question to FX people .. re: Whoosh sound effects

FiddlerMD

FiddlerMD

Well-known member
I have found that in nearly every production I do, i inevitably need some sort of "whoosh" effect.. this tends to be because it's so abundantly used nowadays with every transition, swish pan and text effect that missing it seems unnatural (not that I like that kinda thing but what're ya gonna do)... in any case, for some reason I have a hard time finding decent Whooshes .. ones that are constant white-noise-ish .. ones that go from high to low frequency, etc.. do all of you sound people create these from scratch or is there a library of whooshes i'm unaware of? :)
for those that create it - can u give a quick tutorial as to how?
 
We create them. Having to redo the sound on a number of early Jackie Chan films required a LOT of whooshes. You need a quiet space with some room and a recorder. Basically you just swing things past the microphone. Bamboo sticks work well, coiler phone cords, rope, pipes and plastic tubes, bullroars. Just about anything. The alternative for some things is to take a mic and swing it past a speaker that is playing some white noisey sound, though that doesn't give you as much variety and is a bit more problematic but you can get some really slow evolving by's.
After that slowing them down in PT or Soundminer is a good way to get the slower heavier whooshes. If you buy a library it's probably at it's core the same recordings with maybe some synth sweetener added in.
 
For Kung-Fu whooshes, thin bamboo rods with square or octagonal cross-sections (rather than round) work great. A length of hemp rope swung in a circle will also give a nice whoosh. More exotic techniques include using a cookie sheet to wave a blast of air directly into an AKG D112 (for an extra huge whoosh), or even sliding your hand down the length of a hydrophone's cable (if you have one laying around).

One rather interesting one I've used recently is to get a pack of practice golf balls (hollow plastic balls full of holes). String a few on the length of a string and you have a very interesting whistling whoosh effect. Alternately, use a slingshot to fire them past the nose of a microhphone. Probably too high-pitched for shot transitions, though.

Metasynth can be used to come up with some rather strange and organic transition effects, as can the old stand-by of reversing a percussive sound with a long sustain (eg. gongs, septic tanks) and fading out before the actual hit. Wind and fire effects can also be handy elements, as can explosion tails and animal vocalizations.

If you go to sounddogs.com and search for "whoosh" or "fireball", you'll find plenty of interesting elements. Try to avoid merely slugging in library effects, though. Its much better to design a unique sound that is appropriate to the texture of the overall film.
 
I've recently tried putting a generic distant traffic sound I recorded into a sampler for fun. I used a slow attack and slow release and it created something that sounded like a long whoosh. I didn't get a chance to play with it much, but playing around with that idea might give you some interesting elements in a whoosh.

Also don't forget to layer sounds if one element doesn't have everything you need.
 
thanks for the tips - I don't have a good recording space or the time to play around with various types of foley but i love reading about this kind of artistry (also always love watching the dvd extras about this kind of stuff).
i do remember seeing some tutorial or whatnot about just starting out w/ white noise and tweaking it.. can someone give a brief overview? the software i have available is adobe audition
 
FiddlerMD said:
thanks for the tips - I don't have a good recording space or the time to play around with various types of foley ...
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FYI it's Foley, it's capitalized because it's a persons name. And Foley is recorded in sync to picture, this is FX recording not Foley, though I guess one could try to perform in sync with picture and then it would be Foley... The distinction can get sort of soft but technically if it wasn't recorded to THE picture your working on it's FX. So "technically" Foley recorded for one show and reused in another becomes FX in the second film.
 
Noiz2 said:
FYI it's Foley, it's capitalized because it's a persons name.
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Ooh, I just love a good grammer-fight! In this particular usage, its a garden-variety noun, so needn't be capitalized. Another example would be "sandwich", since the word refers to the snack rather than the gentleman after whom it was named.

That said, in a perfect world "foley" would always be typed in caps. Followed by an exclamation point, regardless of context.
 
SMuir said:
Ooh, I just love a good grammer-fight! In this particular usage, its a garden-variety noun, so needn't be capitalized. Another example would be "sandwich", since the word refers to the snack rather than the gentleman after whom it was named.

That said, in a perfect world "foley" would always be typed in caps. Followed by an exclamation point, regardless of context.
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LOL. But in fact Foley is always capitalized, english... eh American obtuse grammar aside, sort of like IBM is always capitalized even when it's not used as an acronym.

It probably doesn't have anything to do with grammar but more with respect for the originator.
 
Noiz2 said:
FYI it's Foley, it's capitalized because it's a persons name. And Foley is recorded in sync to picture, this is FX recording not Foley, though I guess one could try to perform in sync with picture and then it would be Foley... The distinction can get sort of soft but technically if it wasn't recorded to THE picture your working on it's FX. So "technically" Foley recorded for one show and reused in another becomes FX in the second film.
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i stand corrected :) Foley it is.. or without hijacking the thread, just assume I meant "FX" :)
 
Sound effects that are recorded on a foley stage aren't necessarily considered foley! You don't always have to record in sync to the picture. Foley stages are great in general for how quiet they are, as well as the variety of good props and surfaces in them.

Another huge tip for recording and working with whooshes, or any sounds for that matter, is to record them at very high sample rates (such as 192khz or 96khz). This works especially well with microphones that have a wide frequency spectrum such as calibration microphones. Most normal mics pick up about what us humans hear which is about 20hz to 20,000hz. Some calibration microphones can pick up frequencies as high as 50,000hz. The high sample rates and ultra high frequencies picked up by the mics make all the difference in the world when you start noodling with the woosh recordings, especially when pitch shifting down. The extra sample and frequency information makes them sound far better when pitched down.

Thanks for tuning in. This is my first post in this forum!
 
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Humanwire said:
Sound effects that are recorded on a foley stage aren't necessarily considered foley! You don't always have to record in sync to the picture. Foley stages are great in general for how quiet they are, as well as the variety of good props and surfaces in them.
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All true but if you don't record in sync with picture it's not really Foley, it's FX recording or poss WIFO. I have done tons of recording on Foley stages that weren't Foley.
 
Noiz2 said:
All true but if you don't record in sync with picture it's not really Foley, it's FX recording or poss WIFO. I have done tons of recording on Foley stages that weren't Foley.
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That's what I'm saying, I totally agree.

I like using a foley stage for the reasons listed above; you can record lots of great SFX without picture for use in your current or upcoming projects. People have the misconception that just because you record sound in a foley pit means it's foley, when foley is only really done with picture. Foley in general just means the movement of the characters and objects in a scene, but I've seen subway trains and entire surfing scenes recorded on a foley stage in sync with the picture, which is not considered foley in what people traditionally think of when they think of foley.
 
FiddlerMD said:
ok stop hijacking my thread with the symantics already .. :)
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Well, I thought your question had ben pretty thoroughly answered, and while it's partly picky semantics (capitalization) it is also fundamental definitions. Foley has been used by folks to mean everything from ADR to FX to Music or just any and all sound in a film. And it hurts the filmmaker if they use the term incorrectly. If you go the your doctor for a cold you don't want to get a lobotomy :~). In a business where so much hinges on small details it's important to use the correct words for things.

So have you made any whooshes yet? How did they turn out?
 
Oh and a library note...
Digital Juice, which sells some bargain though not consistently good (some sounds are very good some a VERY amateur), have a lot of transition whooshes in them. They are mostly more synthy, video wipe kinds of sounds. They are being sold (at least on the newsletter) at $199 each witch is a pretty good price for the amount of stuff you get. If your interested and you go to the site and you don't see the discount email me and I'll forward you the newsletter and you can use that link.
 
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