What do you think of this fact?
Close your eyes and think of Star Wars. Chances are you hear that low, humming vmmm before anything else. It sounds like pure science fiction, but it came from a room full of old cinema gear.
A job in the projection booth
Before Star Wars, Ben Burtt studied film at the University of Southern California and worked as a projectionist at the campus cinema. In an interview with NPR, he described a motor in the projection booth that made a pleasant humming sound when it just sat there idling. Burtt recorded it. According to Mental Floss, the booth had Simplex projectors whose two motor tones drifted and blended together, which Burtt found soothing.
StarWars.com says the lightsaber was the very first sound Burtt made for the films, and that the hum was partly based on “an old motor on a projector at the USC Cinema Department.”
The broken cable that finished the job
The second ingredient was an accident. According to Burtt, a microphone with a broken cable picked up hum from a nearby television, a sound he called a “scintillating angry buzz.” He saved that picture tube buzz and combined it with the projector motor. Hum plus buzz: the basic lightsaber sound was born.
To make the blades sound right in motion, Burtt played the sound through a speaker and waved a microphone through the air in front of it. As the mic moved, the pitch shifted, and that gave every strike its typical swoosh. No computer, just a moving mic and a lot of patience.
Bonus fact: According to StarWars.com, Chewbacca’s voice was cut together from recordings of animals such as bears, badgers and walruses, sorted by emotion.
The most iconic weapon sound in movie history is basically a bored projector plus a TV in the wrong place.