Skywalker Sound’s supervising sound editor Matthew Wood and sound designer David W. Collins talk to Brandon Wainerdi at StarWars.com about the soundscape they created for Star Wars: Skeleton Crew.
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 heavilypitched 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 theRaiders 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.”
Head to StarWars.com to read the interview in full, and stream the first five episodes of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew on Disney+ now.
