The Sound Design of Wall-E

LINK
http://www.collider.com/entertainment/interviews/article.asp/aid/9762/tcid/1

While idly browsing the internet I stumbled upon an article about the sound design of the movie Wall-E. (The site is linked above.) The most interesting part of the article by far is the four embedded videos in which sound designer Ben Burtt discusses his process in creating the sound of a film. Not only that but he gives a small live demonstration of how he created these unique sounds. These are great videos and I would definitely recommend watching them all the way through but I want to discuss two things he mentions that I did not realize before.

The first thing that Mr. Burtt discusses is the fact that Wall-E is a film with no production sound. That is to say that it is a film without any sound captured during a normal filming process. While this is rather obvious due to the nature of animated films, it really sunk in for me. Mr. Burtt, as the sound designer, had to create every sound of the screen. Every single sound whether primary, secondary, or EAS was added during post production. That is a pretty mindblowing task especially when you consider that Mr. Burtt created over 2500 unique sounds for the film.

The second, and last thing, I did not really think about when viewing the film is how Mr. Burtt created a distinct defining auditory line between new technology and old technology in the film. He discusses how used sounds to that we associate with something high tech or sounds that we might consider low tech. This is a great example of added value that was used throughout the entire movie.

Well, I don’t want to ramble on too long and I think the videos speak for themselves well enough so check them out in the link.