Recreating two of the iconic Star Wars sound effects

Star Wars is one of the most influential films of ‘modern’ sound design. By that I mean the sound designer responsible, Ben Burtt set standards that were way ahead of their time and even today, stand the set of time. When one of our members asked me to produce a similar sound to the light sabre I had to think creatively. I have yet to produce it but when conducting my research, I came across a really interesting video. So I thought I’d post a short blog entry that featured two videos for recreating these classic Star Wars sound effects… the Light Sabre and Blaster gun…

Creating the light sabre sound effect.

The guys at Shanx FX have done pretty awesome job at detailing exactly how they recreated this one. Okay so they did actually cheat a little using modern synthesis, but the results are fantastic…

Blaster sound effects

The blaster sound created for the original Star Wars film was a laser gun sound created by Ben Burt when on a trip to the Pocono Mountains in 1976. He hit the guy-wire of an AM radio transmitter tower and recorded the subsequent sound with a microphone. So you could do that. Or you could use a slinky as shown here for similar results…

If you find this interesting, you can check out this video interview with the sound designer of the Star Wars films Ben Burtt.

Light Sabre image obtained under CC0 license via Pixabay.com