Word: burtt
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...WALL?E Pixar's ravishing robot love story is now on three discs (one for downloading) with loads of fun extras, including a cartoon short and a doc about sound-effects genius Ben Burtt, plus commentary on the film by director Andrew Stanton. He's a great guy to spend a movie with...
...essentially mimes, could put an end to the eight-film box-office winning streak that began with Toy Story in 1995 and continued unbroken through last year's Ratatouille. To sell the project, Stanton had only his faith in the idea, and the collaboration of sound-design guru Ben Burtt, who would create WALL?E's "voice" and most of the film's other noises. But as Stanton recalls, "No one questioned this. They all knew it would work...
...that the amazing dimension Burtt brought to the film. Signing with Pixar after 28 years at Lucasfilm Ltd., he got this plum of a project: he'd be creating most of WALL?E's sounds, from the hero's voice (Burtt's own, which he stretched, distorted and metallicized on his computer keyboard) to the wind of WALL?E's world ("That's just Niagara Falls") and the sound of the bot driving around ("It's taken from a tank, but it's made to sound tiny...
...Burtt is an audio Audubon. Much of his recording is done "on location"--in zoos, his driveway or (lots of this in WALL?E) a junkyard. The chirps needed for WALL?E's cockroach companion were provided by "a raccoon, speeded up," and the insect's clicks came from the sound of locking handcuffs. "I was recording a policeman's Taser," Burtt recalls, "and I said, 'Let me hear your handcuffs...
Having spent so much time with George Lucas on the Star Wars series, Burtt is used to demanding directors. But even he was sometimes perplexed by Stanton's requests. "Andrew would say, 'That sound of the motor--could we have one with more pathos?' I wonder about that for a minute. And then I see it as just another challenge...