Jamie Benning, Mark Newbold, and Clayton Sandell go beyond the gates of Skywalker Ranch to the heart of Skywalker Sound, the industry-leading post-production company founded by George Lucas occupying a picturesque corner of this iconic property.
Just getting here unfolds like a movie scene.
It begins when you turn off a winding, sun-dappled, two-lane road flanked by tall Coastal Redwoods, Black Oak, and Douglas Fir trees. Just ahead: a mossy-green stone wall and a large wooden gate that mysteriously swings itself open.
Clearing security, the winding route continues into a rustic covered bridge. Emerging on the other side into daylight is like a cinematic fade-in from black, transporting you from the ordinary world to the extraordinary.
Passing a fruit and vegetable stand and the occasional flock of wild turkeys, the surroundings feel very much like the dairy farm that once operated here. Rounding the last curve, the trees pass by and finally reveal our main character: a large brick winery tucked snugly between rolling green hills, overlooking a tranquil blue lake.
There is no sign that gives any clue to what’s really inside the building, save for one. Above the driveway entrance, a vine-covered metal arch bears three words: “VIANDANTE DEL CIELO.” Translated from Italian, it means “Skywalker.”
But here’s the plot twist. You soon discover that despite a few bricked-up windows, this 1880s-era winery is only about 40 years old, an elegantly crafted facade hiding the most modern and cutting-edge temple to the art of sound and filmmaking ever built.
Welcome to Skywalker Sound.
The Technical Building (Credit: Skywalker Sound)
The industry-leading post-production company founded by George Lucas occupies a picturesque corner of his Skywalker Ranch, a mix of mountains and pastures 40 minutes north of San Francisco that the legendary filmmaker envisioned as a place for creative minds to escape the exhaust fumes and clamor of Hollywood studio backlots.
“In the morning, there’s mist coming up from Ewok Lake, and there’s dew on everything,” says award-winning sound designer and re-recording mixer Bonnie Wild, who started work here in 2012. “It’s kind of crazy-beautiful. It looks like a very well-shot movie, just driving up to it.”
Formally known as the Technical Building, the 153,000-square-foot Skywalker Sound facility features 15 sound design suites, 50 editing suites, 6 feature mix stages, an ADR stage, 2 Foley stages, the 300-seat Stag theater, and a world-class scoring stage.
“George built us this incredible facility that is like nothing else in the world, sitting on this incredibly beautiful Ranch,” says Skywalker Sound senior vice president and general manager Josh Lowden.
Academy Award-winning sound design veteran Gary Rydstrom joined the company in 1983 when it was still known as Sprocket Systems and based in the Lucasfilm offices in a San Rafael, California, industrial park. He remembers coming to work at the Ranch when the company moved to the Tech Building in 1987.
“The experience of driving to the Ranch — the hills, the lake, the nature part of it — was kind of overwhelming. I can’t think of another place in the movie business that combines classic architecture, natural beauty, and cutting-edge technology,” Rydstrom tells Skysound.com.
A Vision of the Future Built on Examples of the Past
George Lucas would spend the 1970s based in San Anselmo, a small town in Marin County near San Francisco. In 1979, Lucasfilm would take on as its Southern California office what was once an egg-shipment warehouse on Lankershim Boulevard in Los Angeles, directly across from Universal Studios, where the company first found success with American Graffiti (1973).
While at the “Egg Company,” Lucas started sketching (on his preferred yellow legal paper) images and ideas for what would eventually become Skywalker Ranch. It was ultimately constructed in 1978 on the Bulltail Ranch property, a 2,500-acre former dairy farm in Marin County, which he had purchased with the proceeds from Star Wars: A New Hope (1977).
It was an idyllic setting for what would eventually become the hub of all things Lucasfilm. But before the first nail could be hammered or beam sawed, plenty of elements needed to be worked out.
Lucas employed TMW Architects and, based on his own detailed concepts, plans were drawn up. To create an authentic Victorian-era house rather than merely mimic one, Lucas and his team set up their own art-glass studio (with stained glass created by local artisan Eric Christensen) and a mill shop that would use recycled wood from existing structures to craft many of the panels on the Ranch. With dashes of Art Nouveau, Mission, and Arts and Crafts, the house was designed to accommodate an eclectic array of styles, spanning late 19th-century and turn-of-the-20th-century approaches to bring life to a Ranch that appeared as if it had been there for decades.
Charles Champlin, author of the 1992 book, George Lucas: The Creative Impulse, explained, “The style of the buildings, their placement on the property, their floor plans, and their detailing, down to the doorknobs and light-switch panels, were all Lucas’s, as was the overall concept for the place: The buildings should intrude upon the tranquil landscape as little as possible, should seem to have belonged to the land for a long time, and should be invisible from the highway the building clusters even out of sight from each other.”
True to form for a mythmaker like Lucas, there was a storyline, as the maker himself explained in The Creative Impulse.
“The histories helped everyone working on the project understand how they could have divergent styles side by side.” As Lucas discussed further in Architectural Digest in 2004, “My taste has always been romantic. I think my heart lies at about the year 1910. I love that style.”
The Ranch’s fictional history is lavish and involved. The Main House was built in 1869, with Gatehouse and Stable House added in 1870. The great brick winery (better known as the Technical Building, home of Skywalker Sound) was built in 1880, then extended and remodeled in Art Moderne style in 1934. A library wing was added to the Main House in 1911, and the Craftsman-style Brook House was built in 1913. The final expansion came in 1915 with a Carriage House. What architect or builder couldn’t help but be inspired by a story like that?
However, before construction had even begun at Skywalker Ranch, a number of notable happenings had already taken place there. The first creatives to work on the Ranch were Ben Burtt, Gary Summers, and Randy Thom. As Thom explains, “George had bought the property in 1978, and Ben, myself, and Gary, who was one of Ben’s assistants, would come out to the Ranch long before any of the new buildings were put up, when it was still basically a dairy. I’m told it had once been the Marin Deer Hunting Club. We would come out and record things. We did a lot of recording of bullet ricochets. There’s a real science to getting a bullet to make that kind of ricochet sound.”
Director of sound design Randy Thom (right) conducts a field recording along the shore of Lake Ewok (Credit: Skywalker Sound).
The first Lucasfilm Company Picnic took place on the property in 1978, starting a tradition that continues to this day. Later, buying a further two adjoining ranches to make a total of nearly 5,000 acres, only five percent of the land could be built on, leaving the rest as an agricultural zone and a natural buffer to the world beyond. Finally completed in 1985, the 50,000-square-foot Victorian-style Main House was the centerpiece. Across the site, there are more than a dozen buildings, including the Inn with its guest accommodations, a health club, a seven-acre olive grove, organic gardens, and lots of animals.
Designed by BAR Architects and completed in 1987, the Technical Building sits a quarter of a mile away from the Main House. Appearing externally as an 1880s winery covered in ivy, the first film project to be sound-mixed at the facility was Francis Ford Coppola’s Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988).
Known as Sprocket Systems (which oversaw all post-production for Lucasfilm, not just sound) until the name change to Skywalker Sound in 1989, the company’s home was C Building at the Kerner facility in nearby San Rafael. With the move to bespoke headquarters at Skywalker Ranch, it was all hands on deck, as Randy Thom explains. “We all contributed ideas. Tomlinson Holman was the person George put in charge of actually getting the Tech Building constructed, where Skywalker Sound was going to be housed, but all of us had ideas about the rooms and how the building might be structured in order to facilitate the work.”
Lucas was determined to create an inspirational workplace for all members of the team, especially those who often toil in darkened rooms, as he explained in The Creative Impulse.
“Editors! In some places, they’re in windowless rooms ten hours a day. Having been an editor, I’ve always thought that was wrong. People need to get out into the light and walk around and hear the birds sing. So this place was designed to give us all a sense that there’s a world outside. Writing and editing have significant creative impact on the final movie. For me, movies are made in the editing rooms. That’s where I do the major part of my creative work, and it’s extremely important to me that there be an atmosphere conducive to solving problems and coming up with good ideas.”
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