SyFy Wire take a look at one of the behind the scenes featurettes coming to the Solo: A Star Wars Story home video release, specifically the expansion of Chewbacca’s vocabulary which has for the last four decades been rejigs of Ben Burtt’s four decade old library of sounds recorded for A New Hope.
Skywalker Sound’s supervising sound editor and sound designer Tim Nielsen explains how he and his team began with the original library of bear sounds recorded by Star Wars sound designer Ben Burtt, and then went out in search of additional animal sounds they could make use of. Among their sources were a very hungry bear who wasn’t shy when it came to expressing his feelings about food, and a seal.
These sounds were then added to Skywalker’s library of Chewie noises, manipulated in various ways to make them sound like a Wookiee, and Chewbacca’s vocabulary was thus expanded to allow him to do everything from roar at Han when he first meets him to express humor, grief, and bewilderment. It becomes a seamless part of the character in the finished film, but the process behind it is, as ever, complex.
Sadly the video won’t play in the UK due to those ever-annoying regional restrictions but fear not, the Blu-ray and DVD arrives here on 24th September.
