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

The voice of Wall-E, the lightsaber sounds from Star Wars and Darth Vaders 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 hes going to be on stage alone. Every time Ive been on stage, its been to present something or Ive been part of a team, Burtt tells Variety over Zoom ahead of the conversation.

1977s Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope was one of the first films he worked on. It was Burtt who created the lightsabers famous hum, which he says came from a broken TV set and a film projector.

Most of the sounds that Ive created have been derived from real-world objects, animals or technology, he says. You go out and youre documenting sounds; other times, youre 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 didnt degrade from copy to copy. With analog, the more duplicates you made, the worse it got.

Burtt admits that as he became renowned for being the brains behind Wall-E and Darth Vaders breathing, which he made by breathing into a scuba regulator, there was pressure to raise the bar.

That first Star Wars film was done in innocence to satisfy me and George Lucas. We werent thinking about the impact. But once they had that impact, youre labeled a genius, he says. When The Empire Strikes Back came out the bar was so high.

Despite the breadth of sounds hes created, his proudest one is rarely talked about. Its the Death Star when Obi-Wan Kenobi is trying to turn off the tractor beam, he says referring to the projected force field that manipulates gravitational forces to push or pull objects. I made it by combining a couple of motor sounds and a bit of a synthesizer. That sound didnt stand out to anybody, but I loved listening to it. I would put it on in my room and just would run for hours.

Behold: Ben Burtt is current in the Inventing Worlds and Characters exhibit at the Academy Museum this weekend, and Behold: A Conversation with Ben Burtt will take place at the museum on Saturday at 6 p.m.