LO2: Analyis Of The Sound Design Of Benjamin Burtt (P2)

Benjamin Burtt has created foley sound for the likes of Pixar during his career as a foley artist, one of the most prevalent of these works being 2008s WallE. Producing foley sound for an animation film is a challenging brief however one that focusses solely around a fictitious planet and machinery is particularly hard to create a sound scape for. 

Due to the film for the most part being without any dialogue / narration the atmospheric sound and soundscapes are one of the most important aspects of the film in order to support the narrative, Burtt described it as needing to create an 'original world of sound'. One of the first sounds we see created is the sound of Eve's laser gun, Burtt had discovered through experimentation that the mic picked up a different sound to what you might imagine should you strike a slinky with a metal object - the sound the slinky made is what you would expect a ray gun to sound like hence bringing the action within the animation to life. Unlike early Disney, Burtt uses small portable recording devices to take to certain locations to catch atmospheric sound - McDonald who previously did all of the foley sound for Disney used more traditional handmade props such as canvas against wood to create the sound of wind which would then be recorded using chunkier equipment within a studio - this was impressive for the technology that was available at the time,

In post 2000's Disney films such as Snow White, the methods of providing a soundtrack were purely musical with the slight interjection of a prop - this made it easier to control the sounds which were being captured and how they would fit into the action of the film , for example if someone fell over , they might have used a cymbal to connote the sound of the persons/object body hitting the floor. Burtt for the section of animation in WallE where both characters were trapped in a storm, used a boxing punch bag dragged against a carpeted floor to create a sudden gust of wind - by doing this he created a controlled piece of audio which eliminated the chance of needing to go outdoors and getting potentially unusable audio. Another object which he has used for various sounds for WallE was a thunder sheet, this is a large sheet of thin metal which when shook or struck created a low frequency sound which could be interpreted as thunder most commonly however Burtt also used it for the hum of the space ship and the take off of the rocket as the low sound mimicked that of fire gushing out of the exhaust.

Following on from the old Disney technique where a device was held over the vocal chords to create a inhuman voice, Burrt has taken a technologically advanced approach to this using a vocoder within which you can input a humans voice and at the other a tone, which changes the performance and gives the voice electronic nuances. A similar technique was used for the voice of WallE where Burtt recorded himself making a variety of noises which he changed within a computer software using a tablet and pen which altered the volume and pitch of the sound - the tilt of the pen effects how the sound is then resynthesised within the computed which gave WallE his original voice whiich ranged throughout a variety of pitches dependent on what he was saying.