Brian’s Blog

Awhile ago I was out partying with a friend and noticed he had Batman Returns at his place. I borrowed it and finally got around to finding the Wilhelm clip. I initially tried to find it based of chapter titles but had no luck and while watching clips thought “I really want to watch this movie.” So Sarah and I started watching it a couple of nights ago and then stopped because it got late. We came back to it last night and did not finish nor will we.

I am a bit of a Batman fan and I thought I liked Batman and Batman Returns but after having watched part of Batman Returns I don’t think I really like either of them. One might think that Batman Begins spoiled it for me but I wasn’t entirely happy with that movie either. I’ve realized that Kevin Conroy is my Batman. He is the voice actor for Batman in Batman The Animated Series and Justice League both by Bruce Timm. Batman Returns and the Animated Series were both released in 1992, however the movie was in June and the series started in September. I believe that explains why I had thought Batman Returns was good – it was before my favorite Batman.

We did make it to Chapter 17 of Batman Returns which includes one Wilhelm.

That 8x fast forward came in handy yet again as neither my wife nor I could put up with Planet of the Apes after half an hour and we ended up fast forwarding to the Wilhelms. Unfortunately, the Wilhelm Site doesn’t tell you when the scream occurs so I had to fast forward through the whole movie as they occur in the end chapters.

This raises another gripe of mine. I wrote the Hollywood Lost and Found admins with information about the chapter locations of some screams I have found and have not heard back at all. It is as if my e-mail disappeared in the ether. Not even a “Hey read the FAQ”, which I did later, “and you will find out we think it is more fun to hunt them down.” It might be fun for them but I’m not very patient and really didn’t want to put up with Planet of the Apes. So I am posting where the screams occur in movies for all the other impatient people.

So with that out of the way, one scream occurs in Chapter 29 and possibly 2 occur in Chapter 31. I need to listen one of the ones in Chapter 31 some more as I am not positive about it becuase it may be one of the lesser known screams.

This weekend I discovered that my DVD player can fast forward at 8x.

I went to the library today and naturally decided to look for some Wilhelm movies. The only one that I saw on the shelf and remembered having a scream in it was A Star is Born with Judy Garland. Now, I had no intention of actually watching the movie but had to find the 2 Willhelms in it. One is listed as being during “the rehearsal record of ‘Somewhere There’s a Someone'” was fairly easy to find by studying the DVD insert with chapter titles. It was in Chapter 39 titled “Someone at Last”.
The second clip, which is actually the first from the movie, I found by using the 8x fast forward on my DVD player. As I was watching it at 8x the dog kept on wanting to play with me and I frequently looked away missing minutes of the movie. I still managed to catch the scream in Chapter 19 as it was fairly obvious when “Charge at Feather River” was being screened. It was actually kind of fun trying to make up a story line while watching it without sound and people moving fast. Give it a try sometime.

So Kees had brought it to my attention awhile ago that I may have missed one scream from Return of the Jedi. It appears in Special Edition version of the movie where the celebration scence is extended and includes the planets of Naboo, Tatooine and Coruscant. A Stormtrooper supposedly takes a dive in Chapter 49 of the DVD I have, I didn’t see it but I did hear the Wilhelm right before the fireworks start.

I have been looking at Spider-Man for a while now but haven’t found the scream. I have a good lead and will listen for it tonight.

I am constantly reminded how much reading helps. While processing clip #16 from the Matriculated short of The Animatrix, I was frustrated at where avisplit was putting the end boundary. I was specifying a specific end frame and avisplit was disregarding it, and I continuously tried to move the end frame with no change. Reading the man for avisplit again I discovered the ‘-m’ option. This forces the split at the upper boundary (end frame number) instead of the lower boundary. This makes more sense to me as I would rather have padding before the scream to setup the context than after the scream.

Scream location: 13:55 seconds in Matriculated of The Animatrix

Leann leant me her copy of Anchorman and conveniently marked the DVD with information regarding the location of the Wilhelm scream. It occurs in Chapter 15 at minute mark 1:04:35 of the “Unrated, Uncut & Uncalled For!” version. I have already dumped the clip and will add it to the work in progress video. I’m kind of sad I didn’t watch the movie first and then do the clip. But I’m not a patient individual.

A coworker of mine lent me the Indiana Jones box set of DVDs and that was a gold mine of Wilhelm screams. Raiders of the Lost Ark contained two, one in Chapter 23 and one in Chapter 24. The Temple of Doom had three, one in Chapter 3, one in Chapter 4 and a final one in Chapter 29. Three actually seemed like over kill for one movie. I was also surprised to discover that the name of the club in the beginning of Temple of Doom is called “Club Obi Wan”. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade only had one and that was located in Chapter 28. I was hoping to be able to get Julian Glover, who plays Walter Donovan, in the Last Crusade clip as he appears in the clip from The Empire Strikes Back as the AT-AT commander. However, I think it would have made the Last Crusade clip way too long.

I showed the 14 clips to my wife again and she still thinks I am crazy.

I rented Peter Jackson’s King Kong as I had not seen it yet and also because there is a Wilhelm in it. However, I became so engrossed in the movie that I actually forgot to watch for the Wilhelm for the first third of the movie. When I heard the distinctive scream I immediately reached for the remote so I could jump back and hear it again. However, I was met by staunch resistence from my wife and just had to mentally note that it occurred in Chapter 30 during the dinosaur stampede when someone falls off a cliff.

I actually found a screenshot of this Wilhelm and detailed information about the scene from Revenge of the Sith. However, I was not having a lot of luck finding the scene myself. Luckily, my friend Kees was able to recall the chronology of the scene. I came home tonight and was quickly able add one more clip, from Chapter 5 of the DVD, to the collection.

Incidentally, what a interesting marketing ploy on Lucas’s part . . . “Let’s write an article about all the Easter Eggs in the movie a week after in releases in theatres.” That’ll get people to come back!

How do these things happen? I wish I had a reasonable explanation but I don’t. All I can do is frame the sequence of events that lead to my vision and latest obsession.

I rode my bike home from work to find my wife and kids watching Return of the Jedi. They were pretty far into it as I recall – the scene where Luke surrenders to Vader and is taken to the Death Star. I watched it for a fair bit with them and suddenly recalled the Wilhelm Scream. The Wilhelm Scream is collection of mainly two distinctive screams that appears in a number of movies. I don’t think I had ever explicitly seen the Wilhelm and ran off to my office to read about it. After we finished watching the movie we returned to Chapter 12 of Return of the Jedi to watch the scream. It was around then that the idea occurred to me.What if one were to rip every Wilhelm scream and create a video montage of them? Or given that it occurs in at least 124 movies, what if was a collective (open source if you will) art project? One where people could rip their own Wilhelm clips and submit them to the collection or support it in other ways. It would also be possible to remix the ensemble video by chronological order, alphabetical order or a variety of other ways.

Looking at the movies that the Wilhelm occurs in I realized I have quite of few of them lying around so I started to whip something together. I plan on writing a separate post with a technical explanation of how I go about getting a clip and putting them together. I started with the Wilhelm from Chapter 12 of Return of the Jedi from the Star Wars Box Set when Luke hits somebody with his lightsaber and they fall in the Sarlacc pit. From there I went to the Empire Strikes Back and got the Wilhelm from Chapter 14 when a Rebel soldier manning a canon is shot by an AT-AT. In A New Hope I got the double scream from Chapter 37 when Luke and Leia are shooting it out with some Storm Troopers before swinging across the chasm.

The next not so logical step was Attack of the Clones as I was certain it was one of the first couple of chapters. It ended up being in Chapter 3 when Senator Amidala’s ship is blown up and someone is thrown from the explosion. The clip from The Phantom Menace ended up being fairly long as it was two screams rather close to each other. It is found in Chapter 37 when two Naboo pilots are shot trying to get to their ships in the hangar. I looked fairly diligently for the Revenge of the Sith Wilhelm but could not find it.

The next movie I had lying around was Toy Story and I thought it would also be a good break from all the Star Wars clips. I also keep reading that Joss Whedon is somehow associated with Toy Story and really want to watch it again. I quickly found the scene in Chapter 10 when Buzz is “accidentally” knocked out of the bedroom window by Woody.

I took all six clips that I had and merged them together to realize my vision. One thing I have noticed about video editing is you see the content so much during the creation process that the end result is sometimes hard to watch. Luckily the Wilhelm clip is short and I don’t really feel that way with it. My wife was thorougly unimpressed but my seven year old twin boys dig it. I wonder how many more clips I can get, or how many more people I can get to help me out.