[Music] You're listening to "Tone Bender Sound Design" podcast presented by Sound Ideas. This is the show where we talk with the Sonic artists behind our favorite films, games, and series. Get up to 60% off Sound Ideas proprietary libraries right now. Sound Ideas hasn't offered a sale like this ever before, so if you're building out your Sound Effects Library for an upcoming project, this is a great time to take another look at what they have on offer. The more you spend, the more you save, with discounts of 30, 50, and even 60% depending on your order's total. Pick up the libraries you've had on your wish list or add something new before the next project even needs it. Stock up now at sound-ideas.com. Hello and welcome to "Tone Benders." My name is Tim Meerhead and I will be your host today as we dive into the incredible Sonic universe of Star Wars. We all know that the original trilogy completely changed the game for how movies can sound, and we're coming up on the 50th anniversary of that first film, and I'm sure over the next year there will be lots of coverage to celebrate that milestone. But today we're going to have a talk about the sounds of a galaxy far far away and what they sound like in the most recent generation of Star Wars releases. I've gathered the people who are the current torch bears of the Star Wars sound in both features, series, and animation. First up, we have Bonnie Wilde. This is Bonnie's fourth time on "Tone Benders." Bonnie has worked on a lot of Star Wars properties, mainly as a re-recording mixer, but also as a sound editor, even as a voice actor at times. Her projects include "Is This A Long List," "The Mandalorian," and "Grogu," "Skeleton Crew," "The Acolyte," "Asoka," "Obiwun" "Kanovi," "The Book of Boba Fett," "The Bad Batch," "Legal Star Wars" "Tarifying Tales," "The Mandalorian," "Star Wars Resistance," "Forses of Destiny," "Solo," "Rebels," "The Last Jedi," "Welcome Back to the Show," Bonnie. It's great to have you. Thank you, Tim. Bonnie is actually one of the people that I get the most feedback on as a previous guest. She's very well liked by the listeners of "Tone Benders," so I'm very excited to have her back. Next up, we have David Collins. David also has an exhaustive list of Star Wars projects on his IMDB. Most recently, as re-recording mixer, sound designer and supervising sound editor of the critically acclaimed "Mal Shadow Lord," which has an almost unheard of 98% on rotten tomatoes. Everybody loves this show. It's amazing. Before "Darth Mal Shadow Lord," he worked on other Star Wars projects, including, "Okay, I gotta take a breath for this one." "Visions, rebuild the galaxy, Tales of the Underworld," "Skeleton Crew," "Tales of the Empire," "Bad Batch," "Young Jedi Adventures," "The Mandalorian Tales of the Jedi," "Star Wars Summer Vacation," "Obey One Canoby," "The Book of Boba Fett," "Star Wars Terrifying Tales," "Galaxy of Sounds," "Bions," "Star Wars Holiday Special," "Galaxy of Adventures," "Resistance," "Forses of Destiny," and then a whole other career prior to that working on Star Wars video games with 12 more titles there. This is David's first time on "Tone Benders," but if you are a podcast listener and you are interested in film sound, which should be everyone that's hearing my voice right now, do yourself a massive favor and go find the soundtrack show. It's an absolutely wonderful podcast. David is the host. Welcome, David. It's great to finally have you on "Tone Benders." Can you maybe give me a quick elevator pitch for the soundtrack show for any listeners of "Tone Benders" that aren't familiar with it? Sure, it's kind of a, it's kind of, by the way, by the time you get through all the credits, like I dread when you get to Acorded Matthew Wood, like the hour will be up by the time you list all the credits. But yeah, the soundtrack show is just, it's kind of a complimentary to "Tone Benders." It's very music focused in terms of if you love music, and you love movies or TV or video games, it just kind of takes you into an analysis of what it does to the story, how all the artists working on it, including re-recording mixers and some revising sound editors create the final track that you hear, just kind of getting into that. You don't have to be musician to listen to it. Yes, thank you for mentioning the soundtrack show. No problem. I'm a big fan of it. So I'm glad it's almost weird hearing your voice outside of the context of that show. You're right. The lists are about to get long. I'm going to pair them down a bit as we introduce our last two. Well, what the. Really? Listen, listen, so sorry. No, no, no, no. David Acord is joining us. Regular listeners have heard David on "Tone Benders" multiple times. Most recently on his Oscar shortlisted work on "Superman," you will notice that all the guests today have so many Star Wars titles on their resumes. David was the sound designer, supervising sound editor, and sometimes re-recording mixers as well on Mandalorian and Grogu and Orasoka, Book of Boba Fett. Mandalorian, the Clone Wars, the series, all 133 episodes, Resistance, The Rise of Skywalker, Galaxy of Adventures, Force of Destiny's, Rebels, Rogue One, The Force Awakens, Clone Wars, The Film, Revenge of the Sith, Attack of the Clones, and a bunch more games in series. I can't. We just don't have enough time to read them all. It's great to talk to you again, Mr. Acord. Yeah, nice to see you again, too, Tim. Oh, sorry. Dave was also the utility sound guy on "Print Street." He didn't get that in there, but. I missed that one. I missed that one. Okay, thank you for clearing over there. Are you over there updating IMDV, Matt? Hold on, I'm adding to Acord's page here. "Print Street." There was a failed pilot. Thanks, Matt. Yeah. That voice you first heard a second ago was Matthew Wood, who was joining us for the first time on "Tone Benders," and someone that I get requests to get on the show constantly. So listeners are going to be very happy to hear from you, Matthew. Matt was supervising sound editor. We're going to go and reverse order this time on the Phantom Menace Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith, The Clone Wars series, Lego Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Out, The Force Awakens, Rogue One, The Last Jedi, Rebels, Solos, Rise of Skywalker, Resistance, The Clone Wars, the series. Obi-Wan Kenobi, The Mandalorian, Mandalorian, and Grogu. I skipped a ton of titles because there's literally 50 more, but you get the point that we just don't have all day for that. Oh, but you had all day for Collins. No, no, you go ahead. You go ahead. He's got a podcast tape. Don't do this to me. That was a super long list of intros, and I did it just because I wanted to in illustrate how embedded in the Star Wars universe and how a part of what it's become you all are. We're four kids, just like embedded into draining the life out of it. Yeah. Many of those shows that I read were on all four of your lists. Some of them had threes, but almost all of them included more than one of you. I'm wondering maybe how when a new Star Wars project comes down the pipe, do you decide who's going to jump on it and what rules you're all going to play? Page fight. Yes. We have a Thunder DOM and Skywalker Ranch. It's like Chess or something. It's way more nerdy than Cage Fight. Yeah. Maybe Matthew, do you want to take that first? We're all about the crew. So certainly Star Wars familiarity helps. We bring new folks on a lot too. And that's Star Wars always has that thing where it has a personal connection to everybody in their life at some point. And then usually get people that really want to put their best foot forward. And what they do, and they understand that we're all working on something this bigger than all of us. We have the cream of the crop that usually wants to work on this stuff. Also being able to handle the deadlines and the personalities and mitigate the stress and all that stuff is part of it. And into familiar faces, I mean, Northern California, we have a nice, close Nick group up here. And it's just a very special place at Skywalker Ranch. I mean, there's no real formula. I don't know. If you have your own podcast, I mean, those kind of things do factor in. David Collins, do you want to talk about how you try and claim one for your own or along those lines? I'm just happy to be here. Honestly, I remember my first day, my first day back at Skywalker. I started as an intern a long time ago before I went to LucasArts for like a decade. But my first day back, everyone was so busy. There was solo happening. There was, this was like 2018. And I show up to the tech building like a lost puppy. And I'll never forget that first week back because Bonnie actually found me in the entertainment area and she went, right, you must be Dave. And I was like, hi. And she just, she just rolls her eyes and like kind of like, you know, that scene in Force Awakens when Ray is like with BB8, finally like, oh, follow me. Come on. That was me basically going, okay. It was very sink or swim. And I was working on a show called Star Wars Resistance. And Acord was the sound designer. And he had made all these crazy ships and really cool sounds. And I'm just cutting away. And after the first week, he comes in. He's like, show me what you got. You know, and I'm just like sweating. And he goes, okay, gives me a couple notes and comes out. And then they still have kept me around since then. So I don't really know how it all works. But when I get thrown a project, it's always really fun to put my best foot forward and work with these folks. They're amazing. Bonnie, you started, if you go through your IMDB, it looks like you were a sound editor earlier on on your Star Wars projects. And now you're re-recording this. If you want to talk about how you evolved with that? I can. It will result in me crying at the end. Because this is usually what happens. But yeah, I mean, I was, I worked in the building. I'd managed to kind of like scam my way into the building. As we all do. I was working kind of in the engineering side. And I was a mixed tech. Matenday, like, paid me to their room. I had this cute little room where they were in together. Then I was like, I don't want to go there. Every time they restored like an old clone more session, it wouldn't run on new proto stuff. And you had to like work. Yeah. I went to their room and they were like, so you can like cut and mix
you want to do rebels that I was like, it felt like a prank because I was like, why? We're playing the long game on this prank, Bonnie, Dave and I are playing a real long game on this prank. Yeah. And they were like, no, we think, you know, if you want to like do it, we need to say it's like somebody to cover for like a season. And I was like, obviously, I started on Star Wars Rebels. You get kind of given these like keys into even like the library, you kind of like open up the Star Wars Library, which like Matt will give you access to and then you're like, oh, and you've been like, you've taken it taken into the Star Wars Library, which you can like obsessively like lose hours of time on. It's like Instagram, but the Star Wars Library. They were great. They gave me Dave's library that he built for Rebels and then like, obviously, like the massive back catalog of everything. And I managed to, I think like not fail. I was lucky enough to do, do three seasons of, I think there's pretty much three seasons of Rebels. Yeah. And kind of other bits and pieces as well. I did the last Jedi during that and really, I will go so far as to say, Matt and Dave have been the absolute rock-solid family of Skywalker for me. Like, I wouldn't, I don't know. I can't imagine if that hadn't been like the past. I don't know like what the past would have been that I love this path. And obviously, we've just done the Mad Lore and a Groove together, which was like truly incredible. We had such a good time on that movie or working together and it felt like this accomplishment. I don't go cry now. Dave Acord, do you want to talk about what you signed Bonnie that gave you the idea to give her that shot? I took her to lunch one day at the main house and just was kind of, it was an invisible interview. She didn't know she was being interviewed and kind of talked to her about her abilities. And I mean, she came from the BBC and she can do it all. She can cut, she can design, she can mix. And obviously she's, she's amazing human being. So she's going to be great with clients. It just kind of seemed like a no brainer to bring her on see what you can do with the series. And man, we really, really scored because she was spectacular on that show and has continued to be amazing. Yeah, she's a superstar here. One thing I can add to that if I could George Lucas, when he put together this young Indiana Jones Chronicles that I was on as a kid, my colleague Chris Gariboso and I both got sort of bumped into out of the sound droid development team onto that show. And then meeting Ben Bird and learning sound designs through him and then coming through the ranks through a different path. Like I came in literally through the video games division and then was given this amazing opportunity to be part of creating the show. I was very young. So I never thought about it like, oh, this is non-traditional. What have I come in this different way? But then when I've got to be the person to be able to hire folks, when I met Dave Acord, Dave and I talked about the video games we liked and we had this one meeting. We just, I think we talked about some movies we liked, video games we liked and just that was about it. I'm like, go read these books and then come back to me and then he did. And then the same with Bonnie too. She just had a great attitude. I mean, that is a 90% of it. Like the attitude, you feel like you're going to be able to work with these people and trust them. And also coming from a different perspective. We were coming in when it was very regimented like you're an editor, you're a mixer, you're this. And so these folks that we hired were not part of that. They just naturally came in and like, you know, you might have to cut some, you might have to, you know, mix, you're going to have to master, you're going to work with clients, you might have to go work with the actors in the ADR. And so all that, the multiple skill sets is just something I really crave in crew people and then attitude and that and then same with Collins. I mean, like when we were like, let's bring them in for resistance. You know, I've been observing this parallel career path that David had had with spring and then he loved Star Wars. He's great with all different kinds of things and he can mix and be with clients and all that. So just those multiple skill sets and that's something that I think George Lucas just, I mean, it came from that down the pipe and then we've kind of tried to continue that and the people that we hire and work with at Skywalker. Just as Bonnie said, we had a wonderful time working in this last Mandalorian Grogu movie and all of it just, I want to come to work and work with people that I want to spend time with. So that's the main thing there. It's interesting on this podcast. I keep talking about milestones I'm having with my children. I've got a 10 year old and a 13 year old and my 13 year old son Mandalorian and Grogu was the first Star Wars movie he saw on the theater. So we went to see it and his brain exploded as he was watching this movie. It was unbelievable. I'm wondering if maybe now that we've mentioned that film. If we can talk about that, there is a sequence within the Mandalorian and Grogu that almost turns into a Charlie Chaplin film. There's no dialogue for about 20 minutes. How is that to come up with the sound for? It must have been a challenge when everything is left up to the sound designed to carry it. You're talking about Grogu's world. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think I can speak for Matt and Bonnie. That's our favorite part of the movie. I imagine. Yeah. He's beautiful. Yeah. Because it's so unique. It kind of becomes this Jim Henson-esque kind of movie. Just for like you said, 15 or 20 minutes of Grogu on Nauhada trying to take care of a very injured mando and running into danger and meeting people. It's kind of a beautiful scene. We've had many talks where we were kind of felt like, man, this could be its own movie in a way. This could be like we should do more of this. It has got kind of old school puppet kind of feel to it. It feels very grounded. Then that beautifully star wars kind of way. The music in there is spectacular. I mean, it's the Louis Skour mixed by Bonnie is this perfect. All of our backgrounds for Nauhada are bespoke to that planet. The background creatures, all the insects, everything feels somewhat familiar, somewhat alien. But the idea of all of that is to keep as grounded as possible too because it's really just about Grogu and it's about his little journey for like you said about 20 minutes. It's simple and that's kind of the idea is to keep it simple. You're the same. You're the same. I'm not that. I think you're actually, I think about like you kind of like open up these faders on the final mix and just like, okay, I'm just going to listen to the music and I'm just like listening to that stretch of music down and being like, oh my god, it is so beautiful. I remember thinking like it's been so long since like I've seen that kind of language on screen just like the kind of school that it is which is so tied to the action in kind of a beautiful way. Just how everything is orchestrated that little bassoon, Grogu is just like coming up kind of see Gator as he's coming through like before the frog before he gets eaten by that giant frog. It's just I don't know everything about it's just so like intentional and cared for and you just feel I don't know, but just like feeling that kind of responsibility of like just making sure that you kind of really retain what Ludwig is kind of talking about there, you know, you feel like because there's no dialogue, you know, all these kinds of lines of music are kind of taking the place of all that story and just being like really with Grogu for like those 20 minutes. It's so cute and then talks up under his arm and what else? The adorable. There's so much action in that film as well that having this kind of like different moment for that scene cleanses the palette for the massive fight sequence or escape sequences I guess at the end. A quick heads up to listeners in the Toronto area. I've teamed up with the motion picture sound editors and the Vaughan Film Festival to have a free screening to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the classic sci-fi film Independence Day. After the free screening I will be doing an in-person interview with three key members of the film sound team. In-house will be Val Keklauski, Andy Malcolm and Mark Lanzza talking about their work on this groundbreaking film. This will take place in Toronto on July 6th starting at 6 p.m. at Hot Docs Theatre. Go to the link in the description for this episode and use the code VFF tonebenders to claim your free seats as well as entrance to the post-screening party where there will be complimentary bites and refreshments. I hope to see you there. Attention sound designers. The community run field recording slack channels, mechanical malfunctions crowdsource is open from now until July 17th. All you have to do is submit one original recording of some kind of mechanical malfunction to participate. Everyone who enters will automatically get a full sound library featuring everyone else's submissions. This is a great way to add a treasure trove of unique sounds to your sound arsenal. Plus more additional prizes will be awarded including a radius mini alto windshield, a pair of long UC Pro microphones, plug-ins from audio kids, tons and tons of free sound libraries and more prizes still to be announced. For full details on how to participate, go to the description for this episode in your podcast app and click the link. Let's start recording everybody.
(rooster crows) - David Collins, I'm wondering if we, I mentioned in the intro that you worked on "Mall Shadow Lord." - Yeah. - How tied into the legacy sounds for that kind of thing, would you be when you're jumping onto a show like that? - We're talking with the three folks that basically created the sound legacy of Lucasfilm Animation. And that is a very powerful legacy. It sits on top of those incredible first six films. It's very important, I think, to be a steward of that sound library and to use it and to pursue what I want to hear as a fan. I mean, when I first started back, I just remember exactly what Bonnie said going through and just listening to the library for a long time. And there's so much in there, not just Ben Burt, but Davey Cord sounds, Matt sounds, Bonnie sounds, Renclice, Tim Nilsson, so many people, Scarabosio, there's so many people that have contributed amazing stuff to this universe. And I absolutely leverage it. And I feel like if you don't, you're kind of letting down a promise that the show is making to bring "Mall" to the screen. When "Mall's Win-Milling" his saber, I want to hear those sounds. I might give them a bit of a refresh, which is something I picked up from listening to Dave's work on "The Force Awakens." Maybe add something to the high end or something like that to kind of honor the painterly jagged style of the visuals, which were completely overhauled and updated for the show. But yeah, I absolutely go in there and try and utilize everything that makes sense and gives that continuity to Star Wars animation. - That's interesting, the idea of the refresh. So the sound of Star Wars is constantly evolving, then, if everyone's doing this refresh idea. - It's more just making sure that if you're going to a different medium like from film to animation that I'm also hitting the style, the blade looks different. There's nothing wrong with those sounds at all and we've used them a million times. It's more just, I don't want to make something new if my emotional memory is sitting with those sounds from the Phantom Menace. I want to, yes, and those sounds, rather than try and do something else. And I don't want to hear anything else. I want to hear that. I want to hear what Matt and Ben and everyone did in that movie. - Matthew, do you have anything to add to that? - When I was even given the keys to the original sound library that Ben Burt had created, it was on quarter inch tape, and I'm ever putting those up and being like, oh my gosh, you know? But that needs to be refreshed and updated. But we want to keep those things restricted to Star Wars, which we really had this great library and that be able to help us do that. You know, Clone Wars was the first time that we did a show where Ben Burt was not involved directly. And then Dave A. Cord had to create like the entire library there. We want to obviously have the feeling of what's there, can sound as that glue that sort of, you know, what am I talking to? I'm talking to other sound people. I shouldn't have said that. I don't need to say these things. But Dave had to create a whole bunch of new stuff. And he had so much passion for it. It was a great two-way street of like his passion for it, created this amazing library. And George Lucas was super happy. Of course, the libraries need to evolve. I mean, our Star Wars library has grown exponentially. We also have all the material that was done from the Gaines division when David Collins was there. We have all of that. You know, we keep it restricted to us and new designers come in and add their flavor to it. I'm sort of there too. I work on a whole bunch of the different projects that I try to keep us the guardrail somewhat there. So hey, you could do this. And it would really sound Star Wars-y. We're trying to figure out what that means, you know, like what Star Wars is. But that's why we're here. - I like, like, when you find that unused stuff in the library, that's something to me cool. - Yeah. - You know, Dave will make tons of stuff for a movie and some of it will be, you know, like reworked and reworked, per like direct request or something and sometimes you find these like, this like cool stuff that's never been used before but that's been made in your own. - I want to show that we did, Dave, that and I worked on Force Awakens. That probably had a hundred different BB-8s (laughing) that we had made, which we still lean on those old prototypes of like, you know, different things. And before we, you know, landed on what BB-8 became, it was a lot, a lot of searching and making and creating. And all that's in our library. So, not all of it. - We can lean upon that. (laughing) - What do you mean? I stashed a bunch of my stuff for my private library. - Ooh. - Oh, you're out of the line. - Drizzle it out as we go. - Yeah, yeah. - That's good. Yeah. Yeah. I think I copy-pasted one entire thing into Acolyte for the droid and Acolyte. That's a BB-8 prototype as well. - Pip the name of the droid. - Pip, there we go. - Yes, that's right. - So we've talked about the library. How is it kept up to date? Is there like someone whose job is to maintain a Star Wars library? - Kai Pacquins. - He's sort of our archivist and we're so lucky to have him because he deals with all the licensing requests and pulling things from various shows. And he's a sound person himself. He's also, he records sound. He's a huge Star Wars fan. We used to have to internally do that on his show ourselves. And it's so nice to have somebody that's so dedicated to it. - We love Kai. - With the sound effects library, how many lightsaber sounds are we talking about? Like are we talking about like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of lightsaber sounds? - That's gonna find out. - I'll tell you. - He's looking in it right now. - Yeah. - And is this a sound minor library? - It is. - Laser sword. - I can't, oh, I'm in the wrong library. - That's Star Trek. (laughing) - Don't cross the screens, dude. (laughing) - 719. - 719 different lightsaber sounds. That's pretty awesome. - And you have to listen to every single one. - With another 10,000 more on the way from a Accord's private library. (laughing) - Part of the legacy of the four of you is that at least a few of you have also done voices in Star Wars as voice acting. Is that something that you guys enjoy as something you're aiming to do or something that someone's gotta do it so you guys jump in? Bonnie, I think you were the very first voice heard in Asoka. Was it? I can't put somebody else to do it. - Entering sector G 38, captain. A ship has entered this sector. - There are only. It isn't home one. - Security alert. - Track distance mark 804, 6.72. - It makes me feel weird. Like, so for Asoka, that was because we put a temp, so temp stuff in there for the picture editor. So temp stuff in us, we were mixing and I was like, can't I just gotta get replaced? This is gonna get replaced. And finally I said, I like it. Oh God. And then for fish woman, oh, I'm sorry. The internet says it's a man, fish man, but the dog in the Mandalorian. - What a sweater. - The sweater. - The sweater. Mon calmerie. - Mon calmerie. - Sweater Mon calmerie. That was more like we had done so much auditioning for that Mon calmerie part. And then as we were going through everything, that text me and he was like, can you record something tonight? We'll try and get something through. I was like, no, no. Like because sometimes there's just a really specific, especially for the Mon calmerie. Like how Mon calmerie is it gonna be? - So, how can I help you? - Can you fix it? - Fix it. - Ah, I can make it fly. - Do it you can. - Oh, feel it out. If it's still how it feels. - And so I ended up doing that, which now people think is a man, that's not it. (laughs) - Matthew, your general grievous, is that correct? - Yeah, yeah. I've played different characters over the years. I mean, all of us here on this call, I think I've done a lot of different voices over the years. And that was another thing. I mean, when I was working on Young Indie, I was in community college at night, and I was doing plays. And I remember asking George, I was like, I don't think I can make the mix on this night because I've got my play. And he was very supportive of all those things. And occasionally, he'd be like, hey, voice that guy, voice that guy, Young Indie, and that just felt totally natural. And then, yeah, so that just kind of continued to blossom. And there was just a lot of opportunity that was given. And then we did it. And Ben Burt's the same way. I mean, he uses his voices as instrument constantly. So I never really saw that as something that was unusual. But then here we are working on a team, like David Acord's an amazing sound voice actor, as well as Collins and Bonnie. So like, we use our voices that are instruments a lot. - Hello there. - General Kenobi. - You are a bold one. (laughs) - Kill him. - On the latest film, Dave's a lot of different voices. You've got all the vocal aspects of Grogu that are all, you know, when they're based in a sort of more humanoid kind of cadence this day. Also, yeah, he did a two track of Jeremy Allen White's body cavity to do the resonance track that came in very handy. - Can we come up with a different terminology for that? - No, you're Jeremy Allen White's body cavity. - You are the body cavity. - And because you protest so much, then you will remain. - Yeah. - And then we have, you know, David Collins, his droid in all spy bot as a huge fan favorite. We were all crushed when he saw spy bot go into the lava at the end of the show. It was like, what? - Oh. (dramatic music) - You know, we all get it, we use our voices, our instrument.
And that's a huge part of the gig and it's just a fun thing. I mean, that's the first voice I think you hear in the Mandalorian movie, "My Even Deade" by Cogs, one of the stormtroopers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, yeah. Check out the arms. I'm just a dirty theater kid masquerading as a sound person. And I'm still waiting for everyone to find out and kick me out of the tech building. But it's really fun to do that stuff. I always say it is like kind of like a Star Wars theater camp, especially on bigger days when you're working on Mandalorian and Grogu and Matt will call in like 20, 25 different voice talents that have been in all kinds of different stuff throughout the years and get together and make sound. What do you huts in the background of now "Hutta" sound like? You find out very quickly. But yeah, the talent is just insane. That comes in the voice talent. So it's just nice to be a part of it. Yeah, every sound person lends their voice to something at some point. I think it's just a normal, natural fit. And sometimes just even when you're trying to chase a sound and that you're designing and you don't know what to do a lot of time, I will just like speak out the envelope of it into a Pro Tools recording in order to try and chase what I'm trying to make. Yeah, any sound person can relate. It's a natural evolution. Wasn't the voice of Mickey Mouse Waltz sound engineer too? I thought it was Waltz himself. It was until he couldn't do it anymore because he was too busy and he said, "You take it over." I think his recording engineer was tempting it when he couldn't do it. Right, maybe. So there's this long history of sound people stepping into voice over pretty quickly. I think it's. That's what I. Yeah, for Kylo Ren, that's what happened. Adam Driver was like, "I don't want to do the. I'll just do the movies." And then so we had Disney came and they said, "We're going to put them in the parks." I was like, "Well, I'll try." And they did it and they were like, "Great." And so that's what I. The sound editor for Adam Driver got to do the voice of the character. Weird. Recorded in this room. Oh, yeah, yeah, that's right. That is fun to go to the park and then he. Like, he offends in the park. That is cool. Matt starts bullying you. Yeah, and if you go to a convention with Matt, that's also fun. Because there's like, swalming involved. We were at one. Is it the Anaheim Star Wars convention we came out? And there was like, somebody in a really good, like cosplay general, general grievous. And Matt was like, "Oh, go over." And everyone's just. Fans are so passionate about Star Wars. It's amazing. Yeah. Yeah, it was very cool. I've just learned that David Acord is sometimes the voice of Grogu. I did not know that. That's very cool since the beginning, right? Dave, since season one? Yes. It's a three-part sound for his voice. So there's actual baby and toddler recordings. You can tell when he sounds like an actual baby. That's what that is. And they're sort of like a feral sound that he makes, a little grunts and growls and things. And that's one of two creatures, or creatures. Mammals, I recorded a bat-eared fox and a kinkajoo. So there's sort of a smattering of those things. And then when he does a thing that. When we need him to sound like more human or a moat, a particular way, or stay a nonsense word or scream or something like that, then that's a human voice. And that's me. It's talking to the frog's mouth. Get stuck in the frog's mouth and scream your laugh. Yeah. That's very cool. We've talked about your voices making the voices on the screen. Let's maybe talk about Star Wars is the quintessential creature voice. Well, for instance, in the Mandalorian and Grogu, the giant snake serpent creature. Every single Star Wars project has some kind of creature voice that needs to be created. Do you have a template a way that you go to start tackling that? How do you even begin creating your 750th creature voice? Like, the bag of tricks, how deep does it run? Well, Collins, you want to start with that one? Sure. I mean, I guess the human vocal element is definitely a part of it. To me, it really depends on what's going on in the story and what kind of emoting the creature has to do. Because sometimes it's really hard, if not impossible, to find really specific recordings of exactly what's going on there. If the behavior is just roar, growl, hurt, death, whatever, then recordings are easy to come by or easier to come by. I should say and start blending. I remember on Mandalorian season three, there were two creatures, one of which was working right out the gate, which was a gator, turtle gator at the beginning of that season. And that really worked and was very straightforward. And then there was one later on in the season that wasn't, that I had to take a couple swings at before Fabra was like, yeah, that's it. Because creatures, to me, I don't know if you guys agree, they are the hardest thing to do because they need to have emotion behind them. And sometimes, like Dave was just saying with Grogu, they have very specific emotional beats just like an actor would. And you have to find that middle ground of creature alien weight or whatever the physicality is of the creature or the design of the creature. You have the ball at that point in terms of the story. What you do with it is important in order to make it work and get it back to the characters. Depends on the dramatic function, I guess, would be my biggest contribution to this conversation. Dave? Just okay, like in the Mandalorian movie, a specific scene would be the arena fight and you've got eight different monsters that come out. Initially, there was like, hey, make them sound like the chess monsters in the game and like, no, you can't do that. I mean, it doesn't. There's nothing in any of those creatures sounds that you can really accept for the Hoogix, the little electricity guy. I mean, this is a little squeaky runaway. We did put that in the movie. That was our little Easter egg sound from the chess game. But that scene in particular, you've got eight monsters that all have to have a very unique sound so that you can distinguish one from the other without necessarily seeing it. You don't want eight creatures that sound vaguely the same. They all have to have a different vibe. So the humanoid ones have almost a language. The Hoogix is more as shrieky than the Quentin, the guy with the hammer has a sort of like a simian vibe to him, a like, you just kind of make choices about what you want this to sound like and then try and create that sort of spectrum of sounds so that they can be distinguishable. Okay, what's my source? I'm going to use this mammal or that mammal. I'm going to use dry ice scrapes or metal warping. You can bend into a creature. All manner of things, horns, you can create creature voices out of. And it's just a lot of experimentation. Creating a version of it, sending it off and getting approved or rejected and then back to the drawing board. Maybe it's a process. Bonnie, what's the Star Wars way for dealing with a character whose voice is sound effects? Does that go up on the faders for the dialogue mixer or the sound effects mixer? The sound effects will carry that for the majority of the time. Like, sound effects carry grow goo. I mean, that's a lot for like our eminy purposes and where everything lives and the effects mixes here. I mean, come on then. A baller, you know, you know, there's Chris Boyz over there, you know, Dane. A lot of the time they'll be carried on the effects side of things just purely because that's kind of their means that origin and it'll be where they like live. And especially when dealing with Star Wars, I mean, the effects are the story as much as the dialogue is the story. I mean, it's all the language. I mean, the lightsabers, we're doing something with lightsabers in. They carry as much story and legacy as the dialogue does. Or running out of time. So maybe we can just go around the horn. We'll start with you, maybe David Collins and say, did you have like a pinch me moment or a sudden realization of the fact that you're working on something that has such an amazing legacy to it as Star Wars? Almost every day. I know that sounds cliche, but I mean, it really is something that we actually talk about with each other. You know, Matt, Matt will say to me, are you living in my Star Wars simulation? Or are my living in yours, you know? Every time I work on a new project, I'm always just blown away and amazed by the talent of my colleagues. I will say Skywalker Sound is filled with the greatest filmmakers I've ever met and had the pleasure of work with in that building. I mean, there are just so many talented people. I'm just thrilled to be a part of it. I remember going back to my first week, that was a big one. Anytime I step on a mixed stage and I get to hear everyone's work put together, that's always an amazing moment for me as well. Matthew? One was when I was working on Phantom Menace, been on it since 1997 and we were just just Ben and I for a very long period of time working on it. And I didn't really appreciate the world impact of it for some reason. We had done all these amazing recordings and it was just, but it was just a core group of folks like, you know, like, I wouldn't Dave and I did Clone Wars. It's just like a couple people for years. And then we had Pizza Hut come to the ranch to show off what they were going to be selling and they drove a truck into the back of the tech building and they had like a portable pizza oven. The movie was not out yet. Like, this was like, we were still working on it and they were handing out pizza boxes that had like new gun ray on it and like these 12 inch drink cups with like new gun ray and all these and Jar Jar banks and I think, uh, yeah, Mace Windu and all and it was like, what is all this?
the movie, you know, they've made a $2 billion trycom media deal like this is bit, you know, then obviously after that it was like promoted everywhere. But that's when you're like, realize that a lot of people are going to see this stuff, but it doesn't feel like that when you're working on it, which I really appreciate. Like, Skywalker Sound has a very independently minded ethos out there and we're out in nature and we're just like with our friends and we're working on stuff. David A. Court. Just going back to my first gig at Skywalker, which is Attack of the Clones. In that same period of time, one of my earlier duties as Matt and Ben's assistant was transferring Ben's quarter inch sound effects into the library, digitizing them, doing that whole pass and labeling things and organizing and all that. That was pretty surreal to me, just even just something simple like listening to the electric window motors for C3PO and just the full raw track of that was kind of mind blowing for me, let alone listening to lightsaber sounds and all these other things that Ben was recording. On quarter inch, that was pretty surreal and pretty exciting for a sound nerd like myself. That's awesome. Bonnie? Yeah, I think the first episode of Rebels that I worked on, I had to cut all the sound effects, I don't know that, and then we came to Mix and I had the score and the fourth theme appeared out of nowhere for this moment and I remember thinking like, oh my god. What you feel like is like the weight of responsibility because everybody has such a personal emotional connection to Star Wars and then it's John Williams theme and I remember at that point thinking like, wow, this is like a thing and thinking back to being a kid playing with my Star Wars toys and stuff and that was kind of a moment where I thought, yeah, this is kind of cool. Well, it has been very cool talking to all of you today. It was a great meeting you, David Collins and Matthew Wood and it was great seeing you again, David and Bonnie. Thanks for talking me today and keep up the great work with all the Star Wars content. We're all watching it and having a great time with it. Have a great day everybody. Thanks, Tim. Thanks, Dave. Thanks a lot. Thanks, Thonbenders. Wow, big thanks to David Collins, David Acord, Bonnie and Matthew. That was a really fun talk. I was really excited for that one. If you're a fan of Star Wars and want to hear more about the sound work that's gone into some of their recent projects, take a minute to dig into the Thonbenders feed, search for episode 153 featuring a deep dive into season two of the Mandalorian with David Acord and Bonnie Wilde and if you keep searching, look for episode 213 that digs into season one of Andor. They're both excellent. Stay tuned to the feed in the coming weeks as I have many really special episodes coming your way. Some of my favorites that we've ever done. So please stay tuned. Talk to you soon. Sound ideas hasn't offered a sale like this ever before. So if you're building out your sound effects library for an upcoming project, this is a great time to take another look at what they have on offer. The more you spend, the more you save with discounts of 30, 50 and even 60% depending on your orders total. Toned Benders is produced by me Timothy Miriamet. Theme music is by Jim Guthrie. You can reach me via email through
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