns to control his ANGER. That said, the downshot of Jedi for me is in the writing of Obi Wan's character, how he never really explained why he LIED to Luke in New Hope that Vader betrayed and murdered Luke's father when in Jedi he explains that they are one and the same person, that by turning to the Dark Side, the good man who was Anakin Skywalker was destroyed. I know Lucas was making this stuff up as he went along. Something along the lines of "When a Jedi turns to the Dark Side, that Jedi is considered dead to other Jedi" and "I couldn't tell you the truth--I had to make sure you thought of Vader as the enemy, so that you would destroy him, because he has become a very great threat to the peace and stability of the galaxy" would've been nice, better than the condescending "Luke, you're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view".
Nice Tauntaun mimicry🤣
Are those clips added by you?
7:10 I always felt bad for the single Rebel soldier who got the full AT-AT blast :(
Thaaaank you, the guy's a genius. :-)
the fact that the hyperdrive failing is taken from a 1928 fighter bi plane made me think immeditely of a p-40 because theres a video that literally makes the near same sound effects
Empire is still the best of them all. This is what happens when you have a competent director in charge.
I thought the sound of the AT ATS walking were made by recording an industrial print press?!? I've seen another video detailing this.
The sound is missing for the Wampa.
1:40
The sound and music were so good in Star Wars that they could do a 13-episode _Star Wars: The Original Radio Drama_ successfully without visuals. Unfortunately, for Empire they had to have Rebels on the battlefield describe over the air to the command center what Luke was doing during the Hoth battle, in a play-by-play which took away from it. And the much-later Return of the Jedi version was just awful due to having to translate all the languages, which wasn't a problem talking to Jawas and Greedo in Star Wars.
Want to be a sound designer? Get a dumpster.
Why is there all this shit on the left side and top and bottom of the video THE WHOLE TIME. Do we really need to know that this is Ben Burtt commentary the whole video? Or that it's from Empire?? Why do we constantly need reminders of this? Why do we need chapters IN THE VIDEO ITSELF! It's awful. Get rid of it.