Machine Language becomes poetry
Language development is a process that starts early in human life, when a person begins to acquire language by learning it as it is spoken and by mimicry. Children’s language development moves from simplicity to complexity. Infants start without language. Yet by four months of age, babies can read lips and discriminate speech sounds. Usually, language starts off as recall of simple words without associated meaning, but as children age, words acquire meaning, and connections between words are formed. In time, sentences start to form as words are joined together to create logical meaning. As a person gets older, new meanings and new associations are created and vocabulary increases as more words are learned. Wikipedia
Sound Designer Ben Burtt (who also created the sound for Star Wars) talks about creating the language for the machines in WALL-E from an array of mechanical devices.
Q: Do you find that sound design is still just as exciting for you now as it was when you first began your career?
BEN BURTT: Sure. I love recording sounds and exploring for sounds and yes, because every film seems to soak up and use everything I’ve got because there is always a need for something more and so I’m always on the alert for new things. They are harder to find because I’ve recorded so many airplanes and explosions and electronic noises that for Wall-E I think I and the team as well recorded every motor we ever came in touch with from appliances to jet planes, whatever. We just went wild. The world is full of sound and we found for a science fiction film like this – and others I’ve done – the idea of taking real natural sounds and imposing them into the fantasy film gives the illusion that these things are real because we kind of recognize them even though we can’t identify them specifically, but you say “Oh, it sounds like it is really a motor so I kind of believe it.” That has been the trick in these films.
Q: What are some of the sources of these sounds?
BEN BURTT: Well there are thousands of sounds. There were more sound files in Wall-E then any single feature film I’ve ever worked on, about 2500, because every character has a set of sounds and there are lots of movement and lots of dense activity. Stories of sounds, well let’s see – Wall-E’s treads, he drives around, he goes different speeds. When he’s going slowly, he makes a little whirring sound and that is the sound I heard it actually in a John Wayne movie called Island in the Sky on Turner Classic Movies. There was a guy turning a little generator, a soldier generating power. I said I like that generator sound, that is cool, and so where can I get one? I found one on eBay. I bought it. It came in its original 1949 box so we could take that into the studio and perform with it to tailor it to the speed of Wall-E. But that’s only good for when Wall-E is going slow.
When Wall-E is going fast, he needed something higher pitched and more energetic. Once again, I went back through my memory of things. I had recorded bi-planes a long time ago for Raiders of the Lost Ark. The old 1930s bi-planes have an inertia starter. It’s a mechanical crank that cranks the engine up. You do it by hand and then clutch – you connect it and it makes a wonderful whirring sound. So I thought I want to get that and do more with it. I couldn’t bring a bi-plane into the studio but on eBay I found an inertia starter, bought that again, and brought it in. So we built these props for many things. You know, it’s a tradition in animation to have sound effects machines. This goes back to the earliest days of Disney cartoons — like wind machines and blowing machines and things like that. We actually built several things so we could perform Wall-E sounds that way.
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Q: Wall-E reacts when something fascinates or surprises him. Where did those sounds come from?
BEN BURTT: There are a multitude of sounds like those little eyebrow type things are a Nikon camera shutter and his arms are the sound of a tank cannon, the asmyth motor on a tank. Name something and I will try to tell you what it is. There are a lot of things.
Q: There is one obvious sound joke which is the Mac boot-up sound. Are there others?
BEN BURTT: Once again, Andrew, that was his idea. I attribute that to him.
