The History Of A Scream

Have you ever watched a movie, and thought something about the cries of terror seemed oddly familiar? You may have just encountered the Wilhelm scream, an oddity of film audio editing. An actor recorded a scream in 1951 as an overdub (where they replace the existing audio with a new sound effect) for the film "Distant Drums", and the recorded scream has been popping up ever since. The audio editor of Star Wars (Ben Burtt) started it; he’s included the scream in most of the movies he has edited, and other editors have followed suit.
 
So, you can hear the scream of the actor (who was probably Sheb Wolley, the creator of the song "Purple People Eater") in a huge range of movies, from the Star Wars films, the Lord of the Rings films, Indiana Jones and even TV shows like the X Files, Angel and Family Guy. And audio editors keep using it in films (although Burtt himself has stopped). The Star Wars fan site Theforce.net has a compilation video of movies featuring the scream here, and you can download a clean version of the scream here. Why not stick it in your next video as a tribute to this bizarre bit of Hollywood history?
 
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