Skywalker Sound

Seeing the Podracer scene in THX blew my mind.

Because I think the sounds were used from a lot of different things at Skywalker Sound.

And George's Ferrari was one of them.

So you hear all of that in every single different engine of every single different Podracer.

George had a meticulous sound that he wanted for each one.

And ILM and Skywalker Sound, they created such an amazing and phenomenal experience for us as kids to re-watch it whenever.

So every time you do hear those sounds, you know, you've got Sebulbas, which is more throaty and heavy.

It's like...

And obviously we had you on before talking about all the Beethoven you recorded with a good friend, Bob.

And so it's great to hear what you're up to next at the Skywalker Studios.

And I want to thank you both so much for joining us today on the Cello Sherpa podcast.

Thank you so much.

Disney had about ten of the jobs.

PhD people for Pixar, supervisors at Industrial Light & Magic, and postings at Skywalker Sound for building voice models.

Disney is suing AOI companies over voices right now.

And at the same time, hiring people to build voices in the shop George Lucas named after a fictional planet? Can you believe that? It's insane.

Now, ABC is owned by Disney.

Watch what one company does in one week.

Disney is suing AI companies over voices, and Disney Studios posted about ten AI jobs in a month, including postings at Skywalker Sound for building voices.

And Disney's ESPN has spent the last year running AI-generated voices tuned to sound like its own anchors.

i can perform whatever it is that i'm doing while listening to the track hit the button do the thing and so the ability to really easily and quickly assign a mod wheel to the pitch for example those kinds of things make it the first and last as far as real sound design tools that i need That's Nick Peck, veteran

sound designer, audio director, and technologist who sells senior audio roles at LucasArts Entertainment, Skywalker Sound, Activision, and the Walt Disney Company.

He believes great sound design is less about having elaborate gear and more about using simple tools that let you capture ideas quickly to stay in a creative

flow.

put a sound of the duck in, right? Sound design is, hmm, I wonder how we could best represent that duck to be able to get some subtext and be able to, you know, add a little bit more meaning underneath that.

Or I wonder what the perfect sound is for X, whatever it might be.

I remember many years ago I was at Skywalker Sound and one of the legends of sound design, a fellow named Randy Tom, T-H-O-M for anyone who wants to learn, was working on Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds.

And I remember specifically that they were trying to come up with a sound for don't remember it was the alien ship or the alien an alien alarm or something it's been so many years that I don't remember the exact thing but they worked and worked and worked on it and they ended up with a sound that was very similar to a brass instrument like a tuba or a trombone down really low and I would have never made that choice I don't know how it is that they came to this The ability to say, all right, this is the meaning that we're going to approach to this sound.

And then just from there, you know, Insider carried on.

I think when Star Wars in Concert or Star Wars The Musical Journey was at the O2 I covered that for StarWars.com and so that gave me a little foot in there when they started having blogs regularly in sort of 2012 2013 they kind of you know I was invited to do that um and it just kind of went on from there just little projects here and there the park works and and like right up to now with ILM and Skywalker Sound so it's yeah it's hopefully I'm doing a decent job it's not like I haven't got 30 people lined up behind everybody that's doing it if I was doing a lousy job I'm sure they'd tell me um after all this time I'd like to think they'll tell me um but uh yeah I've been very lucky um yeah that's where it started i would say probably that frank parisi interview in 2005 was the one that made it work

yeah and then i suppose just kind of go from the start to the very end i've got in my hand the last star wars insider insider with the foil lucasfilm fan club cover and you get to your your main sort of article and this is an interview with kathleen kennedy how does it feel to kind of round off that insider journey with an interview with kathleen

very lucky we've been talking about it for blimey Three years, easily three years.

Yeah.

So he used his profits to build industry-leading tech companies like Industrial Light and Magic for visual effects and Skywalker Sound for audio, which profited from servicing the broader Hollywood film industry.

George Lucas, you are a genius.

Made an absolute

And then, uh, so when it comes to sound, a- again, it's a place that can, can sometimes, uh, not get the love that it deserves.

But like with knowing that you're dealing with Lucas and Skywalker Sound and all that, that, that they want, it is a concern for them just as it is for us.

And so it's been a really collaborative, uh, relationship.

You know, our, our audio director, Griffin, works directly with those guys, um, makes sure that the, the audio that we're putting in the game and the sound design, uh, you know, stays within the boundaries and also pushes it, right? When we, especially when we create something new, and that it fits in- inside of the existing galaxy.

So we had to reach out for an expert there.

So yeah, we reached out to Heike Kossi, who was at the Skywalker Sound at that time.

And I think like usually working with Foley artists and games, it's very different from films.

I mean, like the whole artistry is about making great sounds, but it's also a lot about syntax in a way, like this kind of sequence of things in a way.