Chupathingy

[bloodyrosemccoy]

Cranky Co-Workers Day
Frankenstein Friday
Navy Day
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Anniversary - NYC Subway
Birthday - President Theodore Roosevelt (26th President)
Birthday - Roy Lichtenstein (artist)
Independence Day (Turkmenistan)

 

Yesterday we watched Blade Runner in Anthropology and Popular Culture. I’d never seen it before, but I can see where a lot of later movies get their concept of Futuristic Pastiche.

 

But one thing, one random thing, totally messed up any impact the movie would have had on me, and that was the sound effect they used when Rutger Hauer gouged out a dude’s eyes with his thumbs. It was this sort of cronch, not rough enough to be like a head cracking* but not like eyes being crushed. It was like crushing a plastic cup or something, very artificial, and it was just so inappropriate that it took me right out of the movie, and I never got fully back into it.

 

Amazing, the power of one sound effect.

 

Sometimes I don’t mind inappropriate sounds, especially sounds in science fiction, horror, and other movies where sounds that don’t exist in the world need to be made, mixed, and rearranged.  I love playing Where’s Wilhelm, and I laughed like an idiot when they played a bowling strike noise in X3 when Juggernaut bowls through them all. The bus brake the Planet Express Ship makes when it lands in Futurama is brilliant.  And I am difficult to watch early 90s cartoons with because I yell “Star Wars!” whenever I hear one of Ben Burtt’s sound effects used out of its Star Wars context.** But when you put in a sound effect that isn’t well-placed, it can totally throw me.

 

Of course, on the top of this list is any bird. Stephen Colbert’s bald eagle, and all bald eagles onscreen except maybe for Sam the Muppet are dubbed over with the much more impressive cry of a red-tailed hawk, because real bald eagles sound ingloriously chickeny and not at all inspiring.*** And for some reason, in every establishing shot of a jungle in the history of the world—no matter where it is on Earth—you hear a kookaburra. Possibly you also hear his peacock sidekick. They are apparently absurdly well-traveled. And they drive me crazy.

 

I also get distracted by Door Opens noises, be it the sound of an ordinary wooden door or the Star Trek one or whatever, because they often get mixed too loudly and are indeed like having someone yell “Door opens!” at you. Douglas Adams and I have something in common.

 

I know this makes me nitpicky, but someone who geeks enough to pay attention to these things is going to have to put up with the drawbacks thereof. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

 

 

Oh, and note to sound designers: if you want a scaryass animal sound, you can’t do better than a puma . Unlike lions and tigers, they’ve got throats like domestic cats and therefore can truly purr and when they growl they sound like, well, like huge, pissed-off killer tabby cats from space.

 

 

*Interesting fact: Dad, who has firsthand knowledge, says that when you open up somebody’s skull it does, indeed, sound like a coconut cracking open.

 

**Hell, I’m interested enough to be a fan of Ben Burtt, especially since he was willing to completely toss aside the fact that There Is No Sound In Space to make whining crazy TIE fighter noises and loud kabooms because that’s emotionally more intense, just like when you put in music which nobody needs to justify.

 

***When I was in Golden looking through Foss’s General Store, I found myself at a little rack full of those plush Audobon birds with the sounds. I activated a loon, which attracted the attention of a blind man and his two friends (I heard him say to them, “Did you just hear a loon?” “Oh, that was me,” I said). He came over to check it out and his friends and I spent a few minutes playing the different birds to him, trying to stump him. Only one call confused him, and that was the squeaky little cluck that our nation’s bird was making.

Comments

[mile-high-death.livejournal.com]

The dangers of a botched foley artist. Saddly to was the movie you watched probably didnt have the oh so needed internal dialog...that movie is very diffrent without it.

[chibicharibdys.livejournal.com]

I also saw Blade Runner for the first time recently. My main impression was that it was rather foggy, wasn't it?

[gondolinchick01.livejournal.com]

Well, look at it this way: if Ben Franklin had had his way, our national bird would sound even dorkier. At least IMO.

Also, I saw Blade Runner a couple years ago and thought it was OK, but never really got into it. Maybe I wasn't up to date on the Deep Symbolism, or maybe I'm just a hopeless pleb. Or both. Either way, I seem to have blocked the eye-gouge from my conscious memory.

[thewrongcrowd.livejournal.com]

And for some reason, in every establishing shot of a jungle in the history of the world—no matter where it is on Earth—you hear a kookaburra.

You're right! I had never really thought about it, but a kookaburra is exactly the bird the ubiquitous they uses to indicate "jungle."

I am a little concerned that you actually know what a gouged/crushed eyeball would sound like. ;) (I could see under certain circumstances, the breaking of the sclera pouch making a popping sound--just not a paper-cup-popping sound.)

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

For all I know, that IS the sound it makes ~ maybe they actually recorded somebody smushing somebody else's eyeball. But I thought it would be squishier. *SKRONCH* just didn't have the right ring.

When I was small I thought that kookaburra was a monkey. Took me a while to accept that it was a bird.