In 1977, the first Star Wars film was released, and with it, the film industry got one of its most recognizable villains: Darth Vader. A tall silhouette in black armor, a sinister voice, and, of course, that breath.
Long before viewers were told why the character was breathing like that (in short, because of damage to his internal organs as a result of the battle), the sound had already done its job — it was remembered.
The idea for such breathing appeared at the stage of early concepts: according to the plot, Vader could not do without a breathing apparatus. George Lucas wanted it to be heard — as a symbol of his brokenness and distance from everything human.
And legendary sound designer Ben Burtt found a way to convey this: he took an old scuba diving regulator, put a microphone inside, and started experimenting with breathing. Some models sounded particularly rough and metallic — this effect became the basis for the famous “inhale-exhale” sound.
“I went to a dive shop and asked if I could record what different models of their regulators sounded like? I put a tiny microphone inside one of the masks and started breathing — it turned out that the older models sounded much more mechanical,” Burtt recalled.
