Legendary sound designer Ben Burtt claims he “created a monster” with the iconic “Wilhelm Scream” that can now be seen in countless films.
Arrrgghhhh! We all know the “Wilhelm Scream,” the iconic soundtrack that has been featured in countless movies and TV shows over the decades, but Ben Burtt, the man credited with its rediscovery for the original Star wars film, told TR what did he have?created a monster.«
Wilhelm's cry can be traced back to Distant drumsa 1951 Western starring Gary Cooper. It found its way into the Warner Bros. library and was used in many other films, but it became popular when Burtt included it in Star wars as part of a joke with friends.
«This was a scream I first heard as a kid. I recorded it from a TV. It was in a lot of Warner Bros. movies in the 1950s and '60s. It was a standard scream in their library, and it was used in a lot of Westerns. For cowboys getting shot with arrows or something like that,” said Burtt.It was just one of many sounds I heard.“While attending the University of Southern California with future sound designer Richard Anderson, the pair would insert screams into their student films and laugh about it. During production, Star warsBurtt managed to find the original recording and the game began.
So in Star warsI put it in for the stormtrooper falling into the trench after getting shot. It was just for my own enjoyment. Nobody asked for it. Nobody noticed. That's all. Next time, maybe it would be for More American Graffiti. I put it in. After that, I started seeing how far I could take it. Richard Anderson was back in L.A. and working on other films, and he started putting it in his films. We played this game of one-upping each other for 25 years, just the two of us knowing what we were doing.
Burtt continued: “He put it in a Quentin Tarantino movie, called me and challenged me to find it. I put it in Indiana Jones movie. It was a private joke. Nobody said anything. It wasn’t until the Internet came along, must have been around 2000 or so, that people could discuss trivia together and DVDs were handy so you could study these movies. Suddenly everyone heard the same scream in all these Lucas movies and a few others and started wondering what it was. Somehow the word got out. I didn’t mention it. But then it got out on the Internet and became, what do you call it, a meme? Is that what it is? I don’t know. Now it’s everywhere. I just heard it on a TV commercial yesterday. An insurance company commercial. It’s just crazy. I stopped putting it in. But even after I stopped, my team kept putting it in because they felt it had to be there. I couldn’t stop them. I created a monster.«
What started as a joke for Burtt and his friends got out of hand.I never meant it that way,” said Burtt.If you Google me, the first thing you see is “Ben Burtt, creator of The Wilhelm Scream.” I say to my wife, “Is that what I'm known for?” That was a joke I made once, and now I can never forget it.“Today, Burtt says that playing 'Wilhelm's Scream' is something of a rite of passage for sound engineers.”A kind of audio baptism,“he said.”You put it in and you join the club. But none of it was intentional.«