Ben Burtt shares difference between working with George Lucas and Steven Spielberg

Legendary sound designer Ben Burtt was honored at the Lorcarno Film Festival with the Vision Award Ticinomoda for his decades of work. Leading up to the event, he sat down with Scott Roxborough at The Hollywood Reporter to discuss his decades long career.

Over the years, Burtt has worked with both George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, creating the sound for their most iconic films. Roxborough asked how the two directors, both also legends in their own right, approached the sound of their movies.

"George Lucas was particularly interested in always thinking and talking about sound before any shooting took place," Burtt started. "He was also open to experiments. He was never afraid of trying funny things. He liked to develop sounds well in advance, well before the final mix."

It might not have been the best approach as Burtt added, "That spoiled me to some degree because if you are brought in at the last stage when the mix with the music and dialogue is already in place, you can spend weeks just sorting things out. Nobody’s auditioned anything, and it can be a real mess. So George had the right thinking, bringing on a person or a small team early on."

How did Spielberg differ? It turns out he wasn't too different from Lucas, "For the Indiana Jones movies with Spielberg, since George also was an executive producer, we followed the same path. I had access to Steven Spielberg, even before shooting began, to interview him and go through the script, asking: 'What do you want to hear here? How do you envision this?' Once in a while during shooting he would contact us with some ideas he had, saying, 'We’re going to need jeep sounds here' or 'We need some kind of magical sound for the ark,' that kind of thing."

One thing that helped Burtt communicate with his directors is they were all from the same generation. He discussed that and how that shaped his work going forward, saying, "We had the advantage that we grew up in the same era and had a love for the same kinds of movies. We could talk in terms of sounds we loved in movies that we saw growing up. I could say: 'It’s going to sound like the dinosaurs in Journey to the Center of the Earth,’ and Steven would know what I was talking about. So, I was spoiled by my access to the directors."

The entire interview is a wonderful read, delving into Burtt's entire career. You can see it at The Hollywood Reporter.