May 4, 2022
Property
Detecting the sounds of a galaxy far, far away with Mac
Skywalker Sound artists share their creative process, R2-D2 audio origins, and their journey to build a massive audio library
In the rugged terrain of Nicasio, California, with a population of a thousand, visitors to this secluded corner of Marin County are surrounded by the spirit of limitless possibility. Miles of cables and gadgets hidden underfoot.
This is the location of Skywalker Ranch, the massive facility owned and designed by George Lucas, creator of the epic Star Wars universe. The cornerstone of the farm is Skywalker Sound, a world-class sound design, editing, mixing, and audio post-production facility. The 153,000-square-foot red-brick building, surrounded by vineyards and man-made Lake Ewok, is a monument to the often-repeated principle Lucas, whose sound represents at least 50 percent of the cinema experience.
The Soundminer Sound Library system, which allows searching for descriptive keywords semi-poetic in their own right, keeps pace with the ever-expanding Skywalker Sound library of nearly one million sounds.
With the power of nearly 130 Mac Pro shelves, as well as 50 iMac computers, 50 MacBook Pros, and 50 mini Mac computers running Pro Tools as the primary audio app, along with a fleet of iPads, iPhones, and Apple TVs, Skywalker is the Upgrading proper art and reshaping industry.
“It started with the Macintosh SE, way back,” says Ben Burtt, legendary sound designer for the original Star Wars movies, contests, and the “Indiana Jones” franchise. “Word processing was a huge leap forward for me as a writer.”
“Editing audio in a way is really the same as word processing; cutting and pasting files,” Burt continues. “All of the experiences I had on a Mac immediately gave me a practice of what came in digital audio cutting. I started cutting with a Mac with Final Cut in the late ’90s, and now I have four Mac computers. Each handles a different process: one for image editing. Editing audio, writing scripts, I’m totally surrounded. They’re categorized as alpha, beta, gamma, and delta.”
Talk to any Skywalker Sound artist and it quickly becomes clear that they all have a personal library of cherished recordings. “Sounds that evoke emotion are what we always strive for,” says Al Nelson, supervising audio editor and sound designer.
For sound designers, even old equipment creates opportunity. “I love happy accidents and I love breaking technology and getting unexpected results,” says Nelson. “I like to play with digital systems that go wrong, and that means the way the bits are flowing. It’s broken, it looks like a bad radio. I have a really old PowerBook, and it has some old software that I like to use; I can make recordings in it and break them digitally.”
Nobody knows when the inspiration will come. The contractor who knew Burt was always looking for unique voices. He called once to say he heard a strange broken ceiling fan in an apartment he was maintaining. Burt’s recording of wobbly blades later turns into the ominous sound of laser portals momentarily slicing by Qui-Gon Jinn and Darth Maul during the lightsaber duel in “Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace.”
Sources sometimes materialize from thin air. “I’ve had people write to me online and say, ‘My aunt has a really weird cough, do you want to record it for a creature?'” Burt says. (Nelson refers to these ingredients as “live-organism sweeteners.”)
When collecting field recordings in nature, Supervising Audio Editor Baihui Yang emphasizes the ease of use of the MacBook Pro on site. “We can bring a Pro Tools session with us in the field and watch and record it and quickly put it together, to test if it works or not,” she says. “If you bring all the recordings back to the studio, you won’t know if you missed that moment.” Apps like Keyboard Maestro are also integral to its operation, as is Matchbox.
With a background in classical guitar, among other instruments, Nelson often seeks music in the outside world, as well as within the mixing room. “We are all musicians—either musicians in the literal sense of the word, or musicians of sound,” he says. “It’s pretty much all a tonal approach or orchestration approach. You can’t just throw noise at the screen; you have to identify and choose flavors in the same way you would orchestrate something symphonic.”
The sounds we associate with Apple — the Mac’s iconic F-sharp startup sound, the sound of outgoing email — share a key core characteristic with many of Star Wars’ most distinctive sounds, that of activation. Think of how often an idle robot explodes with warnings and whistles. Or how the sleek, sleepy handle of an optical car suddenly breaks out a glow. Or that a ship, swaying and swaying in space, rushes to the speed of light.
“What I learned from Star Wars was that Ben used all natural sounds to make science fiction,” says Gary Rydstrom, a seven-time Academy Award-winning sound designer who started at Lucasfilm in 1983. “He’s kept the sounds in the Star Wars universe so gritty and realistic, based on real voices that you can manipulate into something you’ve never heard before, and it’s inspiring.”
One of the main differences in Burt’s work is the component of performance. “When it comes to imaginative sounds, especially — weird sounds, creatures, weapons, and weird things of this kind — performance helps,” Burt says. In the early stages of finding the R2-D2’s voice, which set the standard for how sound design might affect a character’s development, Burt felt a growing pressure, knowing the robot would be sharing scenes with Alec Guinness.
“When I sat down and started trying R2 in the first movie, I suddenly realized I was in dialogue,” Burt explains. “Timing is very important. Once we realized we had something that was working, the photo editors went back through the film and started re-cutting many of the scenes, changing the timing very slightly. It started to appear at the actual pace, like any dialogue.” Burt continued to improve on pre-shows, working as a sound designer and photo editor.
Since the artists at Skywalker Sound have settled into the digital age of filmmaking, their advice for both aspiring and professional filmmakers is limitless. “I tell young people who want to work with sound in movies, ‘You should listen to the world around you and build a sound effects suite,’” Burt says. The other thing is that since there are a lot of inexpensive apps that you can now access on your iPad or MacBook, you can actually do all kinds of cutting and audio mixing at home. I can never do that. If I was a teenage director again, I’d be surprised. I had drones, I could do all kinds of audio recordings. I couldn’t have done any of these things in my formative years.”
Even Nelson attests that iPhone recordings are “completely usable” in a professional context.
“However you do it, think of audio early on, because it is one of the tools for storytelling,” Redstrom says. “I would argue that it is one of the most efficient storytelling tools, once you start shooting and cutting.”
“You can tell a lot of the story with audio in a way that’s usually less expensive than visuals, and sometimes it’s more emotionally powerful,” Rydstrom continues. “If you are interested in audio or filmmaking, you can record 4K+ video on your iPhone. There is no excuse. The things that are part of our daily lives are the same things you need to record audio and make movies. This is the real revolution. In the end, It will democratize the whole process.”
On Monday, May 9, 2022, fans can join sound designer Leff Lefferts as he shares his favorite projects and how Skywalker Sound brings iconic movie characters to life with Apple Music’s Eddie Francis. Participants will watch footage from the Skywalker Ranch in Apple’s movie Behind the Mac, and learn from Apple Creative Pro how to create sound effects for a character using their own voice, everyday objects, and GarageBand on Mac. Sign up for this unique Today at Apple session at apple.co/skywalker-sound.
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