While many celebrate the groundbreaking visual effects of the Star Wars series when it was released, few know that the sci-fi franchise also introduced many new techniques and revolutionized the sound design and mixing industry. George Lucas established Skywalker Sound (then Sprocket Systems) to work on the sound design of his epic franchise.
Sound designers of Skywalker Sound were reportedly involved early on in the Star Wars sequels as Lucas wanted specific sounds for the films. These included creating sounds for the tech such as lightsabers and robots as well as for the animals and creatures featured. The designers recounted how one old Mongolian woman laid the foundation for Ewoks.
An 80-Year-Old Woman Laid The Foundation For Ewoks in Star Wars
The Ewoks were reportedly created by George Lucas as he wanted a primitive tribe to bring down the technologically advanced Galactic Empire. The creatures made their first appearance in Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi and quickly became a controversial addition to the lore of Star Wars.
Lucas reportedly first wanted the species to be a tribe of Wookies, like Chewbacca. However, the Wookies reportedly became much more technologically advanced, making them unfit for the storyline. Ewoks have been known to be a favorite among children, which has caused significant controversy among more adult Star Wars fans.
The language of the Ewoks, Ewokese, is reportedly a mix of Nepalese, Tibetan, and a Mongolian language called Kalmyk. According to Star Wars.com, sound designer Ben Burrt found an 80-year-old refugee to come and record lines in her native language to base Ewokese on. He said,
We brought her into the studio, as we had with other people. Even with amateurs, I always wanted to get a lot of emotion out of them. I would ask them to just pretend that they were telling bedtime stories to their children, storybook kinds of simple stories, in order to get them in a relaxed state.
And so that’s what we did to get her to talk, to ramble on, to tell stories, to get emotional, and to laugh. She was really great and gave us some great material. Her name was Kosi Unkov. I have no idea whether anyone understood it because a lot of it is used in the movie.
Burrt mentioned that they found the woman when they visited a gift shop in the Embarcadeo area of San Francisco. He mentioned that the owners of the shop brought their old relative, Kosi Unkov, to record Kalmyk.
Why Were Ewoks Genderless In Star Wars?
One of the defining features of the Ewoks is their language and that they are mostly genderless. The sound designers reportedly went out of the way to make sure that the language they developed as well as the sounds they picked would not be categorized in that way. They even got an old woman with a deep and raspy voice to voice the Ewoks, which they could manipulate later.
Randy Thom, who also worked on the Ewoks in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi said to Star Wars.com that they wanted the creatures to also be animalistic and hence, not be sonically differentiated into a gender. He said,
We certainly related to the Ewoks as if they were human, but in a sense, they are more animal than they are human. One of the interesting things about doing voices for creatures is that filmmakers will often ask us to come up with, let’s say, a female vocalization for a dinosaur. And there really is no such thing.
Even though you know members of a given species can no doubt recognize their species, humans cannot tell by sound whether they are hearing a female lion or a male lion, a male squirrel, or a female squirrel. That’s another reason why it would have been kind of wrongheaded to try to have female Ewoks and male Ewoks. I think it wouldn’t have rung true somehow.
Other than humans, the designers reportedly also mixed sounds of Chimpanzees, tigers, and a baby lynx for the Ewok’s sound.
Star Wars: Return of the Jedi is streaming on Disney Plus.
