Ben Burtt

Benjamin Burtt Jr., commonly known as Ben Burtt, is an American sound designer, film director, editor, screenwriter, and voice actor whose career has reshaped modern cinematic audio. Born on July 12, 1948, in Jamesville, New York, he grew up the son of a chemistry professor and a child psychologist, making amateur films as a child and later studying physics at Allegheny College before earning a master’s degree in film production at the University of Southern California. Burtt first entered the professional arena in the mid‑1970s, winning a National Student Film Festival award for his war film Yankee Squadron and a scholarship for his work on the special‑effects film Genesis, which propelled him into Hollywood’s sound department. His breakthrough arrived with Star Wars (1977), where he abandoned the synthetic, electronic sounds typical of sci‑fi and introduced a philosophy of “found sounds,” crafting iconic effects such as the lightsaber hum (a blend of a projector motor and broken TV feedback), the blaster gun crack, and Darth Vader’s heavy breathing recorded through an old scuba regulator. Burtt also voiced many of R2‑D2’s beeps and whistles using an ARP‑2600 synthesizer, and he invented the “Wilhelm scream,” an in‑joke that has echoed through thousands of films. Beyond Star Wars, his fingerprints appear on E.T. the Extra‑Terrestrial, where he captured an elderly lady’s voice for the titular alien, the soundscape of Indiana Jones, the robot vocalizations in Pixar’s WALL‑E, and the audio design for the 2009 Star Trek reboot. His dedication to auditory storytelling earned him four Academy Awards, including two Special Achievement Oscars, and cemented his reputation as a pioneer of immersive sound design. In addition to sound work, Burtt has directed IMAX documentaries such as Blue Planet and Destiny in Space, edited the entire Star Wars prequel trilogy, and contributed to television series like The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. A respected educator and industry leader, he has received honorary Doctor of Arts from Allegheny College, the Charles S. Swartz Award from the Hollywood Post Alliance, and the Vision Award Ticinomoda at the 2024 Locarno Film Festival, continuing to inspire new generations of sound artists.