The Sound Of Star Wars' TIE Fighters Is A Mix Of Elephants And Cars
When creating the sounds for "Star Wars: A New Hope," the film's sound effects engineers didn't exactly have much reference to draw from. Sound doesn't travel through the vast emptiness of space, for starters, and no one has any audio recordings of space dogfights even if they were possible. So when sound designer Ben Burtt had to come up with sounds for the various spaceships and their weapons, he had to draw from his imagination. The TIE Fighters, flown by Imperial soldiers, don't sound like any jet fighter or airplane from our galaxy, and that's in large part because they're made from such an unusual combination of sounds.
In interviews collected by Popular Mechanics, Burtt and special effects artist Joe Johnston explained the sounds that went into creating the effect of the TIE Fighters zooming about, along with the inspirations behind those particular sounds. After all, the zippy little ships need to sound intimidating because they represent the forces of the fascist Empire, and they would theoretically have a different sound than the Rebels' X-wings or Y-wings, and very different from speeders or pod-racers. (Just imagine a TIE Fighter making that high-pitched "weeeeee!" sound that some of the pod-racing ships make. Not so scary, is it?)
How Burtt came up with the horrifying hum of the TIE engines is pretty wild, mixing sounds from living creatures with something much less organic. In the end he made a new, unmistakable sound — one of many that brought "Star Wars" to life.
Inspired by history, created with pachyderms
The whole idea for the sound of the TIE Fighters was inspired by an interesting bit of World War II trivia, according to Joe Johnston:
"In World War II the super dive-bombers had an artificially created siren wail created by air ducts. They didn't serve any purpose except to create this noise, which would terrify people. It was intended that the TIE should achieve the same effect with just a menacing appearance."
Johnston drew the storyboards for "Star Wars: A New Hope," so he had a hand in the look of the TIE Fighters, and those descriptions of the terrifying super-bombers sent Ben Burtt looking for the perfect unsettling sound. He took audio of elephants from the 1958 John Huston adventure movie "The Roots of Heaven" and slowed it way down, creating the inhuman screams of the engines as they zipped about space. However, they still sounded like elephants, so he mixed the audio with recordings of cars driving on wet streets:
"Swoosh, the car would come by, and you heard this car plowing through the water. I took that sound still thinking that I was making a laser of some kind. I'd really put it in because I had no other alternative, but it got great reviews, so naturally it became the sound of the TIE Fighters."
The creation of the perfect TIE Fighter sound was a bit of a happy accident caused by a bit of audio engineer ingenuity, and "Star Wars" fans are all the luckier for it.
A franchise that thrives on being resourceful
"Star Wars: A New Hope" was made on a hope and a prayer, with many of the cast and crew believing it was a bit of a joke until after it premiered. Thankfully, George Lucas and the talented people he worked with managed to make "A New Hope" one of the greatest movies of all time, kicking off a franchise that includes a dozen movies, several television shows, video games, and more toys than anyone could ever hope to collect in a lifetime. A part of that success is the scrappy can-do attitude of the production itself, which feels a bit like the Rebel Alliance piecing together their ships from scrap and putting a galactic-scale rebellion together with whatever resources they can scrounge up. The franchise has gone on to become something much shinier, sharper, and more expensive, but its charmingly roguish beginnings still linger in the many "Star Wars" offerings of today.
Burtt had to create a tremendous number of original sounds for "Star Wars," and other sound designers have had to follow in his footsteps, creating everything from the buzzing hum of a lightsaber to the gurgles and coos of Grogu. The technology and budgets may have improved since the days of "A New Hope," but sound is still a huge part of the "Star Wars" universe — and we have Burtt, some elephants, and a bit of innovation to thank for one of its most iconic sounds.