Ben Burtt, ‘Wall-E’ and ‘Star Wars’ Voice Actor, Reflects on Creating Cinema’s Most Famous Sounds With Academy Museum Installation

variety.com:

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor The voice of “Wall-E,” the lightsaber sounds from “Star Wars” and Darth Vader’s breathing are just a fraction of what sound mixer, designer and editor Ben Burtt has contributed to the world of cinema.

This weekend, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures will celebrate his body of work with a special conversation and installation titled “Behold.” Though the two-time Oscar winner has over 122 credits to his name, this will be the first time he’s going to be on stage alone. “Every time I’ve been on stage, it’s been to present something or I’ve been part of a team,” Burtt tells Variety over Zoom ahead of the conversation.

1977’s “Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope” was one of the first films he worked on. It was Burtt who created the lightsaber’s famous hum, which he says came from a broken TV set and a film projector. “Most of the sounds that I’ve created have been derived from real-world objects, animals or technology,” he says. “You go out and you’re documenting sounds; other times, you’re staging something such as a car skidding around a corner.” The goal, he says, is always to “find sounds that also will communicate something to the audience.” When Burtt was first finding sounds for “Star Wars,” “E.T: The Extra-Terrestrial” or even “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” everything was an analog recording. “That meant you were recording on magnetic tape and you had big reel to reel tape recorders,” he says. “Everything was heavy duty.” As technology advanced and the world moved to digital, Burtt says “you could work faster and you could manipulate things.

The sound didn’t degrade from copy to copy. With analog, the more duplicates you made, the worse it got.” Burtt admits that as he became