Sound Tropes to retire
Sound Tropes to retire
For better or worse, there are sonic conventions that are hard to avoid and tempting to use. Whether to make a point or simply out of laziness, we use tired, cliche'd ideas to complete a soundtracks. Some have simply worn out their usefulness or worse, telegraph a lack of imagination. Let's agree to retire these ancient sonic traditions and only revel in them on tribute podcasts dedicated to things we just shouldn't hear any more.
The Grand Prize Winner:
1)THE WILHELM: The party is over. The jig is up. The cats' out of the bag. Stop using the Wilhelm. You have been outed. It is neither cool, or edgy or "inside". It was great when it was a well kept secret among a very small group of insiders who ONLY knew about it, its origins, and its use cases. If you look it up on Google you will find 190,000,000 (yes that's million) references to it. When directors ask for one, JUST SAY NO!
2)CREAKY DOORS: and I'm not just talking about haunted houses. Modern sound designers have not only decided that everything must make a sound in movies but that ghosts AND suburban families just don't have time to oil their hinges.
3) THUNDER: (on the flash): You don't have to be a meteorologist to know that, unless your in imminent danger of being hit by lighting because, whether hugging a cast iron weather vane or standing in a wading pool, the sound of thunder ALWAYS follows the flash. And many of us know the simple formula for judging how far away the storm is based on the delay between the lighting flash and the sound of thunder. I believe it's 1 mile for each second of delay. Be a hero and stop your slavish adherence to visual sync!
4) WIND IN THE DESERT: While I understand that it can be quite windy in the desert, including violent sand-storms, the deserts' natural state is one of abject quiet, quiet made even more so because there isn't anything around for sound to reflect off of. If you've ever been in the desert without the accompaniment of dune buggies or Burning Man revelers, you'd know that it was so quiet you could hear your own heartbeat. Yet due to a modern aesthetic that insists sound design is an additive process, we fill deserts with wind for lack of any better ideas including silence. Take a chance and revel in doing less!
5)NOISY COMPUTERS: There isn't a modern film that, upon showing graphics on a computer screen, doesn't feel compelled to give those displays an annoying beep or synthesized data scrolling noise. In my brief forays into what the future might sound like, including research at Xerox PARC on what is called "confirmation" tones (the little audible sounds that assure a computer user that what they think they did really happened) it appears that we will likely be in for a much quieter future. Speaking with futurists and science-fiction writers one also finds concurrence that the future should be a lot quieter; modern life is just too noisy. Can you imagine how awful life will be for those who spend their lives at computer terminals (whether sitting in the Command center of a Michael Bay film, or sitting on the bridge of a futuristic space ship in a JJ Abrams film) and having to live with all that racket? Turn em' off!
6)MAGIC SPARKLES: This request will assure I won't work on a Disney animated film ever again but can we please find some other creative ways to signify miracles are happening before our very eyes, we are moving from reality into non-reality or into a dream sequence without the tinkling of wind chimes? Of particular note is the mark-tree, that over-used percussion instrument made of varying lengths of metal tubes or rods that, when stroked, sparkles with all the magic of a ripple dissolve. Don't use it! You will be identified.
7) DREAM REVERB: While the discovery of electronic or even mechanical reverb devices over 100 years ago was surely the panacea early sound designers needed to give their work that "otherness" that accompanies a dream sequence, flashback in time, or eerie voices from the void, surely its over-use in the ensuing 99 years has given us the right to relegate the use of this effect in dreams to the dustbin. How did we decide that the indication we are dreaming or in an altered state of mind was reverb when, as far as I can tell, no one has ever said "I had this crazy nightmare last night and you can't believe the early reflections I heard when my high school math teacher laughed at me naked in front of my classmates." Lets relegate reverb in dreams to a minority status in our toolkit. It is the shortest of short-hand for non-reality in spite of the ubiquity of the sound itself. Its unimaginative...stop it!
8) SLO-MOTION VOICES: Slo-motion photography still manages to capture my imagination. It can still speak volumes narratively about a dramatic moment, not to mention give the audience the ability to enjoy visual detail that might otherwise go by too quickly. In spite of its ubiquity and popularity, one cannot say the same for the very bad habit of bringing perfectly noble and talented actors and actresses into a recording studio to act like 9 year-olds; re-voicing a a slow-motion version of their performance as if they had been speaking in slo-motion. This over-used sound trope finds respectable performers imitating what they think sound does when played back on now defunct analog tape machines. It's embarrassing to watch and hear these noble individuals make fools of themselves because of our lack of imagination. Do better!
9) BABIES AND ARGUMENTS: This one bugs me not so much because of the sounds themselves but their socio-economical assumptions. It would appear, if you watch enough Rom-Coms or "Urban" audience targeted movies, that when the boyfriend/husband is kicked out of the house and is forced to find accommodations "downtown" in the low-rent area, they will be kept up their first night alone by the intrusive sounds of angry couples unable to agree on anything and taking it out on each other by screaming through walls and vents, airing their dirty laundry for anyone to hear. I suppose the conclusion we can make from these sonic narratives is that poor people are angry people or poor and angry people argue more than the rest of us and they do it without consideration for others. The nerve! You never see this audio trope used in Hugh Grant movies. Of course the Dive Apartment Argument's dirty uncle is the baby that wont' stop crying next door. Again, apparently only underprivileged neighborhoods and apartments have infants with that kind of audacity.
10) TIRE SKIDS: Have you ever noticed that, in movies and TV, every time a car goes around a corner, comes to a stop, or accelerates out quickly...it skids or screeches? I've done a fair amount of aggressive driving in my day either testing exotic cars performance or, more importantly, recording those kinds of cars for my sound library. I can tell you that most modern cars take a lot of effort to cause the tires to break away long enough to emit the chirping, sliding skid sound erstwhile sound editors add for just about any reason, let alone getting raced on a track. At it's most egregious, hacks in our community put the screechy skid, caused by rubber losing adhesion on pavement, in car chases...(wait for it)... on dirt and gravel.. Keeyuh!. There are appropriate sounds we all have in our libraries of cars skidding on dirt and gravel but some feel compelled to augment these chase sequences with the more high-octane sound of tires squealing on asphalt. I like to call this the Dukes of Hazard Effect. Go watch a few of those and you'll see what I mean.
11) I'M ON FIRE (and other bad Group Walla): Have you ever been on fire? Very few people have. I have and so has my partner, Richard Anderson who once, while trying to record the sounds of actual fire for a movie, lit himself on fire (I helped) and, you know what? He didn't say a word. Not a fair comparison because, being the pro he was, he knew I was rolling tape and didn't want to ruin the sound recording by speaking. That being said, when on fire one's principle concern is not speaking but...trying to put the damn flames out. Yet, for some reason one of the oldest conventions in cinema audio is the compulsion to have a man on fire run out of a building and announce "I'm on fire". As if the derring-do of the stunt-person performing such an act wasn't amazing enough, we must remind the audience he's on fire, I guess, to preclude them from disbelieving their own eyes. Let's put this fire out right now, please. I beg of you.
12) RED TAILED HAWK: In case you don't know what this is, the red tailed hawk is the species of bird you can not avoid hearing on just so many TV commercials (mostly for cars) and shameless movies that want you to feel a sense of either freedom, open spaces, or Americana. I believe one of the Big 3 American auto makers now uses this oft-heard screech as part of their corporate logo branding. Its a really tired old library sound. You've literally heard this bird-call thousands of times. It's unavoidable in just about every Western when the filmmaker cuts to a wide shot of an open prairie, the Grand Canyon, or other large expanse of real estate. I don't doubt Ornithologists in the audience take a beat when they hear this birds call outside of it's indigenous habitats. Please let these women and men of letters get some sleep and STOP using this tired old sound.
13) THE KOOKABURRA: It's pretty damn hard to do a jungle movie and not use this birds iconic chortling. It's a mesmerizing sound that, honestly, I can't get enough of. But given the abuse of this sound on, seriously, thousands of primitive adventure movies into the deepest darkest recesses of Africa, we just have to stop trying to create the feeling of Jungle with this sound. I don't know much about what it's territorial range is but I'm pretty sure you don't hear the Kookaburra outside of its native Australia. Even if thats not the case, it's become an annoying trope that has transcended geography to imply "adventure" even when the narrative finds teenagers venturing outside their Mayberry-esque neighborhoods to discover the big city.
14) THE LAUGH TRACK: You're not fooling anyone. I don't need to say any more about this.
15) THE CRY TRACK: Ok, look, if we can't legislate the demise of the Laugh Track, lets round out its offensiveness by giving it a rainbow coalition of supporting sounds, evincing the full range of human emotions. If audiences are so stupid not to know when to laugh, we are left to assume they are too stupid to know when to cry, or be embarrassed, or be frightened. Right? Would it really hurt THIS IS US, to overdub an audience balling tears when Kate gets an abortion, empowering the emotionally repressed viewers (men) to join in without embarrassment? Speaking of embarrassment, how much better would CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM be if we added a chorus of of Homer Simpson-like "Dohhs" when Larry does something really appalling? And, if we are being really honest, why aren't we adding a Scream tracks when Jason jumps out from behind a tree or Freddy saws a limb off?
16) PHONE FUTZ: For decades, the sound artists that create the soundtracks to movies and television have robotically degraded the sound of our voices when coming over a communication device like a telephone, mobile device, radio or television (the worst culprit). Most of the aforementioned devices are decidedly high-fidelity these days yet modern sound engineers/mixers feel compelled to reduce the fidelity of those signals to resemble something akin to what Watson might have heard on that fateful first call from AGB. There are dramatic times when this filtering technique is necessary to accurately portray compromised audio signals when listening to broadcasts from the Space Station or an old Army radio in WWII. Steven Soderbergh bought us all passes on this trope almost 40 years ago in sex, lies and videotape (there was no Futz used during the telephone calls) and more recently, Spike Jonze in HER. Futzing is the knee-jerk response of audio engineers not dissimilar to the "God Bless You" response we have to a sneeze. We do it instinctually yet the words have no value to the event other than to acknowledge it.
17) GUN RATTLE: This is a particularly subtle sound and, perhaps, only known by or noticed by practitioners but none the less noxious, illogical, and over eager. If you aren't a sound geek (but reading this anyway), keep you ears peeled for this version of the sound designer declaring "I'm still here". If a cop, or Marine or Cowboy wields a gun on camera, you will surely here some kind of metallic (although sadly sometimes plastic-y) rattle as they train it on their prey/victim. It is most pronounced when the gun wielding person is nervous and shaking. Often, even if they are Clint Eastwood or John Wayne, the gun rattles up a treat even when they are just pulling it out of the holster and simply holding it. FYI - guns don't rattle! You wouldn't trust them if they did. If something were that loose, no self-respecting shooter would risk firing it. It's probably defective and would misfire. Any gun, no matter how old, is a precision piece of manufacturing, assembly and metallurgy. Stop doing this. You are embarrassing peace officers and the military everywhere!
18) THE HIPPOCRATIC OATH: I do solemnly swear to do no harm to sound tracks for any scene taking place in a hospital, surgical ward, or emergency ward by sullying them with the sounds of EKG or Heart Monitor beeps and Respirators that either aren't in that room or don't make those sounds at all. I laugh my tail off when I see a poor accident victim laid up in a hospital room and hear the the beeping of an EKG or wheezing of an electronic respirator and there are NO TUBES AT ALL attached to the patient. We have overused these sounds so many times that they are sonic code for patient in distress. I've been in the hospital way too many times for surgery (knee injuries sustained from playing competitive soccer) and I don't remember my heart monitor beeping. Oh yeah, and lets stop putting doctor pages off camera and in the hallways of hospital scenes between every line of dialog. Doctors hate that cacophony in real life and hospitals aren't that noisy. And another thing...it's not funny when you put your directors name or the name of your plastic surgeon in those pages when you actually need one in the track. You aren't being original. Knock it off!
19) HEARTBEATS: At some critical juncture in film sound history, a very astute sound designer made the connection between hearing your own heart beat and fear. I'm guessing this sound trope is at least 70 years old. That's retirement age, the last time I checked. This has to be the cheesiest and lamest audio trope we have; adding the sound of a heartbeat to "amp-up" the tension/fear/anxiety. It might be interesting if it weren't so over-used. Seriously, if this is the best you can to do make a scene feel edgy, stop whatever you are doing and find another career. If you are a composer, you get a limited hall pass, for the next couple of years, to use percussion to give the appearance of a heart beat but, again, your not fooling anyone. The only anxiety you should feel when adding heartbeats to enhance dread or create tension is the imminence of your demise as an expert in your field.
20) RECORD NEEDLE SCRATCH: If you haven't already figured this one out, you're probably over 40. Using the needle scratch to: augment or accent a moment of sudden realization, need to stop the action or underline an embarrassing action is an anachronism as much as it is the tiredest of sound cliches. Given most filmgoers under the age of, say, 30 have never heard a record player, how do you imagine they know what that scratchy sound actually means? I think modern media consumers have just internalized it as a silly sound used to imply those emotional beats without ever knowing it's origins. I give a hall pass to the REN AND STIMPY cartoons for always using it tastefully. God bless you for that.
21) RICOCHETS: This trope needs a thorough vetting because of the numerous ways they are over-used and abused. First...ricochets are exceedingly rare yet modern sound designers feel compelled to put them on every shot. Ricos are the gun trope equivalent of the car skid. They get plastered around everywhere with the dubious rationale that they amp up the excitement level. I would argue they stamp your soundtrack as traditional, unoriginal and tired...because that's a technique used extensively in very old movies, to good effect. It's worn out. Believe me. And as if this practice were not absurd enough, I'm now hearing sound designers put ricochets on the CUs of the guns themselves... as they are being fired. I can understand amping up the sound of ricos when you see one bounce off a rock or a tank but in reality, the rico is really a fairly subtle audio artifact of a bullet bouncing off something. Hearing it at the point of fire is absurd...unless of course the shooter has aimed the gun at the ground below them.
22) ANTAGONISTS WITH DEEP VOICES: Evolutionarily speaking there are roots in the likelihood of bad actors having a deep voices. The ability to do great harm (an essential feature of all antagonists!) was predicated on physical size and strength and a direct result of a preponderance of testosterone in ones body, a byproduct of which was its effect on the vocal chords and lowering the human voice. Alas, with the invention of fire, and tools and weapons, the physical attributes needed to terrorize villages became less important, ceding dominance to the smaller whiney voiced intellectuals with their more modest physical attributes and gobs of ability and cleverness. This time-worn bad-guy trope can safely be disposed of along with mustache twisting and evil laughter.
23) ALIEN AND ROBOT VOICES: I'm not sure of the history of the robotic sounding alien voice. You know, that mono-tonal drone with no pitch inflection. Early in cinema, think FORBIDDEN PLANET or THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, conversation with a robot or a martian sounded much like the way we talk with each other. Perhaps because the idea that a computer could simulate speech was so foreign we never imagined that the first iterations of robotic speech would be just that, the droning of something like human speech at one pitch...with some reverb on it (duh!). Cut to the mid seventies when speech synthesis arrives and suddenly aliens and robots in cinema took on the attributes of this nascent technology without ever imagining that it would be transcended in very short time. Let go of these bad habits.
24) HELMET BREATHING: Unfortunately, Star Wars has ruined it for sound designers for the foreseeable future. No matter how dramatically correct or justified by the narrative, adding the sound of a breathing device on anyone wearing a helmet will be called out by well-meaning directors the world over. That well has been poisoned for at least another generation of sound designers. Just don't even try. It's fine, you get a pass. Move on.
25) FORCE FIELDS: The idea that, in the future, we can protect ourselves, our communities or our spaceships with an invisible (or perhaps not so invisible) barrier between us and our aggressors, is in itself, a fantastic Science-Fiction movie trope. Aiding and abetting the deployment of this tech is the humming and buzzing apparently needed to indicate said impermeable protection. While I'm not familiar with the equipment necessary to make a force-field (and the attendant sounds they are accompanied by) I feel pretty confident that a) engineers would design them to be pretty quiet given how long they have to be on for and b) if we could hear them, we'd be better off if they sounded musical. I love the idea that listening to Tool, the Beatles, or Beyonce makes me invincible.
So there it is. Some low hanging fruit to pick off and discard. I'll be adding to this list over time. This isn't the sum total of our collective sonic sins. Over time we'll be using and abusing sound out of laziness and we'll have to identify these abuses and abusers and self-police. I can already see one coming that will go on the list pretty soon: the LFE sine wave dive. You all know what it is. You know who you are.
Stop It!!!
Thursday, January 7, 2021