Biography

Ben Burtt

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Ben Burtt was born in New York, USA. Though he is a writer, an editor and a director, he is best known for his work as a sound designer. Ben has worked on many Pixar and Star Trek movies and all of the Star Wars movies. He is credited for creating Chewbacca's voice and sounds as well as the voice of Yoda and several others.
- IMDb mini biography by: Blogmonstermike.WordPress.com

Rediscovered and named the now ubiquitious "Wilhelm scream" sound effect in the Warner Brothers sound archives. To date, it has been used in over 75 films.
Burtt created the voices and sounds for the aliens and droids of Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) and the voice of E.T. To come up with Chewbacca's voice, he went to a zoo, but that day did not find what he wanted. Later, at an animal farm, a bear's growls provided the basis for Chewbacca's speech, and Burtt added to that the barks, growls, and whimpers of dogs and lions. He was finally satisfied when he went to Marineland, in California, and recorded a walrus, which was moaning because its pool had been drained for cleaning.
To create the rumbling sound of the gigantic boulder in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), he placed a microphone close to the tire of his Honda Civic as it coasted slowly down his gravel driveway. The recording was later engineered at various speeds to best replicate the rolling boulder.
His favourite sound is the famous "Arrow" sound from The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). He has used it in almost all of the Star Wars films, and almost every other film he has worked on.
While speaking at London's National Film Theatre in 2009, he disclosed that the alien gibberish spouted by the Mos Eisley spy Garindan/Long Snoot in Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) was actually the processed voice of John Wayne.

Your success as an artist, to say something new, ultimately depends on the breadth of your education. My recommendation would be to major in an area other than film, develop a point of view, and then apply that knowledge to film. Because if film is all you know, you cannot help but make derivative work. I found that what I had learned about sound, history, biology, English, physics all goes into the mix.

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