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Author Topic: Movies With Good Gun Sound Effects Brad Miller Administrator Posts: 17775 From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall) Registered: May 99 posted 05-07-2012 11:38 PM                     Randy, what does coins have to do with planes landing?  |  IP: Logged Randy Stankey Film God Posts: 6539 From: Erie, Pennsylvania Registered: Jun 99 posted 05-07-2012 11:51 PM                     Oopsie! Wrong link! Here's the right one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9sHLI_DPW0  |  IP: Logged Paul Mayer Oh get out of it Melvin, before it pulls you under! Posts: 3836 From: Albuquerque, NM Registered: Feb 2000 posted 05-08-2012 10:29 AM                        One of the captains I used to fly with at Scenic always asked during the approach briefing (if it was going to be the first officer's landing), "Squeaker or Greaser?". A 'squeaker' was like the one's in Randy's link - just the faintest "chirp" as the tires spun up. A 'greaser' was absolutely smooth and silent; with a good runway the only way to tell if you were truly on the ground was to try the brakes. Some airplanes just land better than others. For instance, I can't remember ever having a "bad" landing in a Mooney 201. The Twin Otter was different - reports of one "good" landing were normal, two in a row was luck, three in a row and someone was lying. For me, night landings were generally my best ones. I've been fortunate to have a couple of greasers in the 'Twotter', but not on the same day. My other landings were more like 'arrivals' - you knew when you were done flying. We don't discuss those. Back to gun sound effects. Another example of the differences in sound is in an old anime TV series (from the mid-'90s) called "Blue Seed." The difference between the original Japanese gun effects and the effects on the American English-dub tracks is amazing. That could be due to time/budget limits - the Japanese stems sound like old stock library ones; the US ones sound like were custom recorded. But then again, I think most Americans know (or think they know) what a real handgun sounds like, as opposed to most Japanese (gun control is very strict over there - most people today have never held nor fired a real one). I suspect the audience expectations vis-a-vis the sound are very different.  |  IP: Logged Bill Enos Film God Posts: 2081 From: Richmond, Virginia, USA Registered: Apr 2000 posted 05-08-2012 03:48 PM                     Act of Valor has accurate sounding gunfire, though it is not lound enough in the mix.  |  IP: Logged Randy Stankey Film God Posts: 6539 From: Erie, Pennsylvania Registered: Jun 99 posted 05-08-2012 06:33 PM                     Planes land at "my" airport every day from 5:30 a.m. until midnight. You can see how far my back yard is from the runway. If airplanes squeaked every time they landed, I'd hear it but, in reality, a "squeaker" is a rare event and is typically the result of a bad landing or because something is wrong. The other sound that signals something bad is when greenhorn pilots on turboprops "beat" their props. They don't keep the engines in sync during the pre-flight runup and they can make a loud beating sound. If it gets really bad, it can rattle windows. From my understanding, it's illegal to do that. Once the pilot notices, he's supposed to throttle back or something. I can't imagine it does any good for the airplane or the passengers, either. The loudest plane that lands here is the C-130 from the Air National Guard. They do practice runs here. That can get loud and the pilot does occasionally beat his props. But, it's practice so I give them a break. How else are they supposed to learn? Besides, it's the National Guard. I give them a break. Somebody's got to defend the country. Right? Even the biggest, heaviest planes don't make very much noise when they land. The C-130 occasionally squeaks when it lands hard but, 95% of the time, the most you hear is the whining of the wheels running on the pavement, like the sound a semi truck makes when it's going 85 MPH. If you listened, you could hear that in the video. The point, here, is that I have a very different perception of what an airplane sounds like than 99% of the population. What you think sounds real is very obviously a bad sound effect to me. Conversely, what sounds real to me would sound uneventful, to say the least, to a person who hasn't listened to airplanes land every day for the last ten years. However, consensus reality or majority opinion dictates what sounds movie makers will use when they show airplanes landing. If it didn't, the audience's suspension of disbelief would be broken and they would lose interest in that movie or that part of the movie. The same thing goes for guns. Bobby and I, plus a few others here are self-professed "gun nuts." We can easily tell the sound of a .22 cal pistol from the sound of an M-16 or a 9mm handgun from a .357 cal. Most people don't even know what those guns are, let alone what they sound like. Consensus reality must dictate what sound effects are used for scenes with gunshots just the same way it dictates what sound effects are used when airplanes land.  |  IP: Logged Paul Mayer Oh get out of it Melvin, before it pulls you under! Posts: 3836 From: Albuquerque, NM Registered: Feb 2000 posted 05-08-2012 09:49 PM                        Um, a "squeaker" landing is definitely an intended event - it most definitely is not a mistake, though I admit many squeakers happen by accident. Most of the landings on that YouTube link are squeakers - that quiet "chirp" sound as the tires almost instantly spin up is a squeaker. I guess I need to listen to some movie landings to catch the sound being referred to here. Is it some kind of longer skid sound, like when some dufus lands with their feet on the brakes? Out-of-sync props are the sign of an amateur, except during run-ups. During piston-engine run-ups the prop governors and feather lockouts are individually exercised and checked, so the props will be out of sync for a few seconds. Same thing during turboprop run-ups in order to test beta-range and feather functionality. But once the power is pushed up for takeoff, someone (i.e. the Pilot Monitoring or the Flight Engineer, if available) should be making some quick fine adjustments to set takeoff power and sync up the props during the takeoff roll. Remember the WWII-era TV series "Baa Baa Black Sheep"? They had a Japanese pilot character called "Washing Machine Charlie" that would buzz the Black Sheep Squadron's field late at night with his props WAY out of sync, just to wake them up and piss them off. Yeah, the C-130 is a loud beast. So are Viscounts (man I'm old), Metroliners, Aero Commander turboprops, and Mitsubishi MU-2s. They all use engines that idle at around 90% RPM - not very nice for the neighbors! They are all machines that turn jet fuel into noise. Sorry - back to gun sounds.  |  IP: Logged Randy Stankey Film God Posts: 6539 From: Erie, Pennsylvania Registered: Jun 99 posted 05-09-2012 02:03 AM                     Yes, they make loud sound when running up the engines and testing the props but that's not bad. It makes a "woosh" sound. They do it two or three times for each engine. It only takes half a minute for them to do it. It's not really that bad. I only hear the props beating a couple of times a year. You just know it's a greenhorn at the controls. Only one time did I hear the C-130 do it. He literally rattled our windows. Like I said, it's the Air National Guard. Those guys are the ones that defend the country and they have to get their training somehow. I give them a break just for that reason. Back in the late 1980's there was a class action lawsuit against the airport. The F.A.A. ended up paying to have all the houses in this neighborhood insulated. We got one of those houses. You can't even hear the single engine planes land at all. You can hear Dash-8 turboprops and the Canadair jets a little. A C-130 sounds no louder than a truck driving by. The only times it gets any louder than that is when they screw up. Then, again, if I didn't think airplanes were cool, I wouldn't live near the airport. Even so, you can only really hear them when you're outdoors. I agree, the wheels make SOME sound when they touch down but it's more like a quick "chirp." This runway has some kind of textured pavement (for traction?) and the wheels make a whining sound as they roll but that's different. The sound I'm talking about is that classic "Screech! Screech!" often used in movies and TV shows during the 1970's. I seem to remember it being used a lot on "Hawaii Five-O." (The original show, not that bunch of pretty boys they have on TV, now.) The effect was practically cliche. I can see where they would need some kind of sound effect to signal the audience so they know that the airplane has landed. From experience, I know that real airplane landings sound nothing like that but a real sound effect wouldn't have the impact a real landing sound does. Since movies and TV shows aren't real, anyway, it doesn't matter very much. Just like the airplane landing sound effect, the average audience member expects to hear a cliche gunshot sound effect to "signal" that a gun has gone off but that sound often bears little or no relation to a real gunshot sound.  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 05-09-2012 03:39 PM                     The airplane tire screech noise is indeed quite a cliché. The opening of Die Hard is one of few movies where it seems plausible (you see dust come up when the 747's wheels contact the runway). Another one: movies almost always sync the sound of a distant explosion with the explosion. I can forgive that (along with explosions in space making sounds). In real life the speed of sound really throws off the sync between the flash and the boom. Kind of like lightning. Come to think of it, movies typically sync the flash of lightning and thunder together too. In real life the immediate flash-bang effect only happens when the lightning strikes real damn close. And that will flat out startle the hell out of even the mostly steely minded of people. quote: Randy Stankey The loudest plane that lands here is the C-130 from the Air National Guard. C-130 Hercules planes land at Fort Sill from time to time. They're not nearly as loud as the big cargo jets that land at Fort Sill or Lawton Regional Airport, often on exercises from Altus Air Force Base. The C-141 Starlifters that used to fly into Fort Sill could be heard on approach from a good distance. The C-17 Globemaster sounds more impressive. The best of all is the G-5 Galaxy. No other aircraft sounds quite like that. Sometimes a 747 "heavy" will fly into Lawton Regional Airport directly from Europe or Asia hauling a bunch of troops (for some reason I don't know they can't land at Fort Sill's runway). Even a 747 just doesn't sound as cool as a C-5. I've never heard a movie correctly reproduce the sound of a C-5 Galaxy. They just throw in some stock passenger jet noise and move on to something else. In real life the sound of a C-5 is more cool than any stock passenger jet sound effect. The noise has numerous layers to it. There is a high pitched scream at the top end. The engines have a unique "arrrr" sounding whirr. The engines put out a serious amount of bass. quote: Randy Stankey Just like the airplane landing sound effect, the average audience member expects to hear a cliche gunshot sound effect to "signal" that a gun has gone off but that sound often bears little or no relation to a real gunshot sound. I think the sound designers (and directors) are just making assumptions on what the audience expects to hear. Modern sound recording and editing technology is certainly good enough to record real world sounds, alter the noises to make them sound more "cool" while making them still have a resemblence to the original recording and do so at very high levels of quality. Given the fact many movie sound mixes are composed quickly due to very demanding time deadlines I think a lot of audio clip art for things like gun sounds are being re-used and judged as "good enough." I think we'll only hear accurate sounding suppressed handgun fire in a movie or TV show when a particular production goes to the trouble of carefully recording it. Until then the James Bond clip art fake bull crap will keep being used. Honestly, the only scenario where that sort of sound would be plausible at all would be if the shooter had a suppressor attached to a hammer-less small caliber revolver, not a semi-auto handgun. But a small caliber wheel gun just doesn't look very cool to a lot of viewers.  |  IP: Logged Kurt Zupin Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 989 From: Maricopa, Arizona Registered: Oct 2004 posted 05-10-2012 05:19 AM                     So no one has mentioned the Shoot Out scene from Heat? You definitely get the Pap Pap and not the Pop Pop sound effect.  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 05-10-2012 08:38 AM                     I mentioned Heat as well as another Michael Mann movie, Collateral, for having some good yet accurate sounding gun sound effects. However, certain sounds in the downtown L.A. shootout were obviously pumped up in terms of bass -like when Robert DeNiro fires his M-16 through the getaway car's windshield.  |  IP: Logged Aaron Garman Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1470 From: Toledo, OH USA Registered: Mar 2003 posted 05-13-2012 12:46 AM                     Se7en. Have it on now and forgot how loud the shots get. Heck, overall, this is an amazing sound mix. AJG  |  IP: Logged

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