Heavy breathing

The best breathing in film? 2001: A Space Odyssey. Second best: Darth Vader. They're more connected than you think.

The thing about sound in a movie is that, if it's any good, for the most part, you don't notice it. It's just right. But in some movies, the sound is so integral—not the music, but the literal sound of what is happening—that it becomes part and parcel of what we most remember about the movie. Hence the breathing in 2001, for instance. There are times on the screen when that is literally the only sound. Sound man Ben Burtt refers to that when he discusses his own work on Star Wars in Ben Burtt on Star Wars, Forbidden Planet and the Sound of Sci-Fi. Kubrick's most influential of science fiction films, which made "Thus Spake Zarathustra" into a top ten hit and Elvis Presley's intro music, has an awful lot of silence in it.

When it came time for Burtt to create the sounds of Star Wars, it wasn't about silence, it was about making it real. On seeing the original film when it was released, one of the first things everyone noticed was how lived-in it looked. This wasn't some ooo-OOO-ooo science fictiony universe, this was the real universe. Ditto the sound. Although Burtt does get the credit for the two most science fictiony ooo-OOO-ooo sounds ever, the lightsaber and R2D2.

The interwebs have been all over themselves these last few days celebrating the release of Star Wars 35 years ago, with everything from song sets to plot-only videos to stamp collections. True fans of the film, and of SF films in general, should check in with this interview with Burtt in Wired for some solid reading.

Oh, and here's a little solid listening:


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