Sound Affects

 

image by Gordon Johnson on Pixabay (after Munch's "The Scream")

“Yeeeeargggghhhh!” 

 If you’ve ever heard that particular, blood-curdling scream, in the movies or on TV, you may have wondered about its origin story. No? Well, here it is anyway (whether you want it or not😊). There’s a scene in the 1951 movie Distant Drums, where a character is attacked by an alligator. The accompanying shriek, which has been named for the character Private Wilhelm in the later film The Charge at Feather River, became a very famous sound effect. It has been sampled more than 400 times, and can be heard in Star Wars, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Toy Story, Pirates of the Caribbean, Lethal Weapon, etc. It’s really bone-chilling; in fact, I suggest that the makers of pepper spray and other bad-guy deterrents, program it into their devices. Imagine the effect it would have on a would-be mugger! “No, no! Anything but the scream!!!!” (runs away).

 

“Chuckle. Hahahahaha. Ho ho ho ho ho!”

 

If you’ve ever watched a sitcom, you’ve heard that long eruption of delight from the “audience,” when a character says or does something funny. So prevalent was the laugh track, that it was jarring to watch a comedy without one (nowadays, they are rare.) The thought behind the track was that if you were home alone watching, you’d be much more apt to howl with mirth with the cue of fellow laughers (comedy loves company?) Imagine Leave it to Beaver without a laugh track! Would we KNOW that Eddie Haskell was a regular riot? Legend has it that a specific canned laugh track from I Love Lucy is still in circulation, even though those laughers are very likely in the Big TV Studio in the Sky by now. Turns out that is not strictly true—Lucy used only its live studio audiences’ actual laughter. But that live laughter WAS recorded, and was used again in other shows.

 

After Rose graduated from Berklee with a degree in sound production, some early jobs involved “Foley” (named for film sound pioneer Jack Foley). She would be tasked with creating sounds such as footsteps and creaking doors, to be added to movies in post-production (real steps and door creaking in the scene were often too faint to be picked up). Rose’s out of that biz now, but I bet she could still come up with some cool audio effects -- “once a Foley artist…” after all.

 

How do sound effects, affect us? I remember performing our children’s shows in elementary schools. We wrote them to get laughs, but often the principal would introduce us by saying, “Now I don’t want to hear ONE PEEP! Welcome our guests, boys and girls!” and the confused but obedient kids would sit in total silence the whole show. You haven’t been mortified until you go onstage dressed as a giant dog, and NO ONE LAUGHS.

 

So, don’t be afraid to make some noise (joyful, terrified)! And who knows? YOUR voice could be captured for posterity—maybe for Die Hard 30!