Star Wars occupied most of my childhood. The original film was released when I was 5 years old and, after seeing that, Luke Skywalker, tie fighters and Wookies consumed the majority of my brother, Stefan, and my waking hours… during our sleeping hours, we had The Empire Strikes Back sheets!
It is a movie with very well designed and unique sounds: R2D2 beeps and hoops, lightsaber hums and the terrifyingly unmistakable scream of the tie fighter are just a few of the obvious ones. We used to imitate them as we played and Stefan and I can still identify key parts of the movies blindfolded by just hearing the sound effects or music.
With this history (or misspent youth) I was super pumped to have one of my favourite podcasts, Twenty Thousand Hertz, do an episode on the backstories of many of the key sounds from the Star Wars movies. They interview Ben Burtt, the sound designer who worked with George Lucas to define these iconic sounds and it was fascinating to hear where they came from. I have known some of this history from previous nerdy pursuits, but it was great to hear it from the guy who actually created them and get to hear, from a sound design perspective, how it was done, layer by layer.
If you love Star Wars too, this is a must-listen. If you don’t, you still may like the show, but, frankly, you have bigger problems. 😉
Since its official release in 2011, Minecraft has grown from a small, experimental indie game into the best-selling video game of all time. Today, the game’s haunting music and quirky sound effects are just as iconic as its blocky visuals. In this episode, composer and sound designer Daniel Rosenfeld (also known as C418) unpacks how he created the original music and sounds for the game.
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Episode transcript, music, and credits can be found here: https://www.20k.org/episodes/minecraft
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