LBU Project Journal - 'Rogue One'

Ben Burtt created the unique sound of the Lightsaber by blending recordings of the hum produced by an old film projector and the interference from a television set. I wanted to take a similar approach to recreating this sound effect, but I wanted a harsher tone to emphasise the evil traits of the villainous character, 'Darth Vader'. I therefore, started by creating a sine wave and blending it with a recording of fuzz coming from a distorted guitar amplifire. I then played this tone through a speaker, and used a Rode NTG-2 short shotgun microphone to record the movement of the Lightsaber in sync to the film.

The sound of the 'Star Wars' blasters (Lucas, 1977) were originally created by recording the vibrations down a electrical wire, but for safety reasons I had to find an alternative method. The sound of the vibrations travelling through a slinky after hitting it with a metal rod, creates a similar doppler effect, so I attached a JFR contact microphone to one end to record these vibrations.

Darth Inhaler:

For the original 'Star Wars', Ben Burtt created the breathing of 'Darth Vader' by placing a microphone inside a scuba regulator (Wuest, 2015). I had planned to take a similar approach, and experiment with gas masks and various microphones, but due to the COVID-19 disaster, lockdown has prevented me from safely sourcing these, so I had to improvise. I breathed through an asthma inhaler spacer and added a little distortion and created a noise that could be passed as 'Darth Vader's' well-known breathing.

Burtt, B. (2014) Ben Burtt Interview: The Sound of Lightsabers. [Online]. Youtube. Available from: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJQ3_tipGEY> [Accessed 6th March 2020].

(Burtt, B. (2019) Telling Stories with Sound: Ben Burtt & the Sounds of Star Wars. [Online]. Youtube. Available from: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyb12mUmUME> [Accessed 7th February 2020].

Wuest, P. (2015) The Dacor Scuba Reg Behind Darth Vader's Breathing. [Online]. Scubadiving.com. Available from: <https://www.scubadiving.com/dacor-scuba-reg-behind-darth-vaders-breathing> [Accessed: 22nd April 2020].