In honour of ‘Star Wars Day,’ Apple has published a documentary short video, Behind the Mac: Skywalker Sound, that takes audiences behind the scenes at the legendary studio and their use of Macs throughout their process.
Skywalker Sound, to give you a sense of what it is, is a world-class sound design, editing, mixing, and audio post-production studio owned and conceptualized by George Lucas, the creator of the epic Star Wars universe.
Skywalker is stated to be developing sound creativity and transforming the industry with the help of 130 Mac Pro racks, 50 iMac, 50 MacBook Pro, and 50 Mac mini computers running Pro Tools as their primary audio programme, plus a fleet of iPad, iPhone, and Apple TV devices.
The film, which commemorates the annual “May the Fourth” Star Wars day, is available on Apple’s YouTube account. The film follows the ranch’s renowned community of creators as they use Mac to explore the possibilities of sound and share the secrets behind classic moments from the Star Wars galaxy and beyond, from Foley artists to sound designers and mixers.
Sound editor Ryan Frias gives a tour of Skywalker Sound’s central machine room, which he describes as
basically the brains of all the stage operations. As creative people, you don’t want technology to slow you down, When you have a thought and you really want it out there on a blank canvas like that, you really need fast tools that can give you the results as fast as you think.
More information about how Skywalker Sound develops its renowned, cinematic soundscapes can be found in Apple’s entire press release.