Evening star., 1940-04-18

in us, although we have not checked
with the family psychiatrist.
Out OF can 1178. Mike whipped q
roll OF sound film, slapped it on a
spindle sort Of instrument, turned a
switch. Instantly, in a laboratory,
which was virtually the oldest place
in the world for such a sound, came
the croaking of the bull frog who
probably is closer than any other
of his species to, Immortality. You
may have heard him yourself, q
sound effect in q romantic scene
which finds the young lovers sit
ting enraptured on the shore of q
moonlit lake.
Want a croak?" Mike asked.
And when we, who never thought
Of getting an autograph in our life.
said a sudden, enthusiastic ."yes,"
he snipped a croak out of the film
and handed it to us.
Building up sound library so
infinitely detailed is an enormous
Job and an unending one. If 1t were
just matter of natural sounds, the
cries of animals, the whistling of
winds, the weeping Of women, or
something Of that sort, it would not
be unending. Such natural sounds
do not change much between the
Garden of Eden and Hollywood.
Once recorded, there they are to be
used over and over again in as many
films as may be made. When q
recording wears out, rather before it
wears out, re-recording is made SO
the sound always is fresh.
Artificial sounds are the capricious,
changing ones and those which give
the sound effects library people their
real and continuing problem. The
automobile provides an illustration.
It's sound effects are constantly
changing, just as are those of all
other mechanical devices. The
library must be kept constantly up
to date.
But the human ear is not tuned
finely enough to appreciate those
minute distinctions" one protests.
Some human ears are" Mike
explains. We've got to have au-
thenticity."
He cites the specific case of
streamlined railroad equipment.
M-G-M's library is right up to date
on this as on other scores. It was
brought to that level of modernity
because the studio hired special
train. ran it under every kind of
conditions, in canyons, over trestles,
in fiat lands. Inside and out the
train was plastered with micro
phones and recording apparatus
Never a sound did the train make
that was not recorded, catalogued
and filed away against the day when
some director calls for, say, a
streamliner crossing a trestle in a
mountain gorge at speed of So
miles an hour.
The process is that thorough. even
If it does sound silly and fill the
outsider with perverse longing for
the day when the sound track will
give off q shrill, steamy whistle
instead of the deep-throated horn
tone which is the latest thing for
keeping people of grade crossings.
Even worse than the designers Of
automobiles and trains on the equi-
lbrium of sound effects chasers are
those who build airplanes. Airplanes
sound different almost from plane
to plane and keeping pace with them
is a dizzy job.
One of Mikes favorite anecdotes
on this phase of his mammoth sub
ject has to do with a director who
was expert enough on airplanes to
be precise about certain kind of
noise. When it failed to show up
in the sound of a formation flight
of q new type Of plane, he insisted
that the recording was faulty. That
specific noise, a certain beat created
by the engines of massed planes,
could not be eliminated, he told
Mike.
He had to go to an airport and
listen for himself before he would
believe that it had been.
The mass of movie-goers would
hardly indulge in such hair-splitting,
but sound recorders take no chance
that even one hair-splitter might
show up some night.
There are many sounds in the
studio libraries which cannot be
used. One such group is the cries
of animals in pain. Censorship says
no because there is an echoing cry
of pain in humans in a great many
instances. The animal in question
might not be htrt at all. It might
be merely acting, or the cry might
be used without visual representa-
ton of the animal on the screen.
But the public would not know that
it was merely noise from q sound