If you have ever watched Star Wars, (who hasn’t, right) you know that the most memorable things about the movie are the visuals, the science fiction feel and of course the sound scape. I don’t know how many times I have wondered how they created the tie-fighter sound, the sound of Chewbacca’s voice and last but not least the lightsaber sound. It is such a distinct sound that even if you tried you wouldn’t be able to replicate it at home.
There have been countless behind the scenes videos uploaded to the Internet when it comes to Star Wars, but few have talked about anything other than how they conceptualized and built the world that most of us are so mesmerized by. Little has actually been said about how the lightsaber sound or any of the sounds in Star Wars for that matter were created, and what went into recording them. That is what we are going to unveil to you in this article.
The sound designer behind most of the memorable sounds in Star Wars is Ben Burtt who used nothing more than a movie projector, and the static noise from a TV to create the lightsaber sound. I bet you could have never guessed that the sound that you used to almost duck was created by combining these two sounds and then waving a microphone around the speaker, which played back the combined result in order to make it sound like it came from the lightsaber itself.
There are few more original sounds than the ones you find in Star Wars and the lightsaber sound is definitely at the top of the list. I am sure in recent years Lucasfilm has reused what Ben Burtt once recorded or perhaps they have had him take care of the sounds in the most recent Star Wars movies as well. Either way watch the video below and marvel over how exactly the lightsaber sound was originally created. It’s a mind-boggling trip down your childhood’s memory lane – Uploaded to YouTube by David Phillips.
Star Wars – How The Lightsaber Sound Was Created
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