Locarno 2024 Interview: Hollywood Legend Ben Burtt on Inventing Ewok Language, Finding E.T., NASA Documentaries

Legendary sound designer Ben Burtt was honored at the Locarno Film Festival for his extraordinary contributions to cinema with the lifetime achievement award: Vision Award Ticinomoda. Renowned for his innovative work in the Star Wars saga, where he created some of the most iconic sounds in film history, including the hum of lightsabers and the beeps of R2-D2, Burtt's career spans more than four decades.

His groundbreaking techniques revolutionized sound in movies, earning him multiple Academy Awards and cementing his status as a pioneer in the industry. Beyond Star Wars, his work on films like Indiana Jones and WALL-E showcases his versatility and enduring influence. Screen Anarchy sat down with the sound designer and director to talk about Star Wars, working with Steven Spielberg and getting into NASA documentaries.

Screen Anarchy: On a scale of one to ten, how much of an aversion do you have towards STAR WARS questions?

Ben Burtt: Oh, there's no aversion. Really, no joke. Okay, well, put it this way—if I spent all day giving interviews, I might have an aversion by day three. But no, not presently. Especially when it's about new territory or different kinds of questions, it's still interesting to me. So, no, I haven’t really tired of it.

I’ll start with a STAR WARS-related question then. We all know that the lightsaber sound came from the hum of a film projector and the feedback from a television, and it became legendary. I’m curious if there was another sound that became iconic through a similar serendipitous process in your work?

Well, the Ewoks are an interesting case. We knew they were going to speak their own language, and I had learned from the previous Star Wars films that it was really hard to just make up a language. If I made it up, I’d just be rearranging English sounds, which didn’t feel authentic. At George Lucas’ urging, we decided to find an exotic but rarely used real language, record someone who spoke it, and either use that or imitate it.

With the Ewoks, I thought, let’s try to record some rare tribespeople from remote areas, whose languages aren’t familiar to most people. I didn’t travel myself, but we started looking around the United States for people who spoke various languages from Asia or China.

I ended up talking to a man who ran a Tibetan gift shop at Pier 39 in San Francisco. He was actually Tibetan, and he spoke some Tibetan, which sounded interesting. He mentioned that a woman from the Mongolian desert, who didn’t speak any English and lived in primitive conditions, was coming to the U.S. He said he’d bring her to my studio so I could try recording her.

She was an elderly woman, maybe in her 80s, and I was interested because older women’s voices often have a deep, neutral quality—they don’t immediately sound male or female, which is perfect when you’re trying to create an alien language. When she came to the studio with a translator, we set up the microphone and asked her to tell stories, like she would to her grandchildren.

I had no idea what she was saying, but we recorded a whole morning of her storytelling. She was really good, with strange inflections, a great laugh, and sometimes even a little singing mixed in. It was perfect. We paid her, got her permission, and that was our first Ewok voice.

We either left her voice as it was or slightly sped it up to make it faster. Then, myself and a few other actors would listen to her recordings, practice, and try to imitate her sounds. We used this method to create a few different Ewok characters. Later, we brought in elderly women from around San Francisco, had them listen to the recordings, and imitate them. This gave us a range of dialogue that became all the Ewoks.

The sounds she made were ones we don’t typically hear, and the phrases had more detail than anything I could invent. We went through a similar process for other languages in the Star Wars universe, like the Jawas, the Hutts, and later the Gungans in the prequels.

You worked on complex projects. Were there any moments when something went completely awry, like a total catastrophe?

Well, you know, I have to say no, I'm sorry, I don't have a big story there. With the Star Wars films or Indiana Jones, Spielberg and Lucas and their companies were very well organized. You were always informed about what was going on. There was a schedule they tried their best to stick to, so there were very few crises.

Any crises that did occur mostly happened in the digital age, especially as we were developing new techniques for the prequels. With digital visual effects and more digital sound, filmmakers lost that linear process where you had to finish one stage before moving on to the next because film needed careful handling. Once everything became digital, it became easier to go back and make changes at any time. Suddenly, it was, “We can rewrite this. Let’s go back. We can change the music. Let’s go back.”

So, as time went on, especially with films like the Star Trek movies I worked on with J.J. Abrams at Paramount, things became more difficult and, to some degree, chaotic. Changes could be made very quickly, at any time, which meant that as a post-production editor or sound designer, you were constantly revising and rethinking things because the creators had changed their minds.

I was fortunate to avoid complete chaos, but it was less satisfying in later years. I think most sound professionals would agree with me—things have become so flexible for those in charge that it leads to procrastination. Decisions are delayed, and you end up having to do things very quickly at the last minute.

You mentioned George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. Was there ever a time when they made a really weird demand for sound?

I have to say, no, I can’t think of anything that was really weird. It depends on what you consider weird, but nothing comes to mind as a surprise demand. The thing with Spielberg and Lucas is that we usually talked about everything before we got to a crisis point.

Even before shooting began, we would have discussions about the script, the objects in it, and what they wanted to hear. We tried to get their input early on—what’s the most important thing? What do you want the audience to hear? That way, we could avoid surprises later.

Was there ever a script or a scene where you thought, "This is going to be a tough one"?

We knew that the hardest things were always the voices. Audiences listen to sound effects with a certain perception—they’re generally more accepting or tolerant of them. But when it comes to dialogue, they listen with much more scrutiny and criticism. If it’s an unusual voice or voice treatment, it can be much harder to get it right because there’s more to criticize.

Like some characters. I mean, R2-D2 had to act alongside Alec Guinness. R2 had to work within the scene, not be distracting or silly, but instead, engage in a sort of dialogue with Alec for a few lines. The amazing thing is that it all felt natural, you know?

We were fortunate that it worked out so well. But I imagine if, when they filmed that scene, someone had told Alec Guinness that R2 was going to be talking with electronic beeps, he probably would have been greatly mystified. I never heard his reactions later, but we were fortunate that the director made it all work.

There are those kinds of demands. Or take the pressure that’s on you with something like E.T., where he says very few things, but they all have to be just right. For example, the line “E.T. phone home.” I looked through my recording logs a while back and saw that I must have recorded that line 200 times before we got the two or three takes we wanted. Even though they might have all sounded nearly the same, there was that kind of scrutiny.

But you had the heavily-smoking elderly woman, right?

Yes, exactly. In that case, we were coaching a woman through a performance who wasn’t an actress, but she had the ability to put herself into the part. She would come back for more sessions, and we’d keep working together. Unfortunately, she eventually passed away, but she knew that her smoking had given her that unique voice.

I originally heard her voice in a store. I had a little recording studio in a town near San Francisco where I lived, and down the block from our Lucasfilm studio was a camera store where you’d buy film.

So, I went down there at lunchtime to turn in some rolls of film, and while I was waiting at the counter, I heard this voice from a lady up front. And I thought, “That’s it—that’s E.T.”

It was such an unusual voice. I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman, but it was exactly what we were looking for. At that time, I was working on Return of the Jedi, but we were also planning E.T. I was jumping back and forth between projects.

We were looking for people, animals, whatever we could use to create E.T.'s voice, as it evolved from more animalistic sounds to speaking. So, I waited outside on the sidewalk, and when the lady came out of the store, I introduced myself and asked if she’d like to be an alien in a movie. She didn’t run away—she just said, “Well, okay.”

The next day, I brought her to the studio. She only lived a few blocks away, and she was retired, living nearby with her husband. She really got into it, and we spent many sessions together recording.

The nice thing about it was that Spielberg didn’t want to know how I was doing it. He didn’t want any preconceived notions. So, the agreement we had was that he’d send me a temporary cut of a scene—usually a black-and-white cut—and I’d put in sound, whether it was the animalistic sounds or this woman’s voice, and send it back to him.

Like a blind test?

Exactly, a blind test. It’s always best to evaluate sounds in context, not just play something in an office where you can’t visualize it. You want to hear it in the context of the movie. He liked this woman’s performance, but he didn’t meet her or know anything about her until we had recorded everything and put it into the movie. The mix was completed, but there was still time to make changes.

So, Spielberg finally came up to the studio, and I introduced him to her. He sat in and coached her through a few lines—just a couple of things to get exactly what he wanted. That wrapped up the process, and he was quite happy with her work. We went on from there.

Are there instances where you tried to put the Wilhelm scream in, and it didn’t make the final cut?

Yeah, well, I tried to stop putting it in after a certain point. It started as a joke, of course. It was never serious, just a fun little Easter egg. And for many years, I didn’t think anyone would notice. Myself and a friend, who was also working on films separate from me, would challenge each other. He was in Hollywood, and I was up north in San Francisco. We’d see who could sneak it into more films.

But when I was working on some very important documentaries for the U.S. space program—like on the Space Shuttle and NASA—I couldn’t put it in because there wasn’t an appropriate place for it. It would have been ridiculous for an astronaut to have a Wilhelm scream. We thought about it, but we just couldn’t justify it. So, in those documentaries, it didn’t make the cut. It was too serious, and we didn’t want to distract from the subject matter or face any backlash. Once a film is released, it’s out there for all time.

At a certain point, during the prequels, I told my crew, “No, we’re not going to do it anymore.” By then, the Wilhelm scream had become so well-known. Everyone was looking for it, waiting for it. Other people had gotten copies of it, and it was showing up in TV commercials and in many other films. So, I felt it was time to retire it.

But then my crew would sneak it in anyway when I wasn’t around. I’d hear it in a reel I hadn’t approved yet or something like that. They’d talk me into keeping it. “Ben, you have to put it in. You can’t stop now.” They felt it had to be there, so it continued for a while. I’m not sure what the latest use of it is, but I haven’t put it in anything except for my home movies. When I’m making something for home, I’ll still stick one in.

So, did you direct the documentaries for NASA? Were you involved in the sound, or was it something else?

I started out doing sound design for a series of films made in the '80s and '90s about the space program, shown only in IMAX theaters. Back then, IMAX theaters were in science museums around the world, with giant screens. My first project was a film called The Dream Is Alive. After that, because I had a good relationship with the people making it, they asked if I would direct the next one. I was promoted from sound designer to director.

That’s quite a promotion!

Yeah, it was nice, though the cameramen weren’t too thrilled about it. But it worked out fine. I directed segments of it, and they gave me a generous credit as director. We were sent around the world to shoot scenes on the ground, like in the Amazon, where they were burning the rainforest, while astronauts in orbit were filming the same areas from space. So, you could say I was shooting the “close-ups” while the astronauts were capturing the wide shots.

We made a film about the environment, another one called Destiny in Space. And then I directed a film called Anything Can Happen, which was about the history of movie special effects in IMAX. That one even got nominated for an Oscar. I co-wrote and directed that film in 1998, and it had a long and successful run.

Top image (c) Locarno Film Festival