Valery + Lion + Bear = one of the most famous voices in cinema

Whether or not you’re a fan of the Star Wars saga, there’s a good chance you know what Chewbacca’s scream sounds like. Halfway between a grunt, a grunt and a growl, this particular sound is one of the most famous in the saga created by George Lucas in the 70s, and perhaps even in the history of cinema.

As well as virtually the entire soundscape of the Star Wars galaxy, legendary engineer Ben Bart is credited for these legendary sound effects. And to arrange it, this wizard of sound waves used a very unique technique.

“It should be done with animal noises.”

“The voice of Chewie was the first thing I was asked to work on when I was hired when Star Wars was still in the script stage.”He said a few years later, While making The Empire Strikes Back.

“They knew there was going to be this character called Chewbacca who was going to play and appear in the same scenes as the other actors. But the question was what his voice was going to be. He wasn’t going to speak English. , but he had to have an alien, animal voice. It There had to be an intelligent language that didn’t sound like English or German or French or anything known. It had to be made with animal sounds.”

“I collected a lot of bear voices.”

Ben Burt then recounts that when he first met George Lucas, the latter gave him a list of various animals to write down and suggested that he look for bears in particular:

“During the year I was recording the Star Wars prequels, I collected a lot of bear voices. The sound engineer explains, “Like the sounds of walruses, lions, badgers, sick animals, pets, all kinds of things…”

A double challenge

Ben Barth then isolated small chunks of these different sounds that he believed could be associated with certain emotions, such as love or anger. After compiling these different categories of sounds—corresponding to the character’s different states of mind—he then began to link them together to create a kind of dialect.

But beyond this already difficult exercise, the added challenge was to ensure that this tongue would match well with Chewbacca’s mouth movements on screen, just as the dubbing actors could respect the character’s lips.

To learn more about the character of Chewbacca, (re)discover our special video…