Exclusive: Ben Burtt's WALL-E Sound Masterclass
The world's most renowned Sound Designer teaches RT
A lot of the sounds aren't changed a whole lot for those kinds of things, but in other places, sounds like the howling wind of Earth at the beginning of the movie - that's actually Niagara Falls. If you run it through a reverb chamber and get a bit of feedback off the top of itself, just before the feedback becomes a howl you get that kind of sound. It's kind-of a cold, icy, windy sound, but it's really just the filtered sound of the Falls running.
Other sounds, like EVE's laser for instance, are made by finding unusual sounds that most people wouldn't hear in the course of their day. The sound of the laser is made by striking a very long Slinky. You stretch it out, and there's a special way that you can impact it to get that sound travelling along the Slinky.
It's similar to the blaster sound in Star Wars, but that was a very long cable attached to a radio tower. The same principal applies when you hit it - the sound travels along the wire and the high frequencies travel faster than the low frequencies so when you pick the sound up at the other end of it you get high, then middle, then low. You get a pass-by feeling to it.
I couldn't use the Star Wars blaster, because I wanted to come up with something new, but I tend to think in the same terms - what does a laser sound like? I've already established it in Star Wars, so it makes sense to come up with a distant cousin for WALL-E.
There is a language of sound, and once you've established something it's hard to approach it in a different way. The droids that came before us helped a lot in this movie!
I keep track of the number of sound files that we've made for the film, but it'd be hard to guess how many there are playing during any particular moment. We made something like 2,600 sound files, which is more than I've made for any single feature film that I've ever worked on, mainly because there was dialogue as well as sound to support. There was also a tremendous amount of development over the years and a lot of the dialogue changed, so that number includes sounds we didn't end up using.
And the animation is so densely packed with action - there are so many things happening at any time and usually there's a sound associated with everything. It's easy to design one interesting sound but when you've got ten things happening at one time and they're all there for fractions of a second, it gets difficult to orchestrate them and figure out the clarity. The mixture works very hard in the film to make something that's coherent. It's easy to make 2,600 sounds, but the next thing is to play them back in a way that makes some comprehension to the ear in the brain.
Ben's contribution wraps up WALL-E Week on RT and sister site IGN. For a round-up of the special WALL-E features we've run this week:
WALL-E Week on RT and IGN
RT - Pixar's and Stars' Favourite WALL-E Moments
IGN - WALL-E Explained
RT - Inside Pixar - A Photo Tour
IGN - The Pixar Philosophy
RT - The World of WALL-E
IGN - At the Heart of WALL-E
RT - The Storyboards of WALL-E
IGN - WALL-E UK Review
RT - Ben Burtt's WALL-E Sound Masterclass
Sigourney Weaver, Angus MacLane, Ben Burtt, Jim Morris and Andrew Stanton share their most memorable moments from the film.
IGN - WALL-E Explained
Get an insight into the animation process as WALL-E Directing Animator Angus MacLane.
RT - Inside Pixar - A Photo Tour
Rotten Tomatoes' cameras are given a look inside animation mecca as Pixar opens the doors of its Emeryville, CA campus to us.
IGN - The Pixar Philosophy
Key WALL-E staff including Andrew Stanton, David DeVan and Derek Thompson tell IGN what it's like to work at Pixar.
RT - The World of WALL-E
To celebrate RT's freshest film of the year, we bring together eight WALL-E crew to talk about the film's journey from concept to completion.
IGN - At the Heart of WALL-E
Director Andrew Stanton explains, in his own words, why the WALL-E experience has been a special one and how he crafted the film.
RT - The Storyboards of WALL-E
Story Artist Derek Thompson gives RT readers an exclusive look at the storyboarding process on the film and shares some boards.
IGN - WALL-E UK Review
Critic Anna Smith delivers her verdict on Pixar's latest and adds to the film's fresh Tomatometer...
RT - Ben Burtt's WALL-E Sound Masterclass
The world's most renowned Sound Designer exclusively teaches RT readers the basics of building WALL-E's world of sound.
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