Making Sound Effects

[Spencer09]

Smashing watermelons with sticks you say? Perhaps not the first object that comes to mind when talking about making sound effects for martial arts sequences.

Techniques for making martial arts sound effects seem extremely varied. I saw some sound designers were using fresh celery pieces and snapping them in front of the microphone to simulate the breaking of bones. It seems the sound required needs to be far greater than simply copying the action.

Has anyone come across other techniques than just hitting watermelons with sticks?

Spencer Sternberg
Audio for Games
www.spencersternberg.com

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

My personal favorite is to take a video gamer and string him up in a tight spread eagle with piano wire, and the mic him up with three stereo pairs of SDCs in a vertical stepladder; one pair on the legs/knees, one pair on the hips/pelvis/testicular area, and one pair on the ribcage/internal organs, with a combo Mojave Audio LDC and Sennheiser e602 on the head. Then hit the record button just as I let the local advanced Aikido academy use the gamer as a practice dummy.

Make sure to use plenty of spit screens and plastic around the mics as you wouldn't want them to get damaged accidentally; after all, we're not uncompassionate brutes.

G.

 

[legionserial]

Why a video gamer?

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Why not?

G.

 

[darrin_h2000]

The art of Foley is pretty fun...and if you slowly get to torture a video gamer...all the better.

 

[mattr]

I had a quick conversation with an engineer once about him witnessing a 'sound designer' slapping some contact mics on a dog then recording the sounds its stomach made when feeding it. Don't know what the sounds were actually used for...