Ben Burtt Is My Hero

Star Wars sound designer; Ben Burtt is kind of a personal hero of mine. From the moment I set foot in that movie theater, and heard the rumble, the guns, and the ships battling it out I was hooked.

Have you ever just closed your eyes, and listened to a movie? Especially a movie with great sound design? If the movie was done properly with great sound design, you don’t loose much with your imagination; you see in your head everything that is actually going on on screen.

Ben Burtt is pretty much the modern day father of film sound design. You’ve probably heard so many of his films, and never knew who he was. His credit of films includes: Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, The Return of the Jedi, Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Temple of Doom, and the Last Crusade, as well as the new Star Wars Trilogy, and last year’s Wall-E.

When he started working on Star Wars, there was nothing to compare laser guns, lightsabers, and space battles with. So he created the sound effects needed, pretty much every sound in the film. He also added his own little inside joke, using the famous Wilhelm Scream to each project he worked on.

You can see a montage of his Wilhelm Scream clips here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdbYsoEasio

Once you know about the scream, it’s really fun to listen out for it. Just a little inside joke you have when you’re at the movies.

With Ben Burtt’s sound design, he created some of the most beloved characters of all time, and gave them personality. Can you imagine R2D2 with any other sounds? He wouldn’t be R2! Ben created a whole personality, just the beeps and electronic sounds, to make a small trash can shaped robot adorable, cute, funny, and even serious when necessary.

My love of sound effects and movies has gotten me really invested with my own home movies. The day iMovie was released, was a great day. The amateur filmmaker had a real easy and simple tool to add something extra to their home movies. I even got to fancy as to try to find an inexpensive, but good sound effects library just to give me movies that extra kick.

In my searches I came across Wave Shark Sound FX. They went out a started recording their own sound effects library, just to help fill the gaps in their own projects, and decided to put it all together and sell it online. They recorded everything with the highest quality sound recording available, 96khz, and have two really fantastic libraries. Wave Shark Sound FX, Vol. 1 has over 600 sound effects and Wave Shark Sound FX, Vol. 2 has over 500 sound effects, and the libraries start out as low as $19.95 for the mp3 version, perfect for what I was looking for. So I bought both volumes and went to work adding the sound effects to a home movie, and you wouldn’t believe the difference it made! The microphone on those small hand-held cameras doesn’t nothing to pick up the sounds someone makes while recording, so adding, subtly the right sounds to go along with the movie just made it that much better.

Wave Shark Sound FX has an online store, safe, and secure. I bought the two volumes and instantly was sent an email with the link to download the two volumes. It was easy and so choice! If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.

Oh, and here’s the link to their site! www.wavesharksoundfx.com

Author: Jack West