[LIGHTSABER ACTIVATION HUM]
[CLANKING]
[CLATTERING]
Al Nelson: [VOCALIZES]
Danielle Dupre: Bom! Bom!
Matthew Wood: [VOCALIZES]
[RUSTLING]
Al: [MIMICS SPACECRAFT FLYBY]
♪ Quirky instrumental music ♪
Al: If you were to close your eyes [R2-D2 BEEPING]
and just listen to the sounds, [CHEWBACCA ROARING]
could you identify the movie [LIGHTSABER HUMMING]
and where we are in the movie? [DARTH VADER BREATHING]
Everything is just so... iconic.
[LIGHTSABER ACTIVATION HUM]
[MODULATING SIGNAL TONES]
Even just hearing that, you're like, "Oh, that's Star Wars.
That's totally Star Wars."
♪ Sweeping orchestral music ♪
♪
Bonnie Wild: This is "The Mandalorian" season two.
So here we have, singularly, these sounds
making up the sound of the Razor Crest coming in.
[ENGINES RUMBLING]
And here, uh -- [LAUGHS] I'm such a nerd.
There's what I think is a very hilarious metal wobble sound
that I will try and put in everything I ever work on
because I think it's incredible. [LAUGHS]
Here it goes.
We see this metal debris kind of spin off.
[METALLIC WOBBLING]
[LAUGHS]
It's funny, right?
You'll find that also on the speeder chase on Crait
in "The Last Jedi" when Poe puts his foot through the speeder.
[METALLIC WOBBLING]
[LAUGHS]
You can't unhear it.
There's this little pool you enter
when you work on the Star Wars projects,
and you're kind of given the key.
You have access to the Star Wars library,
which is maybe one of the best things ever.
[LASER BLASTS]
It felt slightly nerve-racking
getting access to all the Star Wars sounds,
because it did feel like breaking into a vault.
The TIE explosion is cool.
[SHRILL METALLIC EXPLOSION]
I mean, I think it's every little girl's dream
[ROARING] to go make Star Wars sounds.
♪ Whimsical classical music ♪
I mean, Skywalker Sound is full of sound geniuses
who have made the most ridiculously iconic sounds
that exist.
And you walk down the hallways,
and those people are just bobbing around with some coffee,
getting on with their business.
Colonel Sandurz: Mr. Coffee. Care for some?
Gary Rydstrom: I often tell people,
"Hey, I worked on 'Saving Private Ryan'
and 'Toy Story' and 'Jurassic Park'
and 'Spaceballs.'" They go, "[GASPS] 'Spaceballs!'"
[SPLATTERING]
Bonnie: Gary Rydstrom is kicking around in his room.
And then Ben Burtt is just around the corner there.
He's like, "Yeah, this is how I made R2-D2."
[LIGHTSABERS CLASHING] And then he's like,
"This is how I made a lightsaber."
Like it's nothing! But it's, like, everything.
He just created the sounds of an entire galaxy.
[WHOOSHING]
Here it is, a building full of people just dedicated to sound.
You know, and it's all under one roof.
♪ Cheerful instrumental music ♪
Randy Thom: You know, I often say I was here
at Skywalker Ranch before there was a "here."
Let's search for a familiar Star Wars sound.
[METAL CRASHING]
And that's a metal shear
that I recorded for "The Empire Strikes Back,"
and it's the main sound component
of the Imperial Walkers -- the AT-ATs.
[LASERS BLASTING]
Before Star Wars, the sound style was fairly synthetic.
George Lucas despised that idea.
[CLATTERING]
He wanted science fiction films to sound like art.
Luke Skywalker: Ben? [ECHOING FOOTSEPS]
Randy: That is harder than it sounds.
Luke: No! Crew: Bang, bang, bang!
George Lucas: Well, we have to think of another way.
Randy: George had this idea in mind
that he called "the used future."
He wanted everything to sound like it had been used a lot
in the real world.
It had to feel believable and naturalistic
and more or less organic and relatable,
but it had this kind of exotic feeling as well
that helped you buy that it was happening
in a galaxy far, far away.
[METAL CRASHING]
[ENGINES ROARING]
Ryan Frias: My very first job here when I was, like,
22 years old, hot out of college,
it was a sound effects librarian.
And it was like this really amazing title, right?
And I was like, "What is this?"
The sounds effects librarian would take
all these cool sounds from all the shows.
[DEEP PULSING]
They listen to every single sound
and type out the description to recall that sound.
I could start with R2; see what we got there.
The description is "R2-D2-like tones, musical, cute."
[R2-D2 MIXED MEEPS]
And here's a sad R2-D2, like, sad beeps.
So maybe frowning. So these droids have emotion.
[R2-D2 SCREAMS] [THUD]
Josh Lowden: I mean, a lot of us just grew up on Star Wars,
and it's definitely kind of central to our legacy.
But we work on close to 200 projects a year.
[CLATTERING]
[GIGGLING]
[RUMBLING]
Ryan: As I opened this up today, it looks like
there's a little over 720,000 sounds
in our Skywalker sounds effects library, which is insane.
[ENGINE REVVING]
You have the "Tron" motorcycles.
[ENGINE REVVING]
As creative people,
you don't want technology to slow you down.
When you have a thought
and you really got to get it out there
on a blank canvas like this,
you really need fast tools to actually give you the results
as fast as you think.
And without Soundminer,
without Pro Tools and that interconnect,
and without the Mac,
there would be no fast iteration of creativity.
[CREAKING]
[CPU FANS BLOWING]
So this is the Central Machine Room.
The Central Machine Room is basically the brain
of all the stage operations here at Skywalker.
These boxes up here actually
help synchronize all these Macs together
so that when they're playing the movie on the stage,
all these machines are all playing at the same exact time.
So there's really long cables
from here to the actual edit bay in the stage,
so the editors, when they're working,
they're actually controlling the computer here
in the Central Machine Room.
[KEYSTROKES]
[T.REX ROARS]
André Fenley: Name that tune.
The second movie I ever worked on here was "Jurassic Park."
There hadn't been a dinosaur sound in a movie
that sounded like that prior to "Jurassic Park."
[T.REX ROARS]
Did everybody get a little tingle?
[LAUGHS] Did that do something?
[ENGINE RUMBLING]
Sound designers actually create sounds from nothing.
They're just -- They're playing.
[RUSTLING] They're playing; they're having fun.
They're going out and recording the most weird things
that you could think of.
And they take those raw sounds and manipulate them
and bend them and break them and turn them upside down
and see what they get.
[WHIRRING]
Al: My uncle Kevin gave this to me in my stocking.
And I was like, "OK, what's this?"
[WHIRRING]
I'm going to go ahead and start a session.
We are recording.
So now.
[WHIRRING CONTINUES]
[WHIRRING SPORADICALLY] [WHIRRING FADES]
Here's what we got.
[WHIRRING] Ooh...
[IMITATES WHIRRING] You can hear that, but let's --
let's go a little spaceship-y with it,
and let's take it down 10 semitones.
[DISTORTED WHIRRING]
That's kind of cool, huh?
[TIE FIGHTER SCREAMS]
Chris Scarabosio: These are TIE fighter-like ships,
so I wanted something that kind of sounded like the TIE fighter
but, you know, obviously steering clear.
So these are some elements.
[SHRILL WHOOSHING]
Whoa! That was awesome.
So this is just titled "space shriek."
[DISTORTED SHRIEKS]
So that's the... [MIMICS BIRD CALL].
And then freezing it so that it loops.
And then -- Oh, here you go.
There's the -- the cougar.
[COUGAR ROARING] The cat.
Those are all the elements that make up this sound.
[TIE FIGHTER SCREAM]
It just doesn't make any sense, but that's what we do.
[LAUGHS] We don't make sense sometimes.
[CLATTERING]
Shelley Roden: That is a stormtrooper.
[THUD] And then here's something we use for a body.
There's sand in here and we just -- [THUD]
We use this for -- [THUD]
Here is a Foley stage.
Someone described it to me once as a magician's shop
mixed with a thrift store and a mini golf course,
and I think that is pretty accurate.
[RHYTHMIC FOOTSTEPS]
That one's a good one.
Scott Curtis: Very nice. Shelley: I like that one.
♪
Chris: Creating is part of why I do this
is because it's fun to do that.
[ZIPPING]
[ZIPPING] [THUDDING]
I like doing that because there's a bit of alchemy
to what we do,
and it takes you to a whole different place.
I mean, there's a certain -- There's an element to what I do
that is completely unrealistic.
And that's kind of the fun part of sound design
is that the real sound is often time not the sound
that you're using.
[LOW COARSE TONES]
Al: That's a great creature sweetener.
[LOW COARSE TONES]
♪ Suspenseful music ♪
♪
Matthew: For these artists and mixers and designers
and editors out here,
not playing by the rules just means, to me,
that you're just open to possibilities.
Josh: Everybody in every department is a storyteller
who's trying to bring their part to the whole.
And, you know, when we're on the mix stage
and you can see that final mix
and kind of all these elements coming together,
when they cross that finish line it's just magic.
Tom Myers: The most exciting part of the creative process
is that of discovery and discovering some idea
or coming up with something out of all the material you have,
which is really what the mixing is about.
This is from "Episode III - Revenge of the Sith."
So this is the Order 66.
Obi-Wan Kenobi: Thank you, Cody. Now, let's get a move on.
We've got a battle to win here. Ha!
Commander Cody: Yes, sir!
[CREATURE NEIGHS]
Tom: Now, let's play that same section
just with the dialogue.
Commander Cody: Very good, sir.
Oh, by the way. I think you'll be needing this.
Obi-Wan: Thank you, Cody. Now, let's get a move on.
We've got a battle to win here. Ha!
Tom: So let's look at the Foley.
[CLATTERING] [FOOTSTEPS]
That's Anakin and the stormtroopers,
and you hear not only their feet,
but the stormtroopers' movement, and you hear the footsteps
[FOOTSTEPS]
and there'll be gun-handling and body falls.
[CLATTERING] So then the sound effects.
I'll play the sound effects for that scene without the Foley.
You'll hear spaceships, explosions, and shots like that.
[LASER BLASTS]
This is representative of a thousand tracks
that make all this stuff up, individually.
[LASER BLASTS AND EXPLOSIONS] So then the whole section,
when we play it all together, it'll sound like this.
♪ Inspiring classical music ♪
Cody: Blast them!
[STAR WARS BATTLE]
You get into the mix
and things start canceling each other out
because there's just too much material.
♪
So in that scene, we'd started to simplify that,
strip it down, and make everything muted.
Ki-Adi-Mundi: Come on!
Tom: It became the fact that the course of things were changing.
Sors Bandeam: Master Skywalker, there are too many of them.
What are we going to do?
Tom: It becomes more emotional.
[LIGHTSABER ACTIVATION HUM]
[FAINT WHIRRING]
It still gives me [LAUGHS] a chill when I see that kid
sort of stumble back a little bit, but...
♪ Upbeat orchestral music ♪
Bonnie: There are all these tiny, little story details
everywhere that, you know, sound can keep things,
like, really alive.
But there's a bigger picture and there are, like,
fun moments and emotive moments.
There are loud moments.
There are silent moments.
There are all those moments that are just out of the box.
And you've got to be brave.
You got to be brave if you're doing something like that.
You know, it's pretty cool.
♪
Randy: One of the things that makes sound
particularly powerful is that
it sneaks in the side door to your brain.
And by that, I mean it affects you
without you really knowing that it's affecting you.
[BIRDS CHIRPING]
Baihui Yang: I can hear...
the bees buzzing and the birds.
Sound is a universal language.
[BIRDS CHIRPING]
It changes people's emotions
and people understand sound directly.
[LIGHTSABER ACTIVATION HUM]
[SWISHING]
Danielle: The Skywalker legacy is not necessarily the scripts
and the films and --
although they're always fun to watch --
but it's the idea of bringing something brand new,
something otherworldly, and creating something
entirely unique and entirely inspiring out of thin air.
And I think that's kind of what we bring to the table.
Ryan: It's the things you take for granted.
It's the things that you don't really pay attention to.
That's what I do.
Sound folks, you know,
we're tucked away in the background;
no one ever sees us.
But if you strip away the lightsabers,
Darth Vader's breathing, R2-D2's synth chirps,
you don't have any defining characters in pop culture.
But as soon as you add those sounds back in --
[ASSORTED EXPLOSIONS, ROARS, LASERS BLASTS, AND VOCALS]
If you do your job right, no one will ever know.
And I love that.
♪ Quirky instrumental music ♪
♪