Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Low Frequency EFX

This is something that's been puzzling me for a while. We all strive to come up with systems that are capable of reproducing the low frequency effects so prevalent in movies these days. What I'm wondering is how those effects are generated/captured? It seems like it would be just as hard to create or capture those sounds as it is to reproduce them. I mean, no one was there with a wide range microphone and a superb recorder when the T-rex took that ominous step in Jurassic Park. Is it just synthesized?

Peter Jackson for LOTRs went to a quarry in New Zealand and had cranes pick up 2 ton concrete blocks and drop them and they had microphones everywhere in the ground and different levels. Its what they used for the catapults in Return of the King.

Hmm. That is a no no nonsense approach.

T-Rex's roar comes from a baby elephant crying or calling. They just happened to pick it up and was there at the right time.

Its probably a mixture of sounds they picked up plus synthesized.

with all kinds of tricks, the can have "The mouse that roared".
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053084/

what i don't like much in some recent movies (and even on some TV series) is that some big sounds (and some not big ones) are too exagerated.

The WOW sounds of yesteryear were rather ease to produce. A ladies scream, a clap of thunder, a squeaky door. Nowadays with the advent more so on action packed, thriller, sci-fi,and suspense movies. Today's sound engineers have to take a sound or a noise, sometimes combining them and or through manipulation to produce a effective sound affect.

Then again, back in the mid 70's, George Lucas had people basically going around the US (maybe even parts of the world) finding sounds. From striking long tension cables, or just overlaying a bunch of sounds, most of them were 100% organic. Not so much today I would guess.

in the early 50's, Canada's CBC has special effects machines to make different kinds of sound effects, like foot falls or doors closing or opening, etc.
i guess they used tubes at the time.
if i remember right, they said the machine could make about 100-125 different sound effects.

Okay, so you drop the 20-ton weight (a la "Monty Python") and no doubt it generates some low frequency sounds on impact. What I'm really wondering is what they capture it with. Think about the dynamic range involved -- from dead silence to who knows how many decibels. And the frequency range involved -- the whole audio spectrum down to seriously subsonic. Even if you have the microphone to handle it, what do you record it on?

Or is this easier than it sounds (no pun intended)?

Whip, I’ve found that most movies don’t have that much in the way of very low below 40Hz effects. With few exceptions I have to set the filter on my Buttkicker up to 55Hz to get the earth shaking feel I would expect out of what I’m actually seeing on the screen.

Yeah. What happened to the good old days when two half coconut shells were all you needed for a horse? No CGI, no roving the world looking for exotic sounds.

Hi Fred,
Yeah you're right. Come to think of it though, didn't they make an episode of Gilligan's Island using this sophisticated technique?

And those horse sounds are even better when you see the characters clapping the coconuts together on the screen

I think the irony of that would be if they had to use a foley artist to produce the sound of the coconuts. Which they probably did.

The 'coconut voice-over'. I don't know if they used a real foley artist though. As I recall they had no budget for the movie at all.

Hmmm... wonder what those coconuts sound like with an ep800.

Yup, they did... and i think Gilligan was assigned coconut duty.... I remember watching that episode when i was "home sick" from school one day....