[Leica] Sound on archive footage

[Simon Stevens <simon@wizard.net>]

“Anthony Atkielski” <anthony@atkielski.com> wrote:

>I'm always surprised by the loud, short, snappy “pop” sound of most
real life movie explosions, as opposed to the prolonged >blast sound one
hears on the soundtrack.  I read once that the soundtrack versions come
from extremely large military >explosions, far beyond the size of the
movie explosions for which they are used.
>-- Anthony


I'm not a combat veteran, but when I was an infantryman we played with
things that go bang quite a bit - demo charges, Bangalore Torpedoes,
Claymore mines, hand granades and M203 grenades, etc. etc.  You are
right, the movies (with the exception, imho, of Saving Private Ryan)
have the sound all wrong.  You don't really hear an explosion so much as
feel it, but I don't see how any movie can really recreate the effect of
feeling your kidneys vibrate in your body which is an effect that even a
little hand grenade will produce.

Incidentally, I was startled by how much real machine guns sound like
the ones in the movies. But I have yet to see a war movie that
faithfully reproduces the tinny little "kak!" sound of a real M16 - it's
just not impressive enough. And the M203's "bloop!" sound just plain
funny.

I think there is a difference between this and sound added to archival
footage which should certainly  be as accurate as possible. But I think
we can grant fiction movies some artistic license. For example, when
they show an explosion there is the obligatory  ball of flame which is
ludicrous, but understandable given that real explosions are pretty
boring to see - a flash and a puff of smoke. The real damage is caused
by the invisible shock wave of rapidly produced gasses and the equally
invisible rapidly moving debris. Which is why you normally don't watch
it, of course.

Simon Stevens