Supervising sound editor Matthew Wood and sound designer David W. Collins take you on a tour of their latest soundscape.
The familiar chime of the Star Tours interstellar spaceline, the wet squelching of a Hutt luxuriating in a mud bath, and the ferocious snarl of the wolf-like Captain Brutus are just some of the (occasionally disgusting) sounds featured in Star Wars: Skeleton Crew. These intricate details were all meticulously engineered by a team of audiophiles at Skywalker Sound, led by supervising sound editor Matthew Wood and sound designer David W. Collins.
Both long-standing stewards of the soundscapes of the saga, Wood and Collins recently sat down with StarWars.com to take a sonically spoiler-filled look at the first half of the Skeleton Crew journey — a bounty of Easter eggs, behind-the-scenes tidbits, and more.
Monkeying Around
Every saga has a beginning. As Collins recalls, both he and Wood got their start at Lucasfilm working in games. “Matt started as a tester at Lucasfilm Games back in 1990, and his first project was The Secret of Monkey Island. Ten years later, my first project at LucasArts was as a sound assistant on the fourth Monkey game, Escape from Monkey Island (2000), and I later ended up voice directing a ‘special edition’ of the original in 2009.”
Fast forward to 2024, when the pair found themselves working on the Skeleton Crew series co-creators Jon Watts and Christopher Ford, who tapped into their love of the Monkey Island series to create the pirates of the New Republic. Collaboration with filmmakers — Monkey Island fans or not — is perhaps the most important part of the sound designer’s role. “They all come in very enthusiastic about being able to work on Star Wars, and we want to roll out that red carpet and have people feel welcome,” adds Wood. “We want them to know that Skywalker Sound can elevate their storytelling.”
Life on At Attin
The sounds of a Star Wars cityscape, the peaceful but mysterious planet of At Attin, posed an early challenge. “It was something that feels very familiar to childhood, but you’re also dealing with a galaxy far, far away, so you have to strike that balance very carefully,” explains Collins.
A good example for this delicate sonic world-building lies within the seemingly simple hover bikes favored by Wim, Neel, Fern, and KB. “You may want to make a really cool sounding speeder, but you really need to make a speeder that sounds like a beat-up kid’s bike, with a basket and tassels,” Collins says. “When I first saw Wim’s bike, I said, ‘You know, that should really have a bell.’ There’s not actually a physical bell built onto the bike, but if you listen very closely, when Wim tosses it [over the rail], you can hear that there’s a bell on that bike.”
Other sound effects for daily life on At Attin that were also found on Earth include the walkie talkies carried around by Wim and Neel. “My kids had gotten cheap-sounding toy walkie talkies for their birthday,” remembers Collins. “When I put them together, they would make all this wonderful static and feedback. I cut those toys into the show’s walkies because I didn't want them to sound high-tech. I wanted them to sound plasticky and childlike.”
One faint sound in the first episode should be familiar to Disney Parks enthusiasts, as Collins recounts: “I was sitting in a mix with Watts and Ford and they asked me, ‘Can we get a little beep on that school tram when we pull up?’ I loaded up my synth, and, as a huge fan of Star Tours and Disney Parks, I dared to put a rendition of the ride’s iconic chime in the mix and present it to them. They loved it.” The nod to the Starspeeder also extends to the RX-series droid at the tram’s controls.
At Attin Middle School reminded Collins of his own school days, where the Pledge of Allegiance echoed through the halls every morning. “I pitched writing and recording an At Attin pledge (‘I pledge allegiance to the Great Work of At Attin,’ etc.)” he says. “You can barely hear it in the background of the school hallway, but the rhythm of it makes you really feel like you're back in class.”
Even Wim’s lunch money has its own special sound. “If you listen very carefully, it actually has a MacGuffin-like shimmer to it, right from the very beginning of the first episode,” Collins says. “This, of course, pays off when you get to Port Borgo, and it excites the pirates and builds on the mystery of what At Attin is.”
A Droid and His Rat
For the pirate droid companion SM-33, it was important for the Skywalker Sound team to accentuate actor Nick Frost’s performance without hindering it. “Only some of his lines are modulated,” notes Collins. Most of the sound design work was added to enhance the droid’s old joints and dragging wires. “SM-33 is probably one of the noisiest droids we’ve ever made, and that's on purpose. He's just covered with wires, and he's got a peg leg. We wanted him to sound like a broken tank, just a little spooky and hollow and haunted and ratchety.”
As for SM-33’s furry roommate, Snowball, the creature’s chittering is a balance between Collins’ vocal talents and a sound file from another adventurous Lucasfilm classic. “Creatures are difficult because they have to express a lot of different emotions,” says Collins. “I performed Snowball's vocals... but heavily pitched and processed. But there was still one element that I felt was missing.” The answer was found in a museum (sort of). “I wanted a more feral sound for the moments when Snowball shrieks at pirates or at Neel. I kept thinking in my head that I wanted it to shriek a bit like the monkey in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).” Luckily, Skywalker Sound also worked on the first film in the Indy franchise. “I found the raw monkey recording from Raiders in our effects library, pitched and filtered some of those shrieks, and added them to my vocal track. Voila: Snowball.”
Ahoy Mateys!
A pirate port is an incredibly busy environment, and each corner of bustling Borgo calls for its own sound treatment. One of the key tools that Skywalker Sound uses for such complex soundscapes is the “loop group,” a collective of talented (and Star-Wars-savvy) voice actors who are brought in to record additional lines and background sounds for each episode. As Wood explains, “We’re all able to banter off each other, and everyone can be recorded onto separate tracks. I use all that material to create the creatures, droids, and various languages that we use in these shows. I love that.”
“My favorite example of this happens in the second episode, in the cells of Port Borgo,” recounts Collins. “I said, ‘Wouldn't it be great if we just did an homage to Pirates of the Caribbean?’ I went and whistled like they do in the movie [and the Disney Parks ride]. Watts and Ford loved it, and I am just so happy we put it in the mix. There is so much [background] dialogue happening in those scenes, whether it’s custom recordings for Jawas or me pretending to throw up all over the floor. It’s always a fun day.”
The chittering of Fuzzball from Captain EO was another library file that helped inspire a new performance by voice actors Shelby Young and Terri Douglas. Skywalker Sound worked on the sound for the Disney Parks attraction back in 1986. “We also borrowed the sound of Hooter’s trunk for the sound of Neel sneezing and snoring in the show,” Collins says.
And Wood revisited his famous B-1 battle droids for a cameo appearance in Port Borgo. “When Jod turns one on, there was no real dialogue written for it. I mean, it could say ‘Roger, Roger,’ because that’s the immediate funny thing,” Wood says. “But this droid hadn't been turned on since the Clone Wars era, so the first thing I had it say was, ‘Did we win?’”
“We had to stop and take a break after that, because it was just ridiculous,” laughs Collins.
Across the Stars
As Wim, Fern, KB, and Neel depart Port Borgo with their new companion Jod, played by Jude Law, they encounter a host of new planets each as different and exciting as the last. According to the team, the owl-like Kh’ymm in Episode 3 is mostly just comedian and actress Alia Shawkat’s incredible vocal performance. “But then we had notes to make her giant rotating observatory sound huge,” adds Collins. “That's exactly what David Kraska, our incredible sound editor, did. He used real observatory rotating sounds, plus different large mechanical noises.”
Another surprise can be found in Kh’ymm’s security door bots (“tattletale” droids). “I was obsessed with Jabba’s droid in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, and I decided to give each of her trio of droids a pitched version of Kh’ymm’s voice,” Collins adds. “You have her voice in the center, one low and another high, all talking at Jod, which was really fun."
On At Achrann in Episode 4, the team got to create the sounds of a herd of eopies, first seen in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. “Bonnie Wilde, one of our mixers, had a schedule break that allowed her to cut sound on that episode,” Collins recalls. “I remember giving her the note, ‘Can we make the eopie fart here? I think that's important. I think that's really necessary for the story. Just a little fartier, okay?’”
And in the latest installment, Episode 5, the crew touches down on the glamorous spa planet of Lanupa. “It feels so different from the pirate world. For the cars that escort the Onyx Cinder into the spa area, I wanted them to be like an homage to the twin pod cloud car sounds from Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back,” Collins says. “I used the sound of horns [trombones and trumpets], processed and mixed them with a few other things, to give them this wonderful, slick tonal sound. You then hear a nice fountain, the subtle chatter of people on vacation…until you get to the mud pits, which are gross. I cut little ‘splurty’, disgusting bubbles. Every single one that pops in that Hutt pit was cut by hand. And then, of course, I voiced the Hutt myself.” And the Hutt’s unsuspecting snack? The tiny attendant was voiced by series co-creator Chris Ford, Collins reveals.
As for the lightsaber that makes its debut among the amassed pirate treasures, it provided a unique opportunity for Collins. “It's always been a personal goal to try and make something as cool as my hero, Ben Burtt, first made with the lightsaber,” he says. “When it comes to the one you see in Skeleton Crew, I took it upon myself to try and make one that sounds different. We aren’t sure where or when it's from, but the goal for this show was to make stuff that sounds unique, but also anchored and familiar.”
Behind the Music
Wood and Collins are also the sound architects behind the fan favorite, in-universe rendition of Peter Schilling’s “Major Tom (Coming Home)” rewritten as “Youngee Wim (Bunky Dunko)” in full Huttese with some translation help from Lucasfilm’s Leland Chee and Pablo Hidalgo. Wood has fond memories of popping in a VHS tape of Star Wars: A New Hope as a child and “transcribing the scene with Greedo so I could learn the language that Ben Burtt and Larry Ward had come up with to make that first rendition of Huttese,” he says. “To this day, I still know it by heart.”
During a Skeleton Crew marketing presentation, Ford suggested that they translate Schilling’s classic pop song into Huttese. With only 24 hours to record, Wood and Collins turned around a quick take that was used in the final trailer. “The trailer got an enormously positive reaction, so we got the call to do the whole song, which we recorded over a weekend,” continues Wood.
The cover song was just another expression of the team’s joy in making Skeleton Crew. “The whole show has such a positive energy,” adds Collins. “You can feel it in every frame. Our work was so much fun, and the creative team was so collaborative. They let us experiment and try new things, going for laughs and gags and thousands of different sounds. It's the loop group, the foley editors, the dialogue editors, the mixers, the sound effects editors, and all the support staff at Skywalker Sound that make it all happen. It’s a small army of sound people, our own tight crew, all trying to make the best sounding and best feeling show that we possibly could.”
All episodes of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew are now streaming, only on Disney+.
