Sound effects make movies movies… but there’s a bit of sausage making going on here: sometimes
you’re better off not knowing where those sounds originated.
So start banging your coconut shells together as we gallop through the secrets behind some
of the most bizarre sound effects in recent movie history.
Star Wars sound designer Ben Burtt is viewed as a legend in movie production circles for
his sound effect creation methods — and with four Oscars to his name on beloved productions
such as E.T. and the Indiana Jones series, it's no surprise.
The next time you or one of your friends swings an invisible lightsaber in an imaginary battle,
just remember who came up with that unique swoosh noise.
"Not as clumsy or random as a blaster.
An elegant weapon, from a more civilized age."
Working on the 1977 space fantasy classic, Burtt found an old film projector and blended
its sound with an old TV to create the distinctive lightsaber noise.
"When they just sat there and idled it made a wonderful humming sound, which would just
slowly change in pitch."
However, even a maestro like Burtt needed a touch of luck, and the whirring element
of the lightsaber's sound was discovered completely by accident.
He managed to capture the iconic sound by thrusting a shotgun microphone back and forth
in front of a speaker.
The inventive sound designer for James Cameron's $102 million masterpiece Terminator 2: Judgement
Day came up with some frugal and unusual methods to make the film to sound as good as it looked.
The special effects for the film were spectacularly groundbreaking and ate up a large portion
of the then-record budget.
This makes Gary Rydstrom's achievements with the sound effects budget all the more impressive.
Amazingly, an everyday item played a key role in completing one of the film's coolest scenes.
Robert Patrick's T-1000 is chasing John and Sarah Connor through a mental asylum, but
a row of jail bars appear to block him.
But he's liquid metal, so he just goes right through.
Rydstrom revealed that he came up with a very cost-effective way to create the sound: he
turned a dog food can upside down and slowly eased the congealed food out.
The quality of Rydstrom's methods was matched only by his creativity, which yielded another
unexpected and comical money-saver for Terminator 2.
By submerging a microphone wrapped in a condom into a thick flour-water mix and then blowing
Dust Off into it, he was able to create the perfect sound for the T-1000's shape-shifting
abilities.
Beneath the mines of Moria lives the terrifying fire demon known as the Balrog, which shows
up just in time to ruin the day for Frodo and his friends in The Fellowship of the Ring.
The sound of that blood-chilling roar was achieved by dragging a concrete block slowly
across a wooden floor while horses and donkeys were layered in to fill out the sound.
It was the work of sound designer David Farmer, who also created the sound of Moria orcs after
a visit to a marine mammal center.
He told Empire:
"It was the time of year they had lots of baby elephant seals there.
[...] So we recorded ourselves scrambling around wearing cleats for the movement, but
the major signature sound for them was the elephant seal pups."
Dinosaurs have been extinct for thousands of years, so obviously, no one really knows
what they sounded like.
No, not even the people who worked on Jurassic Park.
Although the finished product sounds fitting in Jurassic Park, it does make you wonder
how wrong film makers have gotten when it comes to movies featuring prehistoric creatures.
In a 1995 documentary, director Steven Spielberg told sound designer Gary Rydstrom to, quote,
"go make dinosaur sounds that didn't sound like Godzilla or Rodan."
What's really fun to me sometimes is just having something on a keyboard and performing
it giving it a try seeing how it works."
Rydstrom's approach was to find a creature that scientists estimate existed close to
the time of dinosaurs: tortoises.
The shelled creatures did provide the right sound bite, but how it came about was both
strange and unforeseen: Rydstrom sat around for hours recording tortoises while they mated.
Does anyone know what a giant rolling boulder sounds like as it bears down on you after
a booby trap in an ancient temple has been triggered?
No, but Raiders of the Lost Ark sound designer Ben Burtt managed to create a pretty convincing
approximation by using an old Honda Civic on a gravel road.
"And we just coasted down this road, and as the car accelerated in the sense of gathering
speed that ended up really being the basis for the giant boulder"
To record the sound, Burtt had to hang out the back window of the car with his boom mic
pointing down toward the tires.
Does that make him the Indiana Jones of sound design?
Eh, maybe!
The webs that shoot from his wrists have saved Spider-Man on many occasions, but how do you
decide on a sound for such an unusual tool?
Spider-Man director Sam Raimi had high standards when it came to what he wanted, and sound
department veteran Charles Maynes did his best to come up with something unique.
Initially there were failed experiments with blow darts and chemical rockets before the
crack of a bullwhip got the whole process started.
With the first layer down, the second came from a very unexpected place: a feral cat
that Maynes himself rescued from the pound who would attack him every time he tried to
feed her.
"And she would spit, and that spitting sound was one of the principle components for the
actual shot."
It's honestly amazing that putting an angry cat in the sound design worked out so well.
That decision could have gone horribly wrong.
"Oh No… no"