The Wilhelm Scream in Star Wars (EP1 - EP7)

You’ve no doubt heard it many times in video games as well, in everything from Red Dead Redemption to God of War to Team Fortress to Grand Theft Auto to The Witcher 3. The video below, which runs for almost 15 minutes, contains many of its more notable uses in games:

Wilhelm Scream Compilation in Video Games | Behind the Bleeps and Bloops

Anyway! Enough of the history lesson. We’re here because last month a series of old recordings from USC’s archives were uploaded to the internet, and among them was a nice, clean version of the entire take that the Wilhelm Scream originates from, during which you can hear Wooley’s alternate renditions of his death cry before they settle on the version we’re all familiar with today:

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As Paste report, the person to thank for this is “veteran audio engineer Craig Smith, a graduate of USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, who works as the Academic Sound Coordinator at the School of Film/Video at the California Institute of the Arts”. Smith has been preserving USC’s old tapes for years, and this recording in particular was previously part of “the original sound effects library of small Hollywood company Sunset Editorial”, now defunct, which had a particular focus on making and storing sound effects for TV shows.

And, it turns out, Star Wars films. And video games. And...