Star Wars, it’s arguably the most influential and most widely known movie series in cinema history. Having made movies now in 3 different decades, all with different equipment, access to technology and many more differences between the trilogy.
I spoke with Steve Malison, who is the program coordinator of the Music Industry Arts, and Audio Post Production programs here at Fanshawe about how he thinks Star Wars has changed the movie industry in those aspects. He told me “It all started with John Williams being chosen to compose the score, he brought music to each character that was so distinct. If you hear the first four nots of Darth Vader’s theme, you know Darth Vader is coming, and this is the same with every main character.”
Malison also adds that Williams took it into his own hands to have over 90 minutes of music for the “Empire Strikes Back” film, which is only just over 120 minutes long (2 Hours). Which was almost unheard of back when the original trilogy was made.
When talking about sound effects, he said that Ben Burtt, who was in charge of getting all of the unbelievable and unique sound effects for these films, was absolutely the right man for the job. He told me that essentially Burtt went out to a busy highway and started hitting very thick steel wires with a hammer to get the unique sounds that we know as “Lightsabers”.
Now with just over 2 weeks away from Episode 7 “The Force Awakens” releasing, we will just have to wait and see what amazing movie making and groundbreaking work J.J. Abrams and his team do with this film.
(Logo shown above, created by George Lucas in 1977, and has been shown in every Star Wars movie that has been made)
