There’s a good article on Ben Burtt and Wall-E in today’s LA Times.
One interesting quote from it…
Talking about how normally Disney might be worried about a film with no dialogue in the first half, especially during the development stage, the article quotes Andrew Stanton as saying:
“It was just luck, but the movie’s formative years came during Disney and Pixar’s [threatened 2005] divorce, so there was a distraction. By the time people started paying attention, it was obvious it was working.”
I absolutely love Ben Burtt because of all the cool sounds he makes! He’s Wall-E and M-O in Wall-E, he’s countless droids in the Star Wars series, so much more. 
Doesn’t work anymore! They say they are doing “scheduled maintenance”, so it might come back up, meanwhile, try these links instead:
blog.spout.com/2008/11/26/ben-bu … hollywood/
movies.ign.com/dor/objects/87932 … 91608.html
canmag.com/nw/11567-wall-e-walle-ben-burtt
star-ecentral.com/news/story … sec=movies
Ben Burtt is making a public appearance in just a few days, Saturday May 23rd in San Anselmo California. This is only an hour and a half away from me! And they are going to show the movie!!
Here is the link: marinij.com/marinnews/ci_12400696?source=rss
I’m going. And taking my camera too. Perhaps a tape recorder that I just bought to catch anything interesting.
Have fun, DarkHand. Wise move in seizing the opportunity to meet WALL-E himself! I’d love to see the photos that you take, yeah.
He’s also the sound guy for the latest Star Trek movie 
And there is one sound effect in it that sounds so familiar to something I heard in WALL-E, but I cant put my finger on what it was.
Ben Burtt at a screening of Wall-E
I drove an hour north to the hinterlands, got off the main drag and headed into the headlands around the mountain north of San Francisco. I had been this way before, it makes a nice place to retire after years of long work, and lots of folks end up here, till they get tired of the foggy chill in the air and move to Arizona. I saw lots of cars ringed around a small green woodsy area in the middle of the small town’s center and found a spot to park. It was 7:40pm. Brought a freshly washed and dried sleeping bag and a low lawn chair with me and headed for the white 9x15 screen. There were already 250 people there who knew to come earlier and I saw only 2 good spots to plant myself. The area wasn’t much larger than 80x120 feet (25x37 meters), so it was crowded, and it was a challenge to find a path to walk around.
So I walked to the best available remaining spot, near the center and close to the screen. A few steps away from ‘the spot’ to ‘plant’ myself, Mr. Burtt walked right toward me, thru the lounging crowd and stood at ‘the spot’ to survey things then walked about still looking. He glanced at me twice and I looked away both times. (If you have ever been famous you know that a large percentage of people who are looking at you know exactly who you are but have never met you, still you have to be on your best behavior and return kind looks). He was dressed in dark blue pants, possibly new jeans, and a dark blue jacket to his waist and a matching blue cap, without any logo. It made sense for someone with thin short hair to protect their head in the chill.
He possibly thought I was ‘one of those’, an older Star Wars fan from the early years. I was an unfamiliar face. But I also am often mistaken as an artist or computer person and fit quite well in this affluent, eclectic town which houses many people who work at Pixar and nearby LucasFilms. Mr. Burtt had a very natural, unassuming look, and moved about the same way.
The battery was low on my camera, and I forgot to hit the right button to turn on my microphone. While trying to figure out what was wrong, the sky grew darker and a short was aborted, while the emcee kept apologizing for the wait. “Thank God they are waiting, or the best part will still be in the light”. The crowd was almost 100% affluent white, living in $1M++ homes. Mr. Lucas lives here too. So did my parents best friends. I settled in with my still warm chili and looked around. Lots of kiddies, a clot of high school kids with several beautiful blond girls. Everyone that I looked at seemed friendly, they all assumed I was from their area. I went to the Donation station, which sold popcorn too, and asked if they thought it was proper to take his picture or such. They said it might be ok, and that he might be delighted.
I sat over next to the emcee area, on a bench at the end of which was a weird looking device, perhaps a 60 year old camera fastened to a stand. A couple of us looked at it perplexed. I was curious and wondered if my Wall-E U-Command toy might find this of interest too.
Finally, the emcee introduced Ben at around 8:20. He went over a lot of material that we see in the 18:42 Sound Design portion of the dvd. He talked about how he was approached just a week after swearing off ever working on a robot movie again. He got a hand count of how many people had already seen the movie, about a third, and mentioned Elissa Knight, who voiced EVE. He pulled out a device from his jacket pocket which made the nervous fussbutt sounds that Wall-E makes when he tools thru the corridors of the Axiom, avoiding collision with the many other bots, and it’s a common sound he makes during EVE’s security replay in the Capt’s room. Then he demonstrated how he came up with Wall-E’s tractor tread motor noise, and used the strange looking device that made the noise. The number of sounds he had to come up with, 1500, was far in excess of the 800 for a StarWars movie and he found this a challenge and surprising. To make the crashing shopping carts, he and his daughter went to the local supermarket parking lot and crashed them around. It had taken 3 years of work. “Go see Up this weekend, a whole new group of fun characters.” The talk was about 8 minutes and afterwards he and a female helper hauled away the equipment. I don’t know if he stayed for the movie, he usually does.
Oddly, he never mentioned anyone at Lucas films who had influenced him, or even Mr. Stanton’s name, or anyone that I can think of except Ms. Knight. He never talked about the excitement the movie generated, or the awards or nominations. He never said if he was happy to have worked on it, or happy that so many people had loved it. I don’t know if this was due to aloofness, enforced humility, or whatever. It just seemed a bit odd.
They didn’t play Presto. The nearby kids were a real pain and just wouldn’t shut up until finally Wall-E chased down the spaceship yelling “Eva!” and some of the kids started crying, chiming “Eva!, Evaaa!!” By this time it was fully dark. The projector was small, no more than a square foot and 5 inches high. The quality of the picture was nearly excellent. Sound quality was ok, I didn’t hear much stereo, no distortion at louder sounds. A few people laughed at the funnier moments, but I didn’t hear anyone crying for joy, like you often hear. There was a good applause at the end. The folks didn’t stay for all of the credits and songs, and within 5 min of the ending, everyone was gone, except for the technical crew, and Mr. Burtt was nowhere to be found.
still remembering what he said, Under Construction, time for bed
Thanks for that report, DarkHand. Even though you didn’t get a photo with Ben Burtt, at least he looked in your general direction, and stood in the exact same spot you were eyeing off. I like your writing style. It’s very entertaining and funny. Oh yeah, all the kids try to imitate WALL-E, even in my cinema, but that’s just what they’re like… I suppose Ben had better things to do than hang around afterwards, but perhaps he did watch the whole movie. Frankly, I’d be surprised if he did stay the whole way through, but sometimes it’s fun to watch audience reactions for a film that you’ve worked on for years, but they’re watching it for the first time. Woulda been nice for Ben to do a meet and greet or a signing session, too, so you had the chance to meet him. Well, thanks for the write-up anyway. It sounds like it was fun and one of the many perks to living in California.