Wilhelm Scream

The Wilhelm scream is a of a man screaming that has been used in more than 359 movies and television episodes, beginning in 1951 for the film Distant Drums. The scream is often used when someone is shot, falls from a great height, or is thrown from an explosion, and is most commonly used in films and television.

Most likely voiced by actor and singer Sheb Wooley, the sound is named after Private Wilhelm, a character in The Charge at Feather River, a 1953 Western in which the character gets shot with an arrow. This was its first use from the Warner Bros. stock sound library, although The Charge at Feather River is believed to have been the third movie to use the effect.

The effect gained new popularity (its use often becoming an in-joke) after it was used in the Star Wars series, the Indiana Jones series, Disney cartoons, and many other blockbuster films, as well as many television programs and video games.

The Wilhelm scream originates from a series of sound effects recorded for the 1951 movie Distant Drums. In a scene from the film, soldiers are wading through a swamp in the Everglades, and one of them is bitten and dragged underwater by an alligator. The scream for that scene was recorded later in a single take, along with five other short, pained screams, which were labelled "man getting bit by an alligator, and he screamed." The fifth scream was used for the soldier in the alligator scene—but the fourth, fifth, and sixth screams recorded in the session were also used earlier in the film—when three Native Americans are shot during a raid on a fort. Although takes 4, 5, and 6 are the most recognizable, all the screams are referred to as "Wilhelm" by those in the sound community.

The Wilhelm scream's major breakout in popular culture came from motion picture sound designer Ben Burtt, who discovered the original recording (which he found as a studio reel labeled "Man being eaten by alligator") and incorporated it into a scene in Star Wars in which Luke Skywalker shoots a Stormtrooper off of a ledge, with the effect being used as the Stormtrooper is falling. Burtt is credited with naming the scream after Private Wilhelm (see The Charge at Feather River). Over the next decade, Burtt began incorporating the effect in other films on which he worked, including most projects involving George Lucas or Steven Spielberg, notably the rest of the subsequent Star Wars films, as well as the Indiana Jones movies. Other sound designers picked up on the effect, and inclusion of the sound in films became a tradition among the community of sound designers. In what is perhaps an in-joke within an in-joke, one of the scenes from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom actually features a man being eaten by a crocodile (closely related to the alligator) accompanied by the scream.

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