Ben Burtt

Ben Burtt (Benjamin Burtt Jr.) is an American film sound designer born on July 12, 1948 in Jamesville, New York, whose work at Lucasfilm and Skywalker Sound fundamentally transformed the aesthetics of cinematic sound. He is best known for creating the iconic sounds of the Star Wars universe—the lightsaber hum (a film projector motor combined with feedback from a broken television), Darth Vader's breathing (his own breath through a scuba regulator), R2-D2's voice, and the blaster effects—as well as sound design for Indiana Jones, E.T., and WALL-E. His philosophy of grounding science-fiction sounds in real-world acoustic sources, rather than pure electronics, became the industry standard.