MetaQuest chat with Skywalker Sound Audio Director & Supervising Sound Editor Kevin Bolen about his career, his journey in sound and the vital role the audio landscape plays in the Star Wars story, an element that is often criminally overlooked.

Star Wars is an iconic franchise with a storied history spanning nearly 50 years. How do you approach your work for a given project?

KB: What I love about Star Wars is how the entire galaxy is built upon a foundation of juxtaposition, contrast, and possible contradiction. It’s the combination of timeless mythologies and narrative archetypes with popular storytelling conventions and lovable characters, where heroes can be unlikable and villains can be vulnerable, and droids are people, too.

I really enjoy reading the first draft of a script, or watching a rough cut of an episode, or flipping through the concept art in a pitch deck and being mindful first of what is new and unique, and responding emotionally to what elicits my own reactions or inspires an idea. You can only enjoy being the naive audience for so long before you have to become an informed creator instead.

Once that unconstrained first impression is made, only then I go back and rewatch or re-read, and start spotting all the things that could or should be based on established precedent. I work closely with our Star Wars Sound Librarian and all of the sound designers and sound editors at Skywalker Sound to look for interesting opportunities to either add continuity or add diversity to the soundscape for any given project depending on what it needs. I’m also an avid reader, so many of my ideas and approaches to sound aren’t based solely on visual or audio media but on the underlying fiction itself.