The Incredible Voice of Poggle The Lesser

I thought Poggle The Lesser's voice was incredible. Poggle is the leader of the Geonosians. The flying-alien-termite-looking creatures in the arena. Check out snippets of how they created it from the latest Star Wars Insider Magazine #65 (Darth Vader on the cover):

ILM Animator Charles Alleneck was the one who did all of Poggle's rehearsing -

Poggle's rehearsal voice was that of editor Ben Burtt played backward...We did not receive the final Poggle voice until very late in the production. When we first heard the voice, we were a little surprised. It sounded like a bunch of random sounds sandwiched together...Burtt had created a combination of guttural and clucking sounds overlaid with high-pitched buzzing noises.

Burtt said of the experience, "We started out by speaking English and slowly changed a word at a time, and then we started talking through the edge of a piece of paper making a buzzy sound." To the buzzing he added the clicks and pops that were blended with the "words" of Poggle's actual speech. While at first the sounds might have seemed impossible to believe as language, Lucas felt that as long we could articulate Poggle's attitude through the sound, then the audience would follow.

Incredible job they did!

 

Hey, thanks for the explanation. I didn't know that. Poggle's bizarre verbal clickings are a camp highlight of AOTC for me

 

It's a great voice, but hard to mimmick.

 

I was reminded of the "clicking" languages that certain African tribes use. Anyone ever seen The Gods Must Be Crazy?

 

Any South Park fans out their?

Poggle the Lesser sounded like the little Ethiopian chap that swapped homes with Cartman, Starvin Marvin. All the Ethiopians spoke with an accenuated clicking voice, very funny and very much like poggle.

Has GL found inspiration in South Park???

 

Notice how much "The Gods Must Be Crazy" rips off LOTR?

Ring to Mount Doom...
Coke bottle to Edge of the World...

I love those clicking sounds. They are apparently denoted by "!"

 

But try and do a Poggle impression. It's impossible. I keep trying to say "I'm going to send my warriors to the catacombs", but I just spray the screen with spit.

 

To me Poggle talked like the aliens in the movie "The Ariival"

 

I can do Poggle fairly well, if anyone can come up with a way for me to record myself I'll be happy to be an idiot for this thread

Kimerow hooooooontey!

 

That's pretty technical stuff. I guess you could just record yourself and place it on the computer and create a link? I have no idea, disregard that last comment.

Poggle's voice was bizarre to say the least. If you can mimmick it I gotta hear.

<[-]> Saber

 

Yes, thanks for confirming my suspicion that Poggle's voice started out as English spoken backwards! An old Bob and Doug MacKenzie routine I have on tape has them pulling this stunt (badly)--I was reminded of it when I first heard Poggle speak.

All the other enhancements sounded like pretty good synthesized versions of genuine insect-speak to me. If you can find an overgrown meadow on a hot August night, a lot of crickets, katydids and the like will usually be happy to demonstrate their own version of click-talk for you. A small colony of paper wasps resided in my greenhouse one summer a couple of years ago and when one wasp would crawl over another when working on their nest, the trampled one would often make a buzzy or even squawking sound, just like Poggle!

 

Didnt Celeborn do the voice for him? Or did I fall into another trap for gullible people?

 

Not gullible at all. 'Celeborn'--Marton C. (I can never remember how to spell the guy's last name)--was hired to do his voice and act as a stand-in and apparantly did record dialog, although what it was like, whether it was even in English or something alien, I don't know. The actor also apparantly thought the character was going to be done with elaborate make-up and an animatronic mask at one point. Instead, the Geonosians wound up being done as CGI and I suppose their voices then didn't seem alien enough or something, and were redone. I got most of this via older articles the actor has or had up at his website (musingsofmarton.com, I think...found it through google). I gather he lost his movie credit because his voice wasn't used.