Porgs: A sea-bird species native to the planet Ahch-To. Doe-eyed, web-footed, based on real-life puffins and so undeniably adorable that even a hungry Chewbacca couldn’t eat a flame-roasted one in front of its kin.
Another big contributing factor to the porgs’ charm? The way they sounded. Sound designer Ren Klyce revealed the process for finding the perfect sound for the cuddly creatures in an interview with the official Disney Fan Club:
Rian gave us a bunch of adjectives as to what he didn’t want it to be. He didn’t want them to sound screechy, or irritating, or squawky. It was a matter of experimenting through four or five versions of the sound.”
So what made for the perfect porg call? A surprising mixture of a familiar farm fowl and some other well-known birds:
At Skywalker Sound there’s a chicken coop with these little chickens, and Coya Elliott, our first assistant, went down and recorded those chickens. And then we took that sound and slowed it down and stretched it out and found little chirps. We found this man who releases doves at weddings and we asked him to come down so we could record them. So we have a little snippet of that [turkey call], a little bit of chicken, a little dove, and cut it all together.”
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Did Star Wars: The Last Jedi create sonics for the porgs suitable to their cuteness level? Sound off in the comments.
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