Star Wars Autographs
John Sylla

John Sylla Cantina - background voices and "walla"

Mr. Sylla was kind enough to answer a few questions for me about his experiences recording voices for "Star Wars". Thank you, Mr. Sylla! How did you get the job performing voice-overs for "Star Wars"? Did you have any previous experience doing that sort of work? I had met Ben Burtt when he visited my family's church probably in 1976. He lived in LA but was in Marin doing sound work on Star Wars. Ben was particularly ingenious about mixing and morphing real sounds for use in futuristic Star Wars contexts. From time to time, he would come to our house with his fancy tape recorder to record things--for instance, a grinding garage door that became the boulder sound in Raiders of the Lost Ark, or our Boxer Pal who became ET's grumbles before ET learned to speak words, or our dachshund Max who became the growl for the rancor monster in Jaba's pit. My brother was particularly interested in film, so we stayed in touch. Ben knew it would be a kick for us to have our voices in the film too. He called and had us come up to the sound studio at one of the Lucas houses in San Anselmo. He had been working with a linguistics grad student who knew some exotic language, possibly a Native American and/or Malaysian dialect, and we were just filling in the "walla." I read from the original Latin of the Aeneid by Virgil. It was an undulating passage about sailing across the seas. I also said something coarse in Latin. My brother said "Proelia Stellarum" which in Latin means "Wars of the Stars." All of these are in at least some version, but the theatrical release has 6 tracks compared to the 2 (or 1) for home video. So I can pick it out in the version, but it's hard to describe in advance. My brother also went with Ben to the same church where, on megaphone, he called out "All pilots to your stations...all pilots to your stations" used in the rebel hangar sequence later. This was the first such work I did. Can you tell me about the recording sessions? Were you by yourself, or were there others performing at the same time? What was the direction of George Lucas and Ben Burtt like? It was Tom, me and Ben. Ben had a great ear and would say "do it again, don't hesitate." It was kind of like "Have more feeling." But the whole thing took under 15 minutes. At the time, how did you think "Star Wars" would perform at the box office? What was your reaction after its release? I was naturally delighted. Although I had by then read the novelized version and been to a test screening--where everybody who worked on it was surprised the audience cheered at the first jump to hyperspace--I still saw it twice on the first day. Other Star Wars characters played: None Source: John Sylla

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