Be honest: You can hear this scene right now! Image source: Disney/Lucasfilm
A famous man named Wilhelm once said ARRRGGHHH!
and since then we hear this Quote
in almost every film of the last 60 years. Whether in Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, Indiana Jones, Kill Bill or Pirates of the Caribbean – the so-called Wilhelm Scream has become an integral part of cinema culture.
And if you’re wondering where the unmistakable sound effect comes from: Ben Burtt is responsible for this and can confidently be described as a legendary sound designer. Burtt also created, for example, the heavy breathing of Darth Vader and the iconic whirring of the lightsabers from George Lucas’ Star Wars saga.
Burtt now looks back in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter to his creation, which was originally intended as an inside joke. Today, the sound designer jokes that he created a monster
and explains how the Wilhelmsschrei could actually spread so widely.
Where the Wilhelmsschrei actually comes from
Burtt starts at the very beginning. First of all, the Wilhelmsschrei was in The Devil’s Brigade from 1951, when a poor guy is eaten by an alligator. After that, the effect kept appearing in westerns, which is how Burtt first became aware of it:
It was a scream that was the first thing I heard when I was a kid. I recorded it on the TV. It was in a lot of Warner Bros. movies in the ’50s and ’60s. It was a scream in their library that was used in a lot of westerns – when cowboys got hit by arrows or something. It was just one scream out of many that I had to choose from.
Link to YouTube content
From inside joke to industry tradition
Dying cowboys are all well and good. But when and, above all, why did the Wilhelm Scream make it to the galaxy far, far away or to Middle Earth?
When I was working on Star Wars, I [den Schrei] smuggled in when a stormtrooper fell into the trench. I did it purely for my own personal amusement. Nobody asked. Nobody noticed. That was all.
The next time I used the effect was on More American Graffiti. […] After that, I wanted to see how far I could get with it. [Mein Kollege] Richard Anderson came back to LA to work on other films and he also started [den Wilhelmsschrei] to put in there. We played this game of trying to outdo each other for over 25 years and only we knew about it.
He has [den Effekt] in a Quentin Tarantino film and challenged me to find it. I used it in Indiana Jones. It was a joke between the two of us. Nobody said anything.
It wasn’t until around 2000, when the Internet came around the corner, that fans could collectively discuss films […]Suddenly everyone heard the same scream in Lucasfilm’s movies and more and more people wondered what it was all about. […] I didn’t say anything about it. But then it got out onto the internet and it became… what do you call it: a meme? Is that what it’s called? I have no idea.
Now it is everywhere. Only yesterday I [den Schrei] in an advertisement. This is crazy. I stopped [den Effekt] But even when I stopped, my team put it in because they felt like it had to be that way. I couldn’t stop it. I created a monster.
Link to YouTube content
Burtt finally provides the final conclusion: An inside joke between him and a colleague has now become something of a baptism of fire for aspiring sound designers in the film industry:
I never wanted that. If you google me, the first result is Ben Burrt, creator of the Wilhelm Scream. I said to my wife: is this really what I want to go down in history for? It was a joke and now I have to live with it.
By the way: You can read more about what is currently happening in the film and cinema landscape under the links above.
What’s the first movie that comes to mind when you think of the Wilhelm Scream? In which movie do you think the sound effect works best and in which does it not work at all? Let us know in the comments!
