At the very least, Raging Cinema’s supercut of the sounds of Star Wars provides a rare opportunity to trumpet the name of Ben Burtt. Burtt was the sound designer on the Star Wars films, and his career—which includes credits on E.T., Wall-E, and the Indiana Jones series—is the story of one aural innovation after another.
That’s clear from watching this video. Star Wars’ analog aesthetic—the way it created a futuristic world where things still seemed old, worn, and lived-in—was in large part achieved through Burtt’s brilliant sound design: R2-D2’s beeps and boops, Chewbacca’s primal grunts, a lightsaber’s warm, neon hum. And of course, there’s the iconic breathing of Darth Vader, which Burtt captured by filtering his own inhalations through a scuba regulator.
