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An episode of Disney Gallery — Star Wars: The Mandalorian describes the application that was used to synthesize a young Luke Skywalker’s voice.
In a new episode of Disney Gallery — Star Wars: The Mandalorian, series creator Jon Favreau and other members of the crew discuss the technology used to synthesize Luke Skywalker’s voice.
As reported by Collider, the feature provides insight into how the Season 2 finale of The Mandalorian was made, with one part discussing how the show recreated a young Luke. While the fact that Mark Hamill didn’t voice his Jedi Master in the finale has been common knowledge for a while, the specifics behind the technology used to create his voice haven’t really been discussed until now. “Something people didn’t realize is that his voice isn’t real,” Favreau explained in the video. “His voice, the young Luke Skywalker voice, is completely synthesized using an application called Respeecher.”
Once the secret about Luke’s voice was out, many fans were confused. Hamill is an accomplished voice actor, having lent his voice to some of the most recognizable characters in animation, including Joker from Batman: The Animated Series and, more recently, Skeletor from Masters of the Universe: Revelation. Why not have him voice what’s arguably his most iconic character? According to Disney Gallery, the answer is that the crew wanted Luke to sound the same way he did in the original Star Wars trilogy.
Supervising sound editor Matthew Wood described how the Respeecher application works and how they spliced together old sound bites to simulate a young Hamill. “It’s a neural network you feed information into and it learns. So I had archival material from Mark in that era,” he said. “We had clean recorded ADR from the original films, a book on tape he’d done from those eras, and then also Star Wars radio plays he had done back in that time. I was able to get clean recordings of that, feed it into the system, and they were able to slice it up and feed their neural network to learn this data.”
While the Respeecher application fooled many viewers, not all the technology from The Mandalorian‘s Season 2 finale was well received. The de-aging technology, for example, was heavily criticized; in fact, a YouTuber created a better de-aged version of Luke by using Deepfake techniques, and now works for Lucasfilm.
While a new poster has confirmed that the Jedi Master and his new Padawan Grogu will appear in Season 3 of The Mandalorian, it is currently unknown if the Respeecher and de-aging technologies will once again be used to bring Luke to life.
The first two seasons of The Mandalorian and Disney Gallery — Star Wars: The Mandalorian are available to stream on Disney+.
Source: Collider
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