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Tdhtdhtdhtdhtdh: Sound Effects! · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: should know. I got nothing.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Hey, that was a sound effect in and of itself.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: I guess I don't know if it really qualifies, but
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: I appreciate the support. Chuck.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: It was Josh introing the show as he falls off
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: of a cliff.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: You know, it's Josh in space.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah that doo.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the cliff works too.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: I just I like you in space better than dying.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: Thank you. I appreciate that. But I think that really
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: goes to illustrate just how versatile sound effects can be.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm excited about this one.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: I am too. This was a Dave joint. He helps
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: us with this, and I knew nothing about this stuff.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: I mean, I knew that the people who make this
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: are often called fully artists when they do a specific
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: kind of thing, but just like the little details and everything,
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: and it was all new to me and it was
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: all super interesting. So I'm psyched to buy this one too.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, me too. So what we're talking about is sound effects.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: If you haven't gathered that by now. And you know,
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: I never assume what people know about movie making because
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: I worked in that field for a little while and
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: you and I did a TV show, like you know
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: some stuff about it. But I never assume that people
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: know things or not. So we should say right out
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: of the gate, when you're watching a movie, you're watching
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: a TV show or something like that. And also this
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: stuff is for animation and video games and all that stuff,
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: but we're mainly talking about, you know, live action stuff.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: When you see a car drive down the road or
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: a couple sitting in a restaurant having a conversation and
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: you hear all the people in the background and you
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: hear that car drive down the road or anything you
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: hear a door shut, footsteps. All of that stuff is
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: created in post production, either by a person doing it
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: a folly artist, which we're going to talk a lot about,
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: or it might be from a sound catalog like where
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: you have all kinds of recordings you can pull from right,
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: car door shut stuff like that, or sometimes you know
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: that stuff now obviously is created through the wizardry of computering.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but there's a surprising craft that's still left that
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: has not been pushed out by computers. Yet that seems
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: like this sort of happened years ago. But the work
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: that the folly artists do is so intricate and so
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: well done. Yeah, computers just can't replicate it yet, Like, yeah,
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: they there's a car door. Sound sounds good, but it
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: just doesn't quite work. And the reason why, from what
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: I saw all the explanations I saw, basically said, fully
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: artists are there sound actors, so they're acting along with
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: the actors on screen to make the sounds that you
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: know and love and actually don't even notice, but you
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: would notice. So if they weren't there or they were.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: Off, yeah, for sure. And two more quick points for me.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: Sound is often overlooked I think by the general public
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: in a movie or TV show for sure, And even
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: as you've seen my friend on actual sets, it's half
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: the thing is what you're hearing. The other half is
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: what you're seeing. But the sound department, every sound department
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: I've ever worked with, is always like just they're shoved
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: to the side, and you know, you know, they make
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: room for the camera and everything in the lighting, and
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: then there's a boom person that's like, oh, don't worry
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: about me. Like I also have to stand in this room. Yeah,
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: do like half the sound they're always you know, just
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: shoved off to the side, which is incredible that it's
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: still sort of like that. And also, you know, getting
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: back to what I said before about how every sound
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: you hear basically that is not dialogue or music like
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: soundtrack stuff or unless it's diegetic sound actually screws things
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: up on recording out in the world. Like that's what
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: they try to shoot as much as they can on
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: a stage, because if you're out on the street, you
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: often hear the term houlter sound because there's a lawn
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: mower and they may add a lot more later to
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: make something more real, but they don't want the lawn
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: mower that's actually there or the plane flying over. They
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: could add all of that stuff, the birds chirping. They
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: add all that stuff later to make it real, but
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: you can't have any of that on the day while
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: you're shooting, so you're always holding for sound, waiting for
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: the car or the train or the leaf blower. And
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: that's why they shoot like restaurants seems like completely silent.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: Everybody is miming talking in the background, and it's really weird.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: When you see like a clip of it.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: Oh, it's definitely where. It's also weird to be like
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: in the middle of it, trying to act when everybody
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: around you in the restaurant is silently miming.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's also hard. I did an extra thing
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: or two. That's hard to do.
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, I'm sure those are two sides of
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: the same coin. Yeah, so those are two great quick
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: points seven quick points from me. That's about how Oh
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: so you said a word back there a minute ago,
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: diagetic and that stood out to me, like what And
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: the reason why I didn't stop you and say, what
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: are you talking about, Chuck, is because I already know
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: what it means, so I feel like I should explain it.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: Diegetic sound is the sound inside the movie's world. So
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: if you were one of the characters or the extras
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: or anybody in that movie, you would hear these sounds
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: like that lawn mower, that car driving by, the machine gun.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: You know it's from the car driving by. That's my
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: best one.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean a lot of times you hear it
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: in terms of music, like when they're playing something in
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: the car that they're hearing. Sure, and then a very
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: common sort of thing to do is then that becomes
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: the soundtrack. It like kind of changes the tone a
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: little bit. You know, yeah, it's always great.
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: But so that would be diegetic music. But like the
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: score that's just going along with it, that would be
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: non diegetic because the characters aren't hearing that same with narration.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, unless it's like a naked gun kind of thing,
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: and then they might like the strings will swell. Then
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: soon it will be like did you hear that?
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: Has Ruby taken you to the new Naked Gun?
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: I took myself Scotty and.
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: I went, oh, really, how was it?
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: It's very very very funny.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: Really, So do you know Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: are a couple? Now?
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: I wondered about that because they're both people at a
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: certain stage in life that are without their partners and
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: for very different reasons. But I kind of was like,
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: you know that, I kind of hoped they would get together.
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: Well they did, Buddy, your loves came true.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: She's very funny in it. I don't know if it's
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: still out, but I highly recommend seeing it in a
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: theater with laughing with a group of people. Okay, good
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: to know, but it's probably too late for that.
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: So so you talked about how you hold for lawnmower
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: and all that, and that that stuff's added on later.
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: I think something like ninety percent. I've actually seen higher
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: than that of the sound you hear in the film
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: that's not dialogue or music is added later on and
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: post production. That's how important this stuff is. And like
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: you said, though, it just it gets treated like a
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: second class citizen despite how hard they work. And I
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: think if we get across anything in this episode, it
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: should be how hard and creative the people who make
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: sound effects are.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And again we're going to get into
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: the foly stuff and mention things like sound banks of
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: doors shutting and wind blowing and all that stuff that
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: you can pull from. But a lot of times you
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: have sound designers that go out and make their own
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: recordings of that stuff. They just that they don't want
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: the universal catalog of car doors shutting. They want to
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: get their own, maybe it's a specific car. In fact,
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: that's that's what they should be doing, because card doors
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: are very specific the sound they make.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: So they'll go out in the field.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: There's a whole movie about that blow up. I'm Sorry.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: Blowout with John Travolta, where he played a guy that
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: captures the sound of a car crash that ends up
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: being very you know, murderous.
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that was actually a pretty good movie. Great,
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: this is a classic, right, don't people consider a classic?
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: There's also so in addition to card or shutting, like
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: the vehicles themselves, the sounds they make those are often
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: like from a sound library, but I've also seen that
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: they'll be layered. They'll like add certain details sometimes later
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: on onto the sound library file called sweetening, And that's
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: that seems to be a pretty common thing. Even if
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: you're taking stuff that you're making out in the field yourself,
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: or you're making in the studio as you're watching the clip,
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: you'll probably still layer all that stuff together to get
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: like the most realistic, richest possible sound.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they get really into it. It's a good nerdy
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: sort of line of work. You gotta have a good ear,
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: that's for sure. You're because you're recreating you know, punches
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: and slaps and every gunshot that you hear in every
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: movie is not what you hear on set obviously, and
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: then of course you know this is all stuff done.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: It's like real sound effects. A lot of the things
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: that are created to be a computer are, but not
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: all of them are things that don't exist. You know,
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: like if you're going to do like a movie set
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: in out of Space, you're going to be making up
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: a lot of brand new sounds that have never been
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: made before.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they seem to love that stuff because they have,
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: like Carte Blanc, to just go nuts and get creative.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: Basically it's awesome.
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: Another one that gets left out that sounds really boring
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: but apparently it's really hard. Or footsteps. I'm sure there's
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: tons of sound effects of footsteps in libraries, but those
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: don't work from what I've seen, from what I've read
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: there essentially there because somebody put them there. People don't
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: use them. You have to make the footsteps based on
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: the actor and how they're moving, and not just in
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: sync with them. But a good folly artist will take
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: into account the weight, the height, the gait. Are they shuffle,
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: are they high stepping or they goose stepping. They're like,
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: they take all this stuff into account to make a
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: specific kind of walk or footfall for a particular actor.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and a lot of times the stuff is dictated
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: by budget. Obviously, folly artists don't come cheap. So if
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: you've ever been watching a low budget movie and the
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: footsteps sounded kind of corny, it's probably because they're pulling
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: from a library.
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: Probably they're trying their best.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: They're doing their best. They don't have the kind of
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: dough for that, so you know, it all just depends.
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: So I say, do you want to go back to
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: the beginning of all.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: This, yeah, which is surprisingly silent movies, right, yeah.
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: Well, apparently because you further back than that to vaudeville
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: before there were even movies, people would play along on
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: stage to make sound effects with vaudeville act so it
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: was a pretty brainless transition from vaudeville stages to the
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: stage underneath a movie, and it was just somebody playing
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: a lot I think to start with like drums and
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: like maybe some clackers and a few different things. But
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: it very quickly took off as like a cottage industry
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: to make props for people who did this live to use.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, props or traps traps baby short for contraption, And
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: a lot of times it was percussionists, even if they
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: weren't literally playing drums, because percussionists are just good at
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: doing multiple things with hands and feet at the same time.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: So they had these contraptions or traps, and they started
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: making them, Like drum companies like Ludwig started making traps
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: to just simulate things like this sounds. And you know,
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: these are early early talkies, so it's not like they
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: were going for absolute realism with like a barking dog
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: sound or a train whistle or a snore or a
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: cash register. But they would make these traps that were
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: close enough that people hearing this stuff for the first
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: time in a movie were like, oh my god.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: Right, I never knew a dog actually sounded like that. Yeah.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: There is this video of a guy named Nick White,
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: and he is a master of this. He has a
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: bunch of like vintage traps and he does live sound
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: effects along with like black and white talkie movies, silent movies. Sorry,
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: And there's a video of his called Vintage Sound Effect
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: Artist for Vintage Films. And it's amazing to watch him
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: do this in real time because, like you said, he's
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: doing stuff with his feet, he's doing stuff with his hands,
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: and then he's also probably got some sort of weird
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: whistle in his mouth at the same time.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: Too. Yeah, and it's funny. Dave mentioned him later in
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: the article, but I was going to bring him up anyway.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: This guy, Josh Harmon is a very fun Instagram account
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: to follow because he does it to old cartoons. Yeah,
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: and he has really blown up. He's like got fourn
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: of close to five million Instagram people now wow, and
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: has had like some famouses on there that take part.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: And the delight of Josh Harmon stuff is not only
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: watching him squeeze a balloon to make it sound like
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: somebody like Porky Pig is trying to get through a door,
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: but the delight he gets at the end of the clip.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: He just always lights up with this wonderful smile and
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: like one of my life goals is to sit in
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: and do a thing a sesson with do Harmon. Nice man,
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: I've asked, oh have you asked? Well, just on Instagram, like, hey,
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: I know I'm not Nick Jonas, but like I got
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: a few people who listen to me. Can I get
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: in there and and a bunch of stuff. You should know.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: People are like, yeah, get Chuck, get Chuck, but he
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: you know it didn't get through.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: No, Well keep trying, Chuck.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna maybe this will get to him.
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: It could attention Josh Harmon do this.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: What about slapstick though I didn't know that even.
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: Uh yeah, the term is actually, you know, slapstick is
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: like physical silly comedy made up with pratfalls. And the
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: reason it's called slapstick is because there was a trap
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: that people used to use that was a slapstick. I
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: think I can imagine. It's like two wooden duck bills
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: that you smacked together, okay as a clacker. Yeah, and
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: they used that when somebody had a pratfall, like when
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: they tumbled and fell or something like that. They would
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: use this slapstick where the name came from. So now
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: you can go forth and tell everyone you ever meet
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: where the origin of the term slapstick is from.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: I love it. Uh maybe yeah. Here, let's finish up
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: with the Jazz Singer and then take a break. What
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: do you say?
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: Mm hm?
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: Well, the Jazz Singer, as we've mentioned in other episodes,
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: was the first sort of widely released successful talkie, right,
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: And I know we've talked about the vitaphone before, So
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: did we do one on silent movies or was it
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: just the birth of the movies or something like that.
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't I don't know, I don't know.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: Well, Warner Brothers had developed something called the vitaphone, and
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: that was a separate machine that would sync the audio
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: along to the projector while there, while they're playing it.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: And it was it was basically like a record they
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: recorded on Chalac discs like an LP. And once the
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: jazz singer came out, a whole new industry was born
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: from silent movies.
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: Right, like throwing a light switch, like silent movies were
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: out and talkies were in. Like, this is an enormous
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: innovation for sure. Yeah, so yeah, I say, that's a
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: great setup for where we are in history with the
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: sound effects.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: All right, so we're just gonna walk away. Clip clop,
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: clip clop clap.
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: Wait wait, oh no, we'll be right back.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: You do a great machine gun and I have to
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: say you and Scott Ackerman both do great machine gun
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: sounds with your mouth.
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: That is from years and years of playing with M
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: sixteen's in the woods.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: What is that horrible instinct that little boys have.
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: I don't know, it's weird. I'm glad it It usually
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: gets it gets left behind or shed as you get
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: older typically, But.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: Let's pick up that stick and go.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: See that was terrible.
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: No, that was pretty good. That was a modified sixteen.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: All right? How about this bullet? Bullet bullet? Is it good?
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: Did I ever tell you about the time I was
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: playing laser tag and if we didn't, It was like
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: at like ten thirty in the morning on a Tuesday
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: for some reason, and we didn't have enough of us
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: in a group to make it like even teams.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: So the guy who worked there is other kid. He
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: played with us, and he caught me in a corner
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: and got me and then he just stood there and
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: shot me like every time, like my, my, youven get
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: out of there. Reset. He kept just shooting me and
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: killing me, and finally I shouted him like stop, and
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: he just laughed and walked away. But he killed me
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: probably like ten times in just you know however long
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: it took to reset.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: Oh, since you mentioned that, and we're doing this today.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: I had my very first laser tag at Ruby's birthday
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: party this summer. Nice. I had never done it before,
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: and I was the only adult in there with all
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: the kids. I was on the boys team, and I
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: was like listen, guys, they're gonna be running around and
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: screaming and shooting. I was like, everyone, find a position
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: and stay there, not probably higher ground. And I feel
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: kind of bad because we dominated, and I specifically dominated.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: I beat it. It was like I had like ten
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: times the points is the next highest person.
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: That's awesome against kids though.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so I just I got in a high spot
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: and was just picking them off as they came up.
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: You're like Billy Madison, plane dodge in Billy Madison.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: Oh. And not only did and I feel bad, I
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: got a lot of satisfaction.
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: Of all Batman. Yeah, it was fun, all bat instead
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: of bullet did you go laser laser laser?
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: I did?
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: Well, that's our laser tag. Anecdotes everybody, all right, we.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: Got to talk about a legend named Jack Foley, and
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: this guy's story is pretty great.
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: He was there at the beginning, like where we left
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: off with the release of The Jazz Singer in nineteen
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: twenty seven, so he was there at the transition to
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: talkies and he was doing all sorts of stuff. He
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: wrote a monthly column in Universal Studios like essentially Company magazine.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: I guess, huh he did that for decades. He was
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: a great illustrator. He was an insert director, where like
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: if you showed one of the Three Stooges, like grabbing
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: a paintbrush out of a bucket, and you just saw
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: their hand, that's an insert, and then they would edit
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: that in later. The director who directed the whole thing,
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: like the Stooges probably didn't actually take that or get
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: that shot. Somebody like Jack Foley did, and somehow, some
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: way he ended up becoming a sound effects guy. I
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: don't know how he got his first chance. I think
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: he was just hired on as one of the people
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: doing it, and he became so good at it and
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: so legendary that still today anything that has to do
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: with creating sound effects in a studio is called folly.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah. His name became an adjective, a verb, and an
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: art form and a department yeah, which is I don't
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: know many people that can say that so. And I
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: also think he got hired because he was just around
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: doing all kinds of stuff. So it was one of
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: those things like Jack Foley can probably do it right.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: So after the jazz singer, you know, everyone was like,
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: oh my gosh, this is the new thing we have
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: to have our talkie. And Universal had already gotten the
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: movie Showboat in the can as a silent film, right,
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: and they said, we want to change this to a talkie.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: So Jack Foley goes over to Stage ten at Universal
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: Studios with an orchestra and started working his magic, which was,
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: you know, fairly limited stuff at first, like audience is
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: cheering and water and the sounds of the steamboat and
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: stuff like that. But you know, he's kind of saved
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: the day.
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And the thing is, so there's this live orchestra
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: playing along with this, and there's no retakes. You did
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: this whole movie in one take because it was being
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: recorded directly to that vitaphone record, right, So it went
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: out with the film like that was it. So this
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: orchestra's playing and he's making these sound effects as it's
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: happening on screen. It's just mind boggling what he was doing.
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: And he got really good at it. Apparently he could
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: do a reel of film which I saw ten minutes.
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: I think it probably varies a little bit, but somewhere
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: around there, let's say ten minutes of film, several scenes
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: he could do the sound effects live in one take.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's amazing that he started assembling his props and stuff,
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: and they got him a room and it became known
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: as Foley's room, and then eventually that would just become
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: the Foley Room on every studio. I don't know how
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: quickly they adopted his name as an adjective and a
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: verb and all that stuff, but I do know that
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: it was pre credit because he was not even getting
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: a credit for this, because there was no such thing
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: as a Bowley artist till after him.
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: No, his first movie, like you said, was Steamboat, which
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: I think came out in nineteen twenty eight, and his
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: last movie was Spartakiss in nineteen sixty. He did scores,
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: probably hundreds and hundreds of movies and yeah, never once
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: got an on screen credit, which is nuts.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean the credit is named after him, like
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: he invented a credit.
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. By the way, I think it was
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: the early sixties and Desilu was the first studio outside
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: of Universal to call their folly room.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: A folly room. Amazing.
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: What year was that, like sixty one or something like that, So.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: Kind of right after it was done he got the honor.
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess that's amazing. Yeah, that does earns Man.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: He really he was a class act.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: I did a shoot on the Lucy stage one time.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: It was pretty cool.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, is she buried there?
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: No? No, no, it was just where they shot it.
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: Oh okay.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: Like I would always ask anytime you're shooting at one
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: of the old Paramount Ladder Universal and I would always
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: kind of ask the old timers like, hey, what was here?
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: And you know, one time it was Happy Days, one
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: time it was Lucy. It was always kind of.
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: Neat right, Han's moment goes, I'm only thirty one years old.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: I had a couple of books ago, I think three
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: books ago. I read a really great dent Stanley Kubrick
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: book and he talked about this fact which was in Spartacus.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: He didn't like the audio recording of the Roman Army marching,
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: so he was trying to bring in a big, fairly
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: expensive two day shoot to redo that. And Jack Bowley
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: was like, no, no, no, I think I've got this,
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: and on the spot went and got car keys and
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: was able to recreate the sound of like the armor
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: kind of clanking such that even Stanley Kubrick approved.
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: Of yeah, which is really saying something Yeah. But it
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: went from potentially flying back to Spain and re hiring
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: thousands of extras and reshooting these two days just for
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: the sound. To know, check out these keys. I just
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: saved your movie so much money. So just I mean
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: that was his last one too. That was a great
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: way to go out.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: I think, Oh, absolutely great movie. There are about one
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: hundred folly artists working today in the United States, which
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: you know, that's not a lot. I was sort of
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: surprised it was that high, given sort of the digital
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: takeover of a lot of things in Hollywood. But you know,
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: they call them artists because they are true artists. They
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: have their their obviously, you know mentioned earlier. They have
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: great ears. Apparently Dave found that some of them have
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: to wear ear plugs and movies and concerts and things
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: like that because their ears are just so kind of
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: tuned in and sensitive, right, And they had their own language.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: You know, they don't say they may say clip clop
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: of a horse, but they definitely make words up as
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: sounds like you know, I need it to make a
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: scritchy sound, or it needs to sound poofy, and they
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: just sort of know what they mean when they're talking
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: to each other, right.
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: Oh, they definitely do. There's this really great profile in
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: the New Yorker where I think that hundred working fully
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: artists came from. One one of the fully artists profiled
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: said there was probably a hundred. But they, I mean
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: just the different words that they use for these sounds,
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: or like they they immediately know what the other one
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: is talking about. And just even more than that, they
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: can point to some chain or block and tackle just
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: hanging in a junk yard and say that'd make the
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: swaying chink sound or something like that, and they, sure
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: enough they could go up to it and make it
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: it sound exactly like what they were just describing. So
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: it's like a really niche group of people who work
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: in this really niche art. It's like you said before,
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: it's an art form and it's it's just fascinating to
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: read about, let alone talk about. I'm fascinated right now
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: if you can't tell.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: Well, and just the the ability to disassociate sound from
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: object is key and just like super impressive, like you mentioned,
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: like to be able to look at a thing and
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: not see the thing, but see the sound you know,
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: or hear the sound I guess in your head. For sure,
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: potentially it's it's super cool. I love it. Like when
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: I was a kid, I remember seeing videos of fully
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: artists at work with a split screen of what's going
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: on on screen, and I was just like wrapped.
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's that's how they do this. So usually
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: they work in pairs because there's like in a given scene,
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: there's probably frequently more going on than one person could
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: possibly handle. I know Jack Foley pioneered using canes with
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: shoes attached to the bottom to make multiple people walking
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: at the same time. It's a lot easier just have
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: another person in there, so you have like a fully
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: partner that you work with. And then there's the fully mixer.
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: And apparently they don't really see what the folly artists
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: are doing because they're keeping an ear out to see
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: if it matches what they think it should on the screen.
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: They're making a lot of the final decisions on how
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: it gets like what sound gets made, how it gets
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: sweetened or tightened or like tweaked or whatever. Yeah, and
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: then if you step back and watch, like like you said,
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: they're there in front of this giant screen or even
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: a TV sometimes and they're just acting along with the actor,
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: but making the sounds with stuff that you know, you
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: just would never say, like, yes, this is obviously. This
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: salary is obviously what you would use to make the
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: sound when somebody falls down and breaks a bit.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they SELLAR snap is pretty good.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it definitely works. It's an industry wide vegetable.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: It is. They start with a spotting session, which is
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: essentially just sitting down with the director and all the
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: sound department and fully department and just making a huge list.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: You go through the movie and you just have a
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: huge list of every single scene, every single sound you
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: need to make. It's not the same thing as ADR,
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: which is additional dialogue recording, which is a lot of
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: times actors will have to come in. We had to
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: do this we're own TV show a little bit, Yeah,
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: and you have to restate your lines for one reason
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: or another and try and match it up and we're
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: watching the screen. But they do use the same technique
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: called looping, which is just playing the thing on a
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: loop over and over and over to try and sink
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: it as close as you can.
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's amazing that anybody can do that because
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: it's really hard.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah what ADR fully ADR well both yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, adr.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: I felt kind of dumb when I had to do it,
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: because it was, you know, you're trying to even though
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: we were bad actors, like we were trying to conveyce.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: You're always trying to convey some sort of emotion with
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: everything that you're saying, even if it's just normal or
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: bored that is. And just to do that in a
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: room looking at yourself like with no experience, it was.
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: It was tough for me.
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: I blamed Brian for all of those.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: Oh no, so you'll hear this, by the way.
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: So oh yeah, I know I'm hoping you will.
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I knew it.
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: One of the other very classic things you'll see in
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: a Foley studio is the floor will basically have like
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: a raised section and it'll be divided into like squares,
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: and one square will have like a concrete pad, another
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: square will have pebbles, another square won't have you know,
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: parquet fleets. Yeah, leaves, although I saw that they don't
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: usually use leaves. They use like old magnetic reel to
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: reel tape. Yeah yeah, and pull it out and crinkle
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: it and that makes a better leaf sound than a leaf.
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: Somebody figured that out along the way that leaf sounds
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: don't really make a good leaf sound. Isn't that crazy?
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: That's how manipulated we are when we watch movies. Uh.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: True. But I have seen them go in the field
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: for like forest walks and stuff. So there's a mix
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: of everything. There's not like just one way to do things.
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: That's true.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: And they all know share stuff like whoever came up
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: with the celery is probably regarded as a as a
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: you know, a genius in the field for sure.
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sure they're They're.
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: Using carrots before that, right.
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: I also saw there was in that New Yorker profile
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: one of the Folly artists talks about a Halloween mask
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: of the tin Man that got handed down from her
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: former Folly partner when he retired, and she was like,
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: nothing will ever make this sound. It's like a shit
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: like it's described as a yawning chit sound. I can't
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: even wrap my mind around that.
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: But what sound is it supposed to be.
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: A yawning chill sound? I don't know. I think it used.
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: It's like, what's it used for?
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: I don't know. Okay, if you wait a little bit,
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: I can look her up and call and ask, oh.
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: No, no, no, that's all right. I just wondered if
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: you were like, and that's the sound of a pot
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: going on a stove.
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: How about this, Let's edit this in the sound of
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: a pot going on the stove.
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: Okay, perfect, But she was she.
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: Was pointing out like I think they even said, like
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: she ordered a new one online and it came and
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: she was like, this doesn't sound anything like it. It's
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: made of different materials, so like it's so nuanced. I
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: saw a quote from David Fincher, the director, who is
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: like a huge fan of foli art artists, and he
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: basically was like, where we're looking at like the like
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: a scene of some people having a meeting in a
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: lawyer's office, and he's like, what is the what does
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: the nauga hide or the leather on the sofa sound like?
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like is it is it fake? Like is this
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: a strip mall lawyer's office or is it like a
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: really well healed lawyer's office, so it's real leather Like
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: that kind of attention to detail, Yeah, fully artists make
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: like that's what makes a movie like engrossing or you know,
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: at the very least extremely realistic, like that level of
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: attention to detail.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, or if you're not paying attention to detail like that,
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: it makes something stand out as and you may not
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: even recognize it, but subconsciously it may just a sound
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: may sit wrong if they don't do it right.
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like if somebody sits on a leather couch and
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: it makes a yawning sound, right, you're gonna be like,
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: what was that?
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: That's a tidman helmet? Right.
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: You wouldn't believe them if they told you that's right.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: So the you know, the Fuly stage is amazing. They
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: have that floor. It's just riddled with props and weird
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: things that they all. They don't call it by the thing,
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: you know, they call it by the sound it makes.
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: Like you don't say give me those coconuts, you say
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: give me the hoofs, although they don't use coconuts. It's
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: a little bit of a money python reference there. But yeah,
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: it's a fun looking room. Like I encourage everyone to go,
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: like see some like YouTube video of a Folly artist
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: and work in their little kind of cool air conditioned
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: dark room. There's water like that. There's usually like a bathtub,
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: there's usually a working toilet, uh, and just all manner
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: of props that people.
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: Use you wanted to take a break and come back
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: and talk a little more about sound effects.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: Let's do it. Show me open my door.
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: And then look out, Chuck grown out again.
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: All right, So Dave kind of dug up some fun,
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: classic uh folly tricks from famous movies, and we're gonna
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: talk about those and more because we're going to get
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: into Star Wars as well, because everyone loves talking about
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: Star Wars.
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: Well, the guy who was the fully artist and I
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: guess sound designer for Star Wars, Ben Burt, just changed
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: the industry from what I could tell. He's a really
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: interesting creative guy.
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we talked about him before he was the Wilhelm
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: Scream guy.
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, did you see the Wilhelm Scream thing I sent?
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: I did not?
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: Oh? Got I know the story of the Wilhelm Scream.
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: You want to hear it?
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: We did a whole episode on it, didn't we.
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: No, we just mentioned it and then Jerry put the
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: wrong one in.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: Oh, I thought we did a whole short stuff on it.
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: On the Wilhelm Scream. I don't think so.
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: I thought we did well. Either way, Just go ahead.
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: All right, if we have then we'll edit this part out.
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: But Essentially, the Wilhelm Scream was a scream that they
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: they think was recorded by a guy named chev Woolley,
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: who was an actor and musician who's known for the
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: song people Eater. He's the guy who's saying that, And
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: it was in a movie called Distant Drums. And I
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: think we can play the Wilhelm scream right here, right.
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: But I mean I thought we could the first time,
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: and it didn't work.
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: Well, let's try again. So this is what we're talking about.
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: This is the very famous Wilhelm scream. Okay, so apparently
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: Shebb Woolley recorded that for Distant Drums, but it didn't
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: become kind of, I guess a thing or iconic or
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: well used two until two years later there was a
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: movie called The Charge at Feather River and a character
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: named Private Willhelm gets shot in the leg by an arrow,
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: an he screams the Wilhelm scream. Still wasn't called the
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: Wilhelm scream until Ben Burt came along for Star Wars
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: and he'd seen just tons of Westerns as a kid,
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: and that Wilhelm scream showed up in almost all of them.
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: So he sought out that scream and found it in
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: the charge at feather River Sound Library and used it.
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: The first time it shows up is when Luke shoots
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: a stormtrooper and the stormtrooper falls off of something or
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: other I can't remember where exactly, and he adopted as
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: a signature sound, and it just became kind of an
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: iconic in joke among sound editors since then.
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, it may have been movie crush. That
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: makes sense where I covered that. Yeah, totally makes sense.
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: And I think it was all that's interesting. So it's
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: been in over four hundred films.
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: Amazing. Yeah, the ET sound. They needed ET to sound
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: a certain way when Et walked around, because they needed
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: him to sound like an ET but also not be
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: like gross. They wanted people to like ET, so they
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: used like jello wrapped in a damp T shirt and
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: raw liver apparently just for this sort of squishy walking sounds.
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: That's pretty good one.
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: Yikes, what about Titanic? This is a good one.
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: No spoilers are going to spoil the end of Titanic.
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: Oh come on, so you can dial out now if
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: you want to. But at the end of Titanic, Kate
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: Winslet is floating on a door or a piece of
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: wood or something. I think it's a door and she's
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: freezing cold, and they used apparently frozen lettuce to recreate
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: her the sound of her hair movie.
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which was perfect because I remember that sound effect.
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: I don't think I was like that crispy hair sounds
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: crazy at the time, but when I read about it,
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: I remember that it made some sort of impact on me. Yeah,
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: to prevent anybody from emailing in. Apparently it's not a door.
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: Everybody says it's a door, but some people on Reddit
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: found the piece of the staircase that it was taken from,
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: So James Cameron's film was so accurate that you could
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: determine that she was floating on a piece of staircase
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: that is shown earlier in The Titanic before it sinks.
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: I think it was a door.
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: That's fine. I just wanted I knew somebody who's going
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: to email in, and I wanted to burst their bubble
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: fight club.
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: You know, if you've ever heard of fistfight in real life,
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: A I'm sorry, because that's a really dumb thing to do,
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: is to punch somebody. But a punch to somebody's face
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: in real life, to their body doesn't sound anything like
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: it sounds in the movies. It's a fairly boring sound,
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: so they need to recreate that obviously, And a lot
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: of times they're punching you know, raw meat and things
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: like that and adding extra like bass and kind of
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: tweak it and posts. But apparently in Fight Club, chicken
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: carcasses were pounded with baseball bats along with the sounds
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: of cracking walnuts. Yes, pretty good.
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: There's this movie called Berbery in sound studio back in
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: twenty twelve. Did you see it?
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: I've never heard of it.
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: It was a little art house movie the what's the
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: British actor the short British actor with classes Toby somebody?
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: He played Capoti Jiman Capodi?
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Toby Jones.
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: Maybe, yes, you're right. So Toby Jones is in it
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: and he's a folly artist who starts to descend into
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: madness and essentially the entire movie takes place on a
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: fully studiente and there's parts where they're stabbing a melon
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: to make the sound of the person on screen getting stabbed.
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: And the folly artists who actually worked on that movie
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: said that they had to use wet cloth and wood
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: to make the sound of the folly artist on the
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: screen stabbing the water melon to make the sound of
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: the person on their screen getting stabbed with a knife.
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: I think I do remember that movie. I don't think
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: I saw it, but I remember that happening.
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: It's worth seeing. It's a slow burn that, possibly, depending
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: on your view, never actually ignites. Okay, but it's an
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: interesting movie. He does a good job.
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: They should put that on the poster. Possibly never ignites Josh.
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: Clark right, like, this is the best we could get.
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: Melons are useful, use a lot of melons for a
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: lot of things. A hand inside of melon apparently was
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: on that first dinosaur egg hatches sorry spoiler alert in
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: Jurassic Park. It was a hand inside of the melon
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: combined with the cracking of an ice cream cone.
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: Very nice. I saw Raiders of the Lost Art that
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: famous bowlder rolling at Indy in the beginning of the
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: movie first movie. Yeah, it was a car with no
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: motor being rolled down a hill.
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: Oh, okay, and that was also Ben Burt Oh was it?
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: That makes sense?
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah? He did all the Internet Jones movies. He did
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: et He was clearly a Spielberg Lucas guy.
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah he was. He was good and probably still is
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: he still working?
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: I bet he is. He's in his midish seventies, so
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: I bet he's still out there.
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: Okay, there we go.
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: I like to think he is. Should we talk about
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: some of those Star Wars sounds too while we're here?
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so.
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: The blaster Star Wars blaster, very very legendary film sci
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: fi sound. He and you'll see a lot of sound
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: people that just like kind of always carry around their
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: recording device. I don't know if they do that kind
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: of stuff on phones now, just to say like hey,
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: this like just to pick up the sound. But back Ben,
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: for Ben Bird, it was a Nagra reel to real recorder,
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: and he was on he was just collecting sounds all
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: over the place to potentially use for Star Wars. And
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: that's kind of the fun thing, is just looking around
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: the world and like just collecting noises and say, you know,
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: this might come in handy later. You never know, right,
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: And they were in the Pocono's and he went to
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: he saw a radio tower with those big, taut, big
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: bundled wire support cables and he was like, I wonder
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: what that sounds like when I hit it. He hit
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: it with a rock and it made that sound, and
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: then he did it at another tower, a radio tower
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: in the Mahave Desert, and combine those tweaked him a
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: little bit, and that's how you get that laser blast,
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: which you two can make. If you ever see one
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: of those really really taught cables, have you hit that
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: thing with something metal, it'll go cute.
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a bunch of different laser blasts in Star Wars,
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: but the ones that were made with that sound effector
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: once you know that, you can you can really clearly
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: hear it. It's perfect.
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's the blaster sound.
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: Well, you mean Han Solo's blaster.
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean the blaster is just a type of gun.
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: I mean, we're probably gonna get in big trouble from
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: Star Wars people. But when they put laser sound, I
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: was like, oh, you can't say that, dude, it's a blaster.
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: Let's move on to the tie fighters.
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: How about that, let's do it.
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: Those are actually so the very famous.
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: Whaw hey, that's pretty good.
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: Thanks. Those are African elephants that are roaring, layered over
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: one another and then distorted so that it doesn't sound
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: like elephants. But when you hear that and you go
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: listen to the tie fighters sound being made, You'll say, yeah,
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: that's an elephant.
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: I think you do a Chewbacca too, don't you know?
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: I thought you used to do that.
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: Now my Chewbacca sounds like this wall, wall wall, It's
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: like a nitross.
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: I could have sworn it was you that did a
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: pretty good Chewbacca, but maybe not. But apparently Chewbacca was
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: made by just combining a bunch of different animals and
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: again layering them on top of one another, a walrus,
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: a badger, and a bear at the very least. And
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: then we got to mention R two D two because
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: that's where ben Bert brings in. And you know, a
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: big change in the industry is when the synthesizer, especially
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: the mogue was invented, because not only could you make
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: all sorts of like cool space ag music for soundtracks,
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: you could also make just bleeps and bloops, which is
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: what he did. He had a Coorg synthesizer, a very
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: early Chorg, and did these you know, beeps and boops
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: for R two D two. And you know, you think,
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: all right, that's great, big deal. But the genius of
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: it is that he somehow creates emotion and conveys emotion
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: through these beeps and boops from a little droid with
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: a synthesizer. Yeah, that's it's magic.
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: That's the reason fully artists are still around because you
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: can't you just can't do that with stock stuff from
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: a sound library.
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, or you could tell when it's done that way
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: for sure.
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: There you go. So one other thing we should probably
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: touch on real quicker nature documentaries.
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, to get ready to be disappointed.
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they get a lot of guf for basically fudging stuff,
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: and they are legendary for fudging stuff like apparently they'll
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: use semi domesticated animals that they rent to film, you know,
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: chasing a lamb around or something like that. But one
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: of the things they're very frequently criticized on is using
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: sound effects and really kind of going overboard with them.
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: But by the nature of what they're making, they have
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: to use sound effects to begin with.
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean a lot of this stuff is filmed
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: on very long lenses from very far away. If you're
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: filming a lion tracking down an antelope and killing it,
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: you're not like right up on it, you know, so
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: you don't have the sound to begin with. Maybe they
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: bring some people out there with those long distance mics
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: to record some stuff, but then there's just so much
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: ambient sound they probably can't use it. So generally, if
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: you see like you know, a Planet Earth discovery documentary,
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: these the sound department is handed kind of like a
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: silent film almost, and they use you know, it's not
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: like they gotta have to use like real animal calls
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: for the real animals. They're not just like, hey, let's
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: make this lion sound kind of like different. So they
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: want accuracy there for sure. But you know when you
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: see a mushroom growing in a time lapse, they're just
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: adding all those sounds of like a mushroom stretching its
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: arms out. Yees, mushroom doesn't have arms its head.
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: Sure, I mean, lean in and put your ear to
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: a mushroom as it's growing, and you're not going to
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: hear anything. It doesn't make a sound.
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: Nope.
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: Another one they get accused of is making the northern
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: lights make a sound. Yeah, those don't make a sound.
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: There's just all sorts of like if you stop and
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: think about it, like a close up of a spider
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: walking on a leaf, it wouldn't make a sound, but
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: it would look weird to not have a sound, or
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: at the very least it looks better. That makes the
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: whole thing better too. Sound, I don't really I mean,
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: nature documentaries are so fudged to begin with that I
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: don't really have a problem with that.
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: The sound, Yeah, I don't have a problem. And I
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: think if someone like you said, if you sat someone
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: down and showed them just the realistic thing with just
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: the realistic sound, it's probably not nearly as compelling.
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: They'd be like, can I leave now you anything else?
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, one last thing, just sort of on the note
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: of using things like pro tools. I mentioned earlier that
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: it was was kind of budget related, and obviously big
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: movies can just afford to do whatever they want in
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: terms of that kind of thing. But even then, the
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: sound line items are often just a very small part
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: of the budget. You know, it kind of depends, but
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: you know, when you budget out a movie or a
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: TV show or commercial or anything, you kind of have
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: a general template to work for, like we're going to
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: allocate this percentage for this, this percentage for this camera
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: department's going to get probably something like this, and sound
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: is always like maybe ten percent or so, and a
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: lot of times. That can include the rights to play
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: soundtrack stuff. And you know, it depends on the movie.
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: If it's like Dazed and Confused or something like that,
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: there's really music reliant. You know, you're gonna have to
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: spend a lot of money on that, So you may
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: you may look at the post production sound and be like,
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry, you have very little to work with. So
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: that's where you're gonna get stuff like pulled from libraries
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: a little more. When you get these big, big movies,
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: that's when they can afford to bring into folly artists
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: and the whole teams. And that's why this sound is
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: always really awesome and that's why they highlight it at
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: the Academy Awards.
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: Yes. Nice. Yeah, So go forth and watch movies and
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: listen out for sounds and you'll probably be amazed here
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: or there.
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but don't get so caught up in that. Like
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: I wonder if fully artists can even watch movies I
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: know and enjoy them.
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: I feel so bad for people who can't watch movies,
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: who can't enjoy food because they're chefs or something like that.
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, totally can't.
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: Enjoy simple pleasures in life because they know too much
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: about it, you know, can't enjoy maloney or sausage.
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I say here's a new stuff you should know
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: T shirt. We have a new T shirt seller.
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, it's on Cotton Bureau, our new merch merchant.
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah. We've never put a lot of effort into merch,
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: but we always hear people asking, So Cotton Bureau stuff
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: you should know. You can find our merch now. And
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: I think a new T shirt should be stay dumb,
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: Enjoy Things.
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: Oh that's a good one. Yeah, that's a great one.
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: All right, Well let's have Aaron Cooper get on it,
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: because I say, I think two thirds of our shirts
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: in our merch store from Aaron Cooper because he's really
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: good at it.
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and State of enjoy Things is perfect to promote
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: a show that's all about trying to make people smarter precisely.
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I wonder if we can get his shirt that says.
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: How would you spell that?
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I'm going to leave that to Aaron Cooper.
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: Well, since we said Aaron Cooper's name at least two times,
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: I think maybe three, we've unlocked listener mail.
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: You don't want to say it three times because he'll
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: be right behind you. All right, here we go from Stephanie,
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: and I feel bad about this because I even knew this. Hey, guys,
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: thanks for the great episode about the militarization of the police.
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: I'm truly grateful for the decade of learning since I've
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: been listening. One of you commented, I think it was me,
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: probably that you were surprised to read about the police
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: in teen Vogue. I thought you might be interested to
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: know that teen Bogue is pretty well known for serious
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: journalism and being an example for taking young women and
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: girls seriously. I knew that, and we've even talked about
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: this before, and so I don't know why it's like, oh,
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: than Vogue.
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: No, it was me, was it? It was one hundred
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: percent of me.
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: Oh I thought it was me. Well, I'll throw myself
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: on that grenade. That's along with you. That's all right,
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: But she says, here's an article from Jezebel by Julian
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: Escabato Shepherd. If you're shocked teen Bogue is great, you're
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: not paying attention. I imagine you may get other emails like this,
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: although I may be the first, since I was up
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: crazy early and listened right away. Thanks and have a
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: great day, and that is from Stephanie.
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: Thanks Stephanie. Those are the correct that we love to
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: get where it's very gentle, but also like you guys,
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: come on, you know yeah, if you can balance those
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: two things, you've come up with a great correction email
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: as far as I'm concerned.
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: Agreed.
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: If you want to be like Stephanie and send us
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: a correction or just an email say hi or whatever,
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: you can send it off to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: dot com.
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.