A problem I have with movies nowadays is how often they recycle sound effects.
For example, The Incredibles would’ve been a better movie if Pixar recorded actual baby sounds for Jack-Jack instead of using those stock baby sounds that always take me out of the movie. It’s also amazing because Pixar had Ben Burtt, Hollywood’s premier sound designer since Star Wars.
Why can’t movies try to innovate sound and create more original sound effects for a specific film instead of recycling a bunch of sound effects everyone knows? Why don’t we have people researching the origins of all the other sound effects, their usage, and place of making like what people have done with the Wilhelm Scream?
They didn’t use stock baby sounds. You know you can easily find behind-the-scenes information for pretty much any movie, right? You’re getting upset about something that you made up. You could at least complain about something real if you’re going to complain.
As suggested on another thread, why not focus on your ambitions of being a writer instead of this? It would be a much better use of your time and you’d be a lot happier.
Given all your threads about how hard your life is and how much you hate everything, you don’t seem happy- so go do something about it. The more you sit around and brood about how miserable you are and how terrible society/movies/whatever are, the more miserable you’ll be. Just make a choice to be happy, dude. Go do something that makes you happy and stop brooding. I promise it makes a difference.
I know you’re going to read that and dismiss it, saying to yourself that your circumstances preclude you from being happy. Let me tell you something. I barely graduated high school. It took me six years to get my four year degree. I didn’t have a driver’s license until 21. Before my current relationship, I was in one abusive relationship and was cheated on in two others. I have chronic GI problems, crippling ADHD, one of my legs is shorter than the other and causes chronic back pain, and I’m currently unemployed. And guess what? I’m happy. Because when I start feeling the temptation to brood and be miserable, I go do something that makes me happy. Your circumstances do not determine if you’re happy or not. Only you do.
Well I’m not sure you’re looking for a genuine answer… but in any case.
I don’t know how it’s like in movies, but sound design is quite a demanding job, they operate and the very end of the chain with everyone out of schedule, and they work super fast.
They reuse a lot of sound because is there a real benefit of recording a baby crying at each movies ? ( to get the exact same kind of sound ?)
In the meantime they also produce a lot of original sounds, since it’s sometime simpler to synchronize them right away (for footsteps, water,…) .
For small production like series, they obviously can’t rent a foley studio but sound designer always have a bunch of props that they can record in the same way.
Baby crying is a special case , since you can’t force a baby to cry, or you can’t ask them to cry in sync with the movie. I suppose it’s the same with some animal sounds and such…
If you are really interested in that you should try to reach sounds designers, their work is amazing and quite inspiring !
I once had to do the sound editing for an animation movie. There was a scene in the delivery station and I only had a hand full of those “crying baby staple stock sounds” to work with. They are forever burnt into my memory and I will recognize them in every movie But I doubt that anyone without this experience has ever noticed. And the Wilhelm/Howie screams etc… don’t seem to be used unironically eyewinky anymore.
There’s a lot to complain about when it comes to movie sound. Dynamic range too narrow/uneven, unintelligible dialogue, ever repeating sound tropes…
but as @joseph already niggled about negativity maybe this could be a good place to link to tutorials or great examples of sound design, recent or ancient.
When there are only so many possible variants of certain sounds to begin with (infant crying or babbling for instance), then it is no surprise that the sound effects in every movie sound like something you have heard of before.
This is even more so for newborns; I recently visited my newborn niece who sounded an awful like my newborn nephew a year ago. The unique voice of the individual does not really start to blossom in full until a bit later.
I think my favourite movie sound that I can think of right now is the spacecraft ambience in the Alien movies. This superslow undulating ‘…whoooooOOoonnnn…’ that is just in the back of your head the whole time. That one is so great.
And the old StarWars eps of course, guess there are lots of “how did they make-s” on YT. One was with a key rubbing against a low pitch piano string if I remember correctly. Not sure if it was the light saber or some spacecraft sounds.
Also I really loved the sound design of the american horror story intro for its refreshing take on the reverse verb horror sound trope.
SD in games can be fantastic too. I am not really up to date anymore, but the enemy sound design in Descent 1 and 2 is something to behold. And who doesn’t love the life-up “ksh kish” sound in halflife?
Your superficial assessment might be due to lack of exposure. People who have little experience with the sounds of a newborn can’t tell one baby from another, while caretakers can tell not only who among a group of babies is screaming. but also what the screaming means, whether the baby is hungry or needs a diaper change or is scared. At one point we had 7 cats and I could eventually tell them apart just by their sounds, but somebody not knowing them would have had no idea, they can at best determine a clear outlier. We need to train our senses and our minds to tune in to fine differences.
And I second J’s advice about the negativity – I’m looking forward to actually see a Blender project from you, rather than the complaints about (often imaginary) things that don’t really matter to your life and won’t help you improve it.
Dunno about incredibles “cry sound”, but yes, a lot of movies and video games use old sample libraries, probably from BBC or Hollywood. Im not sure (and dont think there any chart for this are exist) but i guess this sfx is one of the most popular:
Those “kind laughing” used in the past and still can be heared in nowadays productions.
Sound designers use those sounds not because of lazyness, but simply because a lot of those sounds are really good. They was well recorded and edited. They perfectly “nailed” the description: eagle sound, kid laughing, etc.
And based on my expirience, most of the time you can hear, recognize and get negative effect of “take me out of the movie” only if you was sfx artist or sound recordist in the past.
Most of my friends recognize they actually hearing those sounds over and over again only then i told them like “Hey! Did you remember this sound fx?”. Each time their reaction was: “Huh? What sound? Wait, play it again. Oh yeah i heard that before”.
The amount of old and widely used SFX compared to complitely uniq one maded for average movie or video game are virtually incomparable.
Sound design went downhill in the 1990’s. The Star Wars original trilogy has better sound design than most movies.
I’m sure the government can fund the recording of better sound.
By the way, in The Incredibles, all of Jack Jack’s sounds were generic baby cry sounds, most prominent in the scene when Syndrome tries taking Jack Jack away. The same sound effects were used in that scene from Saving Private Ryan when the American soldiers encounter that family and try to take that girl, in Togo with the hospital in Nome full of children with diphtheria, in the background in a hallway in Joker, from that picture of a woman and crying baby in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and baby Po’s cries in Kung Fu Panda 2.
I would be more forgiving if people recorded actual babies for films.
This is objectively not true. Do some research before posting nonsensical claims like this. Or, just read the replies to your post where multiple people pointed out with sources how this is a complete fabrication.
Again, if you’re going to whine about something, whine about something real.
Jack Jack had a voice actor. You can call that actor generic if you want, but you can’t pretend like an objective fact isn’t real because it doesn’t fit into your complaint
Maybe because I feel that my immersion in a film is broken when I hear a familiar sound effect?
I want to learn Blender, but when I try getting help when something isn’t working, no one is there to help me? I also don’t learn that much if I just follow the tutorials. I like learning, and I want to learn animation, but I feel bad about myself by not getting the help I need.
To be fair, I answered the twisted shape one only today, after reading his complaint that he wasn’t getting any help. Before that he’d gone 12 days without a response. The problem was that he posted it in the wrong section; questions for support in #artwork don’t always get answers because people who generally help don’t always look at that section; we primarily read #support.
But yeah, he doesn’t often thank people for their efforts, and that will end up leading to not a lot of people helping.
Still point being he does get help via his past art related posts, a pity it would seem there’s an inability too focus upon creative pursuits (some talent there) rather than nonsensical rumblings.
I always wonder if someone posts a question but then does nothing else but making a (sometimes badly reasonable) personal statement… and then even repeating it… as if this would make it any more true…
… even in a off topic chat…
…because this: “everything is bad nowadays on the whole world and in the future” – talking is just the reason why this may feel so…
Things could be worse… someone could live in any of the lethal conflict and/or catastophy zones around the world… with no medical help or starving… or already dead by now…
...
And if you think some product is not as good as you like it… remember the producing company… avoid them… be willing to pay more…
I was riding to work one day (I use a motorized tricycle) and I saw a hawk take off from a power pole. The sound it made was virtually identical to a large number of Hollywood movies and could potentially give you a copyright strike on Youtube if used in a video, but it was obviously from a real bird which was not recorded.
Again, to the OP, some sounds only seem to be from a sound library because they are, by nature, quite limited in their variation. There is definitely no crisis and especially not one of the caliber that calls for government intervention (that is unless it can be proven that people are literally being injured when hearing them, but that is a huge stretch).
Although I get bothered by many sound effects, the one that makes me cringe the most is definitely the Wilhelm Scream. Somehow, I get very uncomfortable watching a movie when I know that scream is in it.
I’m sorry if I complain about sound effects so much. My ears are too keen for my own good, and my Autistic brain tends to nitpick way too much.
I don’t think sound design has gone downhill. Sound mixing, though, has started taking a path of combining FX, music, and dialog in such a way that I have to use subtitles more often than not to understand what anyone is saying… or, turn it up so loud that the music and explosions are going to break the windows.
My hearing is getting worse over the years, but I have far fewer issues with movies and TV recorded 10-15+ years ago.
But I doubt that anyone without this experience has ever noticed. And the Wilhelm/Howie screams etc… don’t seem to be used unironically eyewinky anymore.
