Ben Burtt has the most amazing job in Hollywood: he gets to creates sounds and even characters for some of the geekiest things in the movies. Lightsabers, the sound of the Ark of the Covenant being opened, WALL•E’s distinctive tread noises –– Burtt came up with different ways to create them all. What’s really impressive is that he doesn’t create most these on a computer or with a synthesizer, he actually goes out in the real world and gets them by hand.
When asked about the distinctive sound of Indiana Jones’ pistol, which sounds like a cannon blast whenever he fires it, Burtt responds, “Oh, that’s my 30-30 Winchester rifle. We found a little box canyon that gave us a perfect little echo, so if you listen to that closely you can hear a really quick echo every time he fires that pistol.” That’s the sort of stuff that I really geek out on. There’s more where that came from after the jump.
I never knew it was so easy to add lightsaber effects to any YouTube clip. Earlier this week, when I wrote about the new Clone Warslightsaber game for the Nintendo Wii, I saw it done with the infamous “Star Wars Kid” video (see it here). And now, thanks again to Fark.com, I see it done with a clip from The Princess Bride (above).
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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