Chewbacca's Voice And The Lightsaber

34 – that's the average age of those who bought first tickets to the seventh episode of Star Wars, according to Movio media company's latest reseach.70% of those buyers are men aged 18-49. The sales started on the 19th of October. IMAX booking hit the record with 6,5 million dollars gross, while previous bookings reached a million top. Due to incredible demand and traffic overload, online tickets booking websites in the UK experienced system failures. Of course, such a stir attracted many profit seekers, some sell tickets to premier for 8 thousand dollars. All these is just a brief summing up of the massive hysteria around the new Star Wars. And it is quite understandable, considering at least the masterpiece soundtracks. Even the process of creating the lightsaber sound is fascinating!

John Towner Williams is an American composer and conductor, one of the most remarkable composers in cinematic history. Being nominated for Oscar 49 times, he is the second most-nominated individual, after Walt Disney with his 59 nominations. Williams is known for long-lasting work with such leading directors as George Lucas and Steven Spielberg.

Thanks to the last one, in the late 70es Williams met at that time young and ambitious Lucas. He shared his idea to make a strange sci-fi movie, and asked John to compose sound for it. Williams had already worked on sci-fi music before, so he accepted an invitation to a galaxy far, far away. He proposed to use trendy synthesizer sounds and create 'space' sounds with it. But Lucas had a different idea about that. As he inhabited his world with aliens, knights and princesses, he believed the music should also remind of old fairy tales, so he insisted on symphonic sound instead of electronic. As many scenes were shot in the UK, the London Symphonic Orchestra was chosen to play the soundtrack. At first, being a dedicated fan of Dvorak and Liszt, Lucas thought about making classics the main theme for his cosmic fantasy, but luckily John Williams felt like creating something original, the sound, which awakens the hero era. Here is YouTube link for the Best Star Wars Music Mix Compilation to refresh your memory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PumEuWLv8Ag. And if you would like to have those universe sounds on your gadgets (in case of important negotiations, of course), you can download it here

Source: www.flvto.biz

• Being a great fan of the Star Wars, director J.J. Abrams was very sceptical about the idea of taking part in the project. In fact, at first he just rejected the invitation.

• The sound director Ben Burtt created the sound of junk dealer Watto's wings just by opening and closing of a simple umbrella.

• This is the first J.J. Abrams movie, where Michael Giacchino is not involved. Giacchino himself said in an interview that he prefers to hear John William's music in the movie rather than his own.

Want some more sci-fi sounds fun facts?

The lightsabers unique sound is a combination of the hum of idling interlock motors in aged movie projectors and interference caused by a television set on a shieldless microphone.

The War of the Worlds Tripods sound is roller coasters, trains and bicycle chain, riding at the different speed. The Dark Knight’s Bane voice was converted with 3 dynamics in order to get clear.
Chewbacca's voice was made up with sounds of cats, bears, walruses, badgers and camels.

R2-D2 sound also demanded a very intense work. That little robot’s signals must have not just form words in some enigmatic language, but also be emotional and expressive. Some kind of a newborn’s speech. Burtt decided to combine his own squeaks with keyboard synthesizer electronic sounds. This was the way he created R2-D2’s dictionary.

The cries of the giant monster from the first episode were taken after Ben Burtt’s daughter Emma. When she was around 3 months old, she made incredibly irritating sounds, and Burtt thought he can use it for the monster. And here is a special advice for the most patient readers: have fun by picking Sea Monster Cries as a ringtone for your special friend. You can easily download the sound at flvto site. And may the Force be with you!