Matt Wood Talks the Sounds of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

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Star Wars Sound Editor Matthew Wood discusses his approach to the sound design of the new Star Wars spin-off film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. The veteran designer also shares how he will balance new and old sounds while continuing to capture the familiar feel from the original films. Read on for more.

 

 

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is set to blast into theaters this December. The film takes place before the events of Star Wars: A New Hope and will be a departure from the saga films but have elements that are familiar to the Star Wars universe. The all-new spin off story follows Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), as she joins a band of rebels that embark on a dangerous quest to steal the plans for the original Death Star seen in Star Wars: A New Hope. Directed by Gareth Edwards, the film features a stellar cast that includes Diego Luna, Riz Ahmed, Jiang Wen, Donnie Yen, Mads Mikkelsen, Alan Tudyk, Forest Whitaker and Ben Mendelsohn.

 

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Recently, the first trailer for the film arrived and it was amazing, filled with all kinds of incredible imagery, promising characters, and really cool stuff like a return of familiar sounds we heard in the original Star Wars films.

 

IGN’s Max Nicholson caught up with Matthew Wood who is the supervising sound editor on Rogue One and Episode VIII. During the chat, Wood talked about what it’s been like editing the sound for a film that’s so chronologically close to ‘A New Hope’.

“Star Wars just has such a great legacy of sound that we’ve kept really special over the years,” Wood told me. “Ben Burtt, who’s the original sound designer from the first Star Wars in ’77, was my mentor, and we’ve worked together on many, many projects. He’s still active at Skywalker Sound, almost 40 years after the first Star Wars. We’ve kept those sounds very special, so they’re only used in Star Wars films. I mean, Skywalker Sound, we do a ton of other movies, but we keep those sounds special, because we want that. You hear a TIE fighter, you’re gonna know that’s a TIE fighter. It’s not going to be like, ‘Oh, I heard that in Transformers. I heard that in Pirates of the Caribbean.’ This is the TIE fighter, and it hasn’t been spread out amongst all the different movies.”

Standard Fighter

 

Without legendary composer John Williams’ rousing score in the stand alone spin-off, it will be up to Wood to drive home the familiar nostalgic sounds heard in the original films.

“Sound has that way to subliminally take you, to connect you to things, and it’s a very easy way to do it. It’s not onscreen. We don’t have to render it. We pay special homage to the lightsabers and the wookiees and the wampas and the TIE fighters and the X-Wings. All of that has a connection back. So those sounds we don’t really want to alter much.”

 

Wood also said they’re still trying to create new sounds by blending the old so that it feels similar to the universe we all know and love.

“take things that are in that same patina [of the old sounds] and create new ships and, you know… David Acord, who was my co-supervisor on The Force Awakens — and we both did The Clone Wars together as well — we’ve just tried to take a blend of what we made in Clone Wars and what we’ve done in the Prequels and now The Force Awakens and just tried to put it in that same zone so it seems like it’s in that same universe.”

 

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story hits U.S. theaters on December 16th.

 

Source: IGN

 

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38 thoughts on “Matt Wood Talks the Sounds of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

  • June 14, 2016 at 10:15 pm
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    “MATT WOOD TALKS THE SOUNDS OF BURYING EFFECTS IN A MUDDY MIX”
    .
    FTFY.

    • June 15, 2016 at 9:14 am
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      I’m sure you’d do a splendid job, they need you there Cranky.

      I agree though, that the weapon sounds seemed off especially in the beginning. Later on, they seemed to correct it which is weird.

      It seems like they wanted to add more punch but ended up drowning out the treble and even some of the mid.

      The times I noticed the weapons sounded off.
      1) When the troopers first leave the transport on Jakku, and are firing their blasters, the blaster shots sound nothing like the original E-11 blasters, I don’t know if that was intentional because later on Takodana you can hear the classic E-11 sound again.

      2) The Millenium Falcon’s quad gun shots sounded drastically different, which I believe was intentional, but it still caught me off guard.

      3) The TIE Fighter’s turbolaser shots while shooting inside the crashed Super Star Destroyer, you couldn’t hear the classic shot sound at all it sounded more like a drum.

      4) Anakin’s lightsaber igniting sound is very bass heavy, I noticed it when Finn turns it on for the first time, and while it still has the classic swhishh sound mixed in, it gets drowned out by the bass.

      Those were the most noticeable sounds that seemed off to me. I’m sure you may have found more, but those were he ones that stuck out to me.

  • June 14, 2016 at 10:16 pm
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    I have no doubt they’ll get the sounds right. What I do wonder is why there are new triangular-winged tie fighters in a film set shortly before ANH. (Really, these new Ties look cooler and more futuristic than anything in TFA.)

    • June 14, 2016 at 10:20 pm
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      Didn’t (and I may be misremembering here) that leaked book say they were in-atmosphere craft — planes rather than space fighters? The TIEs we saw in the OT were all in space. Visually they look like a callback to the Jedi starfighter from the prequels.

      It’s hard to compare them to TFA tech when we haven’t seen them yet, although TFA’s TIE fighters (at least the special forces variant Poe & Finn stole) are certainly more advanced than the ones in the OT — they are seen operating in atmosphere and have more advanced weapons at least.

    • June 15, 2016 at 12:40 am
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      They were actually used in TFA at the concept stage but of course Abrams in his infinite creative wisdom went with repainted ones from the OT instead.

      • June 15, 2016 at 12:58 am
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        Hey, but with tractor tires on the arms!

        • June 17, 2016 at 11:20 am
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          The Art Of Book is painful to look at in that we would have gotten something pretty close to the OT in terms of visuals had they gone with a lot of the earlier designs. The concept team didn’t suck, It was the director and his lack of good taste.

    • June 15, 2016 at 10:25 am
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      Personally, I think those triangular Tie-Fighters for Rogue One look like these horrible Tri-Fighters form these 90’s Star Wars games.

  • June 14, 2016 at 10:34 pm
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    Is Ben Burtt only doing the sound design for the episodic films or something?

    • June 15, 2016 at 12:56 am
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      He didn’t do TFA, so….?

      • June 15, 2016 at 2:42 am
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        Of course Ben did it for TFA.

        • June 15, 2016 at 3:09 am
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          Nope, he retired from Star Wars. He was credited in TFA, as they used some of his original sounds from the OT & PT.

          • June 15, 2016 at 2:42 pm
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            Oh, okay. Thanks.

        • June 15, 2016 at 4:21 am
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          Wood is listed as the supervising editor, the new sounds are all pretty feeble and digital sounding, and the mix is really very flat (saw it in two totally different theaters and listening at home – it’s flat and muddy, with nothing really placed very well and weapon sounds in particular lacking punch). I can’t believe that Burtt had a lot of input on the film.

          • June 15, 2016 at 2:34 pm
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            Oh. “Supervising Sound Editors”, not simply “Sound Design”. All right, thanks for clearing that up.

          • June 16, 2016 at 5:02 am
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            I thought the weapons in TFA sounded far better than any previous Star Wars film.

  • June 14, 2016 at 10:46 pm
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    Does anyone think that the sounds for Rogue One will sound sick (In a good way)?

    • June 14, 2016 at 11:13 pm
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      Is that what you kids say today? “Sick”? First “bad” means “good” now this? Get off my lawn.

      • June 14, 2016 at 11:18 pm
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        Hey, I’m a young adult you know. Also, the word you’re looking for something good used with a bad word it’s actually “shit”.

        • June 14, 2016 at 11:31 pm
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          Now you’re really making me feel old if you’re too young to remember “bad” meaning “good”.

          Or should I say you’re making me feel like my shit isn’t on fleek.

          • June 14, 2016 at 11:33 pm
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            You’re making me and the others very confused you know.

          • June 14, 2016 at 11:33 pm
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            How do you think I feel? My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead and that’s the way I like it.

        • June 15, 2016 at 3:11 am
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          It always confuses me. “The Shit” is good but just “Shit” is bad. Sometimes it gets hard to pick out which is which, I always have to do a double take and try to remember “Wait, they just called my painting something about shit … did they say my painting was THE Shit or just regular shit?”

    • June 15, 2016 at 12:39 am
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      Does anyone really know?

  • June 14, 2016 at 10:55 pm
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    So, my take away is that Wampas are in R1.

  • June 15, 2016 at 12:38 am
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    He’s a nice guy but no Ben Burtt. Btw, You can hear a lot of SW sound effects (lightsabers, TIE engines, C-3PO) in those old Marvel-Sunbow cartoons from the 80’s – Transformers, GI Joe, Jem, etc. I think Nelson Shin stole them and inserted them in since he worked on the OT.

    • June 15, 2016 at 1:34 am
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      “You can hear a lot of SW sound effects (lightsabers, TIE engines, C-3PO) in those old Marvel-Sunbow cartoons from the 80’s – Transformers, GI Joe, Jem, etc.”

      Yeah, you absolutely can. I’ve been watching the old Joe cartoons with my boys and I forgot how many SW sounds made their way into the show.

      • June 17, 2016 at 10:42 am
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        I’m not sure if Shin was responsible for that but he is the most likely suspect having access to both libraries. Oddly enough it really does fit in the shows most of the time.

  • June 15, 2016 at 1:32 am
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    Does anyone know if the great Ben Burtt still works at Lucasfilm? Is he retired or semi-retired? Did he do work on TFA at all aside from his previous work being reused? What’s he up to nowadays? Just curious.

    • June 15, 2016 at 4:59 am
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      When the film making team was announced he had a credit of Sound Designer along with same on Imdb. That’s all I know. If that helps.

  • June 15, 2016 at 3:11 pm
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    Burtt or Wood, I just know I need a Wilhelm Scream somewhere

    • June 15, 2016 at 9:53 pm
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      I thought Burtt had retired it as it had become cliched and a distraction. Would be nice if Wood honored that decision.

      • June 15, 2016 at 9:57 pm
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        All Star Wars film to date (including The Force Awakens and several Clone Wars and Rebels episodes) have it

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