'Star Wars' sound designer takes on robots, changes moviemaking

Sound designer Ben Burtt at Skywalker Ranch in Marin on June 16, 2008. Sound designer Ben Burtt at Skywalker Ranch in Marin on June 16, 2008. Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close 'Star Wars' sound designer takes on robots, changes moviemaking 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

"WALL-E" features the voices of comedian Jeff Garlin, "Cheers" star John Ratzenberger and actress Sigourney Weaver. And they all nearly get upstaged by a shopping cart from the San Anselmo Safeway.

Needing shopping-cart noises for one of the funnier scenes in the latest Pixar film, sound designer Ben Burtt grabbed his 10-year-old daughter, drove from his home to the nearby market and pretended to be a customer.

"We put a recorder in the cart and covered it with bread," Burtt says during an interview at Skywalker Ranch in Marin County. "We went over and banged into things in the parking lot. We actually took the shopping cart a block or so away, took it up a long, sloping hill and let it go, recording it roaring down the street."

That's just a day in the life of the pioneering sound designer, who went on similar field trips when he came up with Darth Vader's breathing in "Star Wars," the Indiana Jones whip in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and a variety of other iconic sounds now embedded in cinema history. After more than 30 years in the business and four Academy Awards, he found his largest challenge yet in "WALL-E," which features almost no dialogue in the first half of the movie. The story about a robot who finds love on an abandoned, polluted Earth used 2,500 new sound files - compared with the 700 to 1,000 for the typical "Star Wars" or "Indiana Jones" movie.

Burtt was invited to meet with director Andrew Stanton ("Finding Nemo") about "WALL-E" three years ago. He had just finished his sixth "Star Wars" film and was looking forward to exploring new territory. Just a few weeks earlier, Burtt had told his wife that "at least there are no more robots" in his future.

"I went to this meeting and said, 'What is the movie about?' 'Robots!' " Burtt says. "At first I was a little frightened. I thought, 'Is there another new voice that I could come up with, much less the half-dozen robot voices?' "

But he appreciated the fact that the Pixar filmmakers wanted him involved very early in development - much like George Lucas had done with "Star Wars." Burtt became an employee of Pixar, working on a movie with more sound than any he had completed before. By the time it was over, he would also provide the voices for WALL-E and M-O, a cleaning robot who arrives later in the film.

Stanton says Burtt's participation was essential.

"I knew that he was the best, and wouldn't that be cool if I could get him?" Stanton says. "But with each passing month that I worked with him, I realized that he was absolutely essential. ... When you're that good, it's never about the bad take or a good take. It's about what's the best choice out of all these good choices.'"

Burtt, 59, is unassuming in person. Walking comfortably through the sound stages at Skywalker Ranch, where he still has an office, Burtt has a good memory and talks excitedly about his craft. He carries a tape recorder with him almost everywhere, never sure when he might come across one of the sounds on his mental list.

"The best sounds have been accidental encounters," Burtt says. "I suppose part of the curse of having this job is that you're always listening, and maybe not paying attention to your family at a dinner table or on a trip. 'Wait, I hear something! Let's record it!' "

For example, the sound that the magical skulls emit in "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" was discovered in a buzzing lamp post in a Skywalker Ranch parking lot - not even 100 feet from where Burtt recorded the sound used for the rolling boulder that pursues Indiana Jones in "Raiders of the Lost Ark."

"I went to my car one night, and the lamp was whirring, like it was going to burn out or something," Burtt says. "I went out there one night and recorded it, and got almost all of my skull stuff from that one buzzing lamp post."

The character WALL-E and his robot love interest, Eve, are made up of dozens of sounds, some found, some synthesized and some created with elaborate props. He says the whirring sound WALL-E makes when the robot moves slowly is actually a World War II Army hand-cranked generator - Burtt saw a soldier on television using one to operate a radio and bought an identical device on eBay. The sound of WALL-E moving fast is an inertia engine starter used for 1930s biplanes, which was also bought on eBay and mounted on a table.

Thirty years ago, Burtt famously created the blaster sound in "Star Wars" by striking a power pole guy wire with a hammer. For Eve's blaster, he tried something different - constructing a ladder with a metal coil hanging from it, and then hitting the coil with a timpani stick.

"I couldn't just use the 'Star Wars' laser gun. It's too much of a classic. It belongs in 'Star Wars'," Burtt says. "So I just created sort of a cousin."

WALL-E and Eve's voices were a more complicated endeavor. The robots say only a few words each, but with many inflections. In the end, their voices were created in much the same way as R2-D2 from "Star Wars" - with an electronically altered human voice. For "WALL-E," Burtt used technology that was devised specifically for the film.

"It was a method that I could record my own voice, put it in a computer and take it all apart - just like we know that pictures are made of pixels and you can reassemble them in Photoshop," Burtt says. "In the end, the voice is definitely a machine. But it doesn't lose the human element."

A native of Syracuse, N.Y., Burtt never planned to be in the film industry. He got a degree in physics from Allegheny College in Pennsylvania and wanted to be in the space program, but a small film he made won an award that led to a scholarship to film school at the University of Southern California.

"I was going to go back and be a scientist, I guess, but then I got an offer to work on this film called 'The Star Wars,' " Burtt says. "George Lucas was looking for a student-type USC grad who was cheap and he could train. I was paid $150 per week, which at the time was huge money."

At that time, in the mid-1970s, big studios would heavily recycle sounds, using mostly canned electronic noises for Space Age films. But Lucas wanted his own library, with more organic sounds that were gathered from the environment. After "Star Wars" was a surprise hit, Burtt was asked to stick around for the next film.

"I always thought, 'Well, it will only last a year and I'll do something else.' But it never happened," he says. "I'm thankful. It was a great opportunity. To make a living making sounds and robot noises, there aren't too many places where you can do that."

So he continues to gather sound, even though he's not always sure where it will end up. He recalls the last thing he recorded, just days before the interview, while walking from the sound-mix room to his office. As he passed a closet, he noticed some floor panels missing.

"I could hear this great humming - something was wrong with the air conditioning down there," Burtt says. "Some fans were running and they were rattling and buzzing. I just stuck my microphone down there and recorded. I'm not sure what, but it will definitely be used for something in the future."

WALL-E (G) opened this weekend at Bay Area theaters.