Episode 42 - Wow Experiences and the Sound of Star Wars

Today we’re going to talk about Wow experiences. What is a wow experience?

It’s moments that go above and beyond expectations. Two moments that came to mind for me, one was visiting the Redwood forest in northern California. The trees and the landscape there are gorgeous.

The other one was when I was 12 years old, waking up to the Nintendo 64 I’d saved up to buy for a year. The packaging was colorful and had bright pictures of all the amazing adventures I was about to have, everything was new and crisp, and I had a blast playing Super Mario 64 that day.

Wow experiences— going above and beyond, don’t come naturally. We don’t have them every day. But just think if you could create one for someone else and connect in that way, what it might do for them.

In his book Platform, Michael Hyatt mentions 10 principals to help you “Bake in the wow”, check it out to learn more.

I think one of those principals, surprise, can be especially powerful, because it’s unexpected. We usually dread what we don’t expect, but what if we could flip that and have some more good surprises?

One surprise that really took off came to theaters 41 years ago this month. We’re going to celebrate May the Fourth by talking a little bit about Star Wars. We already talked a little bit about George Lucas and his commitment through adversity. A lot of the special effects were things that had never been done before.

In terms of going above and beyond and baking in the wow, one thing that sticks out to me, something we don’t really think about, is the sound engineering. Most of the sounds in the movie, from the lightsabers to spaceships blasting off, R2-D2, Darth Vader’s famous breathing, were created by Ben Burrt.

Burrt worked for a year gathering sounds. Lightsabers, for example, came from film equipment and television static. Darth Vader’s breathing came from a scuba mask, and R2-D2 is electronic voice was created by Lucas and Burrt’s words getting filtered through an electronic synthesizer.

The sound effects in Star Wars are a wow you don’t necessarily think about, but they really nailed it, adding to  the feel of the Star Wars movies and helping bring them to life.

Some random facts I learned:

Han Solo was originally going to be a green alien

Chewbacca was based on Lucas’s dog, an Alaskan malamute named Indiana (who provided the name for Indiana Jones)

We’re also celebrating Bird Day, Lumpy Rug Day, International Tuba Day, and Space Day

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