The RebeLibrarian

What are the top 5 most obscure and least obscure sounds in the SW Trilogy? — Eric

I decided to take this question for Fun Friday because I don’t have my book that talks about SW sound effects with me, so I’ll mainly be giving you my opinion. I suppose I do that anyway, but let’s talk sound effects today anyway!

In reply, I would give these two lists of the most obscure and least obscure SW sound effects. I am making an educated guess on these, pretty much using my experiences with people as a guideline. On the most fundamental level, I figure, “If my sister could identify this sound as being from Star Wars, it’s not obscure.” And then I ask myself, “If my roommate would hesitate before saying, ‘That’s a sound from Star Wars,’ then that’s pretty obscure.” So, voila! I give you my lists.

The Top 5 Most Obscure Star Wars Sounds According to the Star Wars Librarian

1. The sound the lighted lap indicators make when the podracers finish a loop
2. The sounds made by the mynock latching to the Falcon
3. The “power-off” sound the tractor beam control center makes when Obi-Wan shuts it down
4. The sound Luke’s lightsaber makes when he tries to pull it out of the snowbank using the Force
5. The hum of ray shields

The Top 5 Least Obscure Star Wars Sounds According to the Star Wars Librarian

1. Darth Vader breathing
2. A lightsaber igniting
3. A lightsaber being on
4. A lightsaber shutting off
5. R2-D2 squealing/chirping/beeping

If you consider that counting the three lightsaber sounds separately is cheating, I will give you two additional sounds: 4) TIE fighters, 5) Chewbacca speaking.

As a bonus, I will also give you my two favorite sounds in all of the Star Wars universe: 1) Seismic charges. *click* *silence* *SPANG* 2) The EMP fields generated by the electrostaves carried by Grevious’ MagnaGuards.

Finally, just to make Fun Friday really fun an interesting, here is a supercut from Cinexcellence featuring just about every Wilhelm scream in cinematic history. This is related because Ben Burtt (a recognized genius whom I will one day quote at great length about sound effects) is the one who brought it out of cinematic obscurity for SW. Warning . . . well, it’s 12 minutes long and your brain will probably turn to mush from hearing “ugh-ahhh!” so many times in a row. Also, because it features people screaming, it does feature violence. However, because it’s a Wilhelm scream, the violence can’t be taken too seriously. Anyway, you’ve been warned. Enjoy!

This entry was posted on 29 April 2011 at 12:30 PM and is filed under Fun, Questions with tags movies, original trilogy, prequel trilogy, random, sound effects, video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.