ArticlesI was talking to a friend of mine who is responsible for adding sound-effects to TV shows.
I was reminded of the time that I did a radio-play for a school project. The script called for the sound of a glass (i.e. a tumbler) smashing, but I didn’t have access to any sound-effect libraries. There was only one thing for it.
I went through our collection of glasses and selected the oldest, rattiest glass I could find, and enlisted my father’s help. I set up the microphone in a tiled area, and I sat with my finger on the pause button and counted down from five. On zero, I unpaused the recording as my father dropped the glass from a great height onto the hard, tiled floor….
With a loud thunk, it bounced high off the tiles, still in one piece! It hadn’t smashed!
I swore silently, and paused the recording again…
…just as the glass landed after the bounce and smashed into hundreds of pieces.
Sighing, I went off to hunt down the next-most old, ratty glass I could find.
Comment by Cassie on June 15, 2006
And that reminds me of a situation earlier today.
One of my tasks this week is to wash a whole heap of laundry that has been neglected for some time – largely some doonas and an underlay, from when I nearly burnt down the house, which seem to take forever to dry.
Anyway, I had ABC Classic (radio station) playing in the loungeroom while doing some things around the house. My enjoyment of the music I could faintly hear wafting into my bedroom was interrupted when it suddenly started pouring with rain. “Crap!” I thought. “Those doonas have been trying to dry for a few days and now they’re gonna get wet again!”.
And then I realised that the sound I thought was rain was the applause from a concert that had been playing on the radio. And I think I might have made this mistake before (or perhaps the other way around).
So there you go. If you ever want a rain sound effect, and you’re in a drought, just get a hall full of people clapping and record it from an adjacent room. Conversely, if you ever need an applause sound effect, and you’re just not that entertaining, record some rain. They’re roughly interchangable.
Comment by Aristotle Pagaltzis on June 15, 2006
Cassie: neat. And the neatest thing about that factoid is that once you think about it for a while, you realise that this is not at all coincidental.
Comment by Cassie on June 22, 2006
Julian, sometimes the failure to break on first contact is a blessing.
I was walking along a Sydney street with a friend a few years ago, when he was struck with a rock that appeared to have been thrown from a window across the street, at least five storeys up. We turned to see the size of the rock, and noticed that it wasn’t a rock, but an egg. It had remained intact when it hit Chris, and only broke once it hit the ground. How thoughtful. Chris walked away with a slightly bruised hip, but at least his clothes weren’t spoiled. Bruises heal, but crusty egg on one’s clothes is not at all becoming.