Ben
Burtt returns to the Jedi to blast the trilogy's audio into hyperspace
for 90s audiences

When
Ben Burtt picked up his undergraduate degree in physics from the University
of Southern California, he dreamed of joining the space program. In 1975,
he did. But not NASA's.

"George
Lucas, the writer/director, asked Gary Kurtz, the producer, to find a student
somewhere who didn't cost very much to go out and collect sound for the
film they were developing," says Burtt, who cobbled movies together as
a hobby and received a scholarship to study at USC Film School when one
of them won an award. "Gary called USC and said, `Do you have any prospective
Walter Murches there?' And they recommended me, because I did have a great
interest in sound. Most students wanted to be writers and directors, not
sound people."

Burtt
had no idea thatpotential of what they wanted to do."

With
a 1/4" mono Nagra tape recorder and a microphone supplied by his new bosses,
Burtt went into the field to round up sounds for a melange of creatures
and mechanical effects called for in the script. "They went off and shot
the movie, and I traveled around to zoos doing animals, and factories and
airports doing various kinds of airplanes and jets, and out to army bases
to record machine gun fire," he recalls. "One time I went to Marineland
down in Long Beach, CA, to record a walrus for a possible Wookiee effect.
Its pool had been drained for cleaning--the walrus was stranded at the
bottom, moaning--and that was the sound! Finds like this made me realize
that there would be a lot of adventures to be had in sound