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Has anyone ever heard (!) of this before?
It's a little movie in joke apparently that I'll be looking/listening out for from now on! 😁
There’s another one that I don’t know is an actual recognised thing, but you know that sound you get when opening a door in doom 2. Heard that loads in the late 90s/noughties on tv shows.
Yep, heard of it years ago, along with the Amen break. (a mate does film scores/video game scores etc)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amen_break
Yes, it’s a load of films use it as a kind of in joke.
Yep. It's well known to those who know it well.
Been known about for ages, there are a few others snuck in places too but can't remember them!
The newer ones that are all over YouTube and I've spotted in a few movies is the Coin sound from Sonic the Hedgehog and the Alert sound from Metal Gear Solid.
I've known about it for at least 10 years and when you're tuned into it you notice it everywhere.
I kind of wish I could unlearn it.
Isn't canned laughter also taken from an original recording from maybe the 50's ? so that all on it are now most likely dead.
Isn’t there one for an eagle? Everytime a film shows some sort of wilderness there will be the stock cry of an Eagle in the background. Once you’ve noticed it, it crops up everywhere. Pretty sure it was an eagle specific to the US too, but weird to hear it in the Aus outback, Pennines etc.
I knew about the Amen break, it's on thousands of tracks. Sadly, by the time the copyright owner knew about it the statute of limitations had passed so they didn't get a penny in royalties. And the drummer that actually devised and played it wasn't even the copyright owner, officially at least, and died homeless and penniless possibly never knowing the impact his 4 bars had had.
Video games nerds who played Magic Carper will often hear the ‘whoosh’ effect that was used for spells, may have been a carper boost, in the game. It often appears in films and TV.
And there’re one for car alarms being set to alarm, like a double chirp. Taken from a US 80’s car. Still hear it on films for modern cars. Drives me nuts!
Going for a hat trick here.
Isn’t canned laughter also taken from an original recording from maybe the 50’s ? so that all on it are now most likely dead.
Theres a fascinating documentary about sound design in sport - that in sports coverage you can hear things that the competitors and spectators can't. If you watch olympic rowing on TV you can hear the oars hit the water - if you were on the river bank all you would hear is the the helicopters and speedboats. Similarly you can hear the swish of skis in the Winter Olympics even though the camera is half a mile away from the action. In both cases wild-tracks have been recorded during practice runs and theres someone playing along to the live footage with a sampler.
The London 2012 Olympics had 600 sound technicians and 4000 microphones - microphones that would hear an arrow in flight between the archer and the target for instance. There are contact microphones on balance beams in gymnastic recording 'sounds' that nobody has ever actually heard - watching live you can hear inside the equipment.
In a lot of horse racing even when the camera is filming across to the far side of the course on a long lens you can hear the horses hooves - rather than try to record that live broadcasters have been using the same slowed down sound-library recording of stampeding buffalo for decades.
Its fascinating how important sound is to sports coverage whether its real or fake - 'The sound of the 2008 Wimbledon Mens Final" won a bafta - just for the craft of being able to modulate between the silence of breathless anticipation and the roars of cheering and celebration in a live broadcast
A really worthwhile Sunday listen
And there’re one for car alarms being set to alarm, like a double chirp. Taken from a US 80’s car. Still hear it on films for modern cars. Drives me nuts!
Theres a sound of chirping frogs that indicates being 'in the middle of nowhere' anywhere in the world in movies but its a species of frog you'd only hear in the countryside around Los Angeles.
They're still sticking it in new films, I last heard it in Chicken Run : Dawn of the Nugget
The original recording was only discovered recently.... https://www.pastemagazine.com/movies/filmmaking/wilhelm-scream-original-recording-session-audio-discovered
/cotyote howls.
Isn’t there one for an eagle? Every time a film shows some sort of wilderness there will be the stock cry of an Eagle in the background.
Mountain vistas, empty deserts and everybloodywhere in between!
I had a little google and this nugget of wisdom popped up. Spoiler because I can't embed twitter: it's not an eagle!
https://twitter.com/USFWS/status/1611478902714650656?s=20
In this bbc film https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08flyr2
they kept playing the same clip of a buzzard crying and a raven at intervals all the way through it. It made my teeth itch.
Pretty much any 'jungle' or mysterious wilderness soundtrack has a kookaburra sound in it. Especially making as it's often the African wilderness...
A really worthwhile Sunday listen
@maccruiskeen - thanks, I really enjoyed that while I was having a Sunday potter in the kitchen!
It's lovely isn't it - really interesting guy at the centre of it all. And for something thats about sound he's are really lovely voice to listen to.
Its funny I watch the TDF avidly but never really manage to stick with the Giro or the Vuelta and I wonder whether theres a sound dimension missing from the the coverage- just seems empty and colourless somehow but can never put my finger on it.
One I hear everywhere is the standard US railroad train horn. Just reminds me of half-life 2.
Just watched Sharpe's Seige .... all over it 🙂
Chaffinch song turns up everywhere.
There are also 'things' that have made multiple appearances in movies.
There can be fairly mundane things - dresses get lots of outings in different movies, the same car appears in Evil Dead, three different Spiderman films and about a dozen other movies. There are even newspapers that have cropped up in movies made decades apart. But there are some quite bespoke custom built props that make multiple appearances like The 'PKE Meters' from Ghostbusters which are a bit of a signature prop but they were recycled in 'They Live' and 'Suburban Commando'
The lab from 'Young Frankenstein' reuses the props form the original Frankenstein movie that was made over 40 years previously
Something that will be interesting to see if it will be revealed to be in lots of movies is Obi-Wan's robes from the first Starwars Movie - they were thought to be 'lost' but had in fact been chucking in with general monk's vestments at a film / theatre costume store and came to light again decades later being worn by an extra in the background of 'The Mummy'. In the meantime the likelihood is that had probably been hired out as a monk's costume for fancy dress and could have been used in all sorts of theatre shows . The chances are it was hired out to various film and TV productions over the years so might have made more screen appearances the anyone has yet realised
Remember the prison scene in Face Off where all the prisoners wear magnetic boots? When they're activated you get stuck to the floor.
They're the same boots that let Bob Hoskins and Jon Leguizamo jump really high in Super Mario Brothers.
It’s lovely isn’t it – really interesting guy at the centre of it all. And for something thats about sound he’s are really lovely voice to listen to.
Its funny I watch the TDF avidly but never really manage to stick with the Giro or the Vuelta and I wonder whether theres a sound dimension missing from the the coverage- just seems empty and colourless somehow but can never put my finger on it.
There was so much that now seems obvious but had never occurred to me. As with the boat race, the TDF without active intervention on sound design would be largely noise from helicopters and camera bikes!
For some peculiar reason I’m not getting any of the facilities at the top of the posting box for bold, italics, etc, and photos won’t post either. 🤷🏼
“ Theres a sound of chirping frogs that indicates being ‘in the middle of nowhere’ anywhere in the world in movies but its a species of frog you’d only hear in the countryside around Los Angeles.”
There’s also the inevitable nighttime sound of crickets and/or cicadas.
There’s a weird noise in a lot of electro/dance music that’s called ‘loon’, actually the call of the Great Northern Diver, or Loon as it’s called in North America, a hollow, hooting sound.