What are these sound effects called?

P

plnelson

Member
(if this is the wrong forum for this question feel free to suggest the right one)

In recent years it's become impossible to avoid the hyperbolic sound effects used to amp up the drama in practically everything in the movies and on video. Thunderous booms, crashes, swooshes, etc, are used for transitions between segments on local TV news, or in sports broadcasts when a player's stat graphic goes up on the screen, and of course, in movie trailers. You could have a movie about a little girl and her grandfather and their pet bunny-rabbit and the studio would still find an excuse to use these effects in the trailer. And if the movie has any actual dramatic content, like the new "Noah" movie, the trailer becomes a nonstop boom and crash-fest ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OSaJE2rqxU )

So I've been collecting these sounds in little short MP3 files to study them - I have an idea of using effects like that in some sort of parody video. And I've noticed something - there's only a handful of different effects. Once you've heard hundreds of them you can easily figure out which bucket to put each one in.

So my question: Do these things have names? For example, the opening 'boom' in the Noah trailer at :01 second. Or the 'swoosh' where he wakes up from a dream at :21-:22 seconds. There's an effect I call a 'percussive crash' that occurs about 8 times between :42 and :49 (and countless times in the rest of the trailer). You'll hear all of those effects in dozens of other trailers by different studios, so I assume when sound engineers get together and talk shop they must have words to describe them. What words do they use to talk about these?

Thanks in advance.
 
They have all sorts of descriptive and fanciful names. For example...

Accents, Acid Rain, Air Releases, Atmospheres, Beeps, Beeps Blurps, Beeps Pings, Beeps Telemetry, Bells, Boings Bounces Sproings, Bubbles, Build Crescendo, Buzz Hum, Crystal Strikes, Distortion, Door, Drones, Electrical, Feedback Tones, Flanges, Flare, Flutter, Glimmer Shimmer, Glitches, Guns Explosions, Hits Bursts, Hits Stabs Stings, Horror, Lasers, Lightning Thunder, Liquids, Menu Buttons, Metal, Musical, Noise Static, Oscillators, Power Downs, Power Ups, Pulsing, Rattle, Ringing, Rumbling, Science Fiction, Screeching, Squawking, Squirming, Squishes, Statics, Stingers, Stutter, Sweeps, Swirling, Transitions Appear, Transitions Disappear, Transitions Swells, Transitions Various, Vacuum Processed Doppler, Video Game Action, Vocal, Whoosh, Wind

And that is just the sub-categories of "Sound Design" SFX over on Sound Dogs:
http://www.sounddogs.com/category-search-subcategories.asp?Type=1&CategoryID=1050

And they have 365 clips just under "Stingers" to give you an example.
There are hundreds of interesting videos on YouTube about sound design.
 
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I would point out that there is almost no chance that a single sound from some library was used in any trailer from a normal budget film. They tend to be done by a few "trailer houses" so there may be a certain similarity in concept and they are almost never going to be using sounds from the actual film since they are mostly released well before sound has even started it's work, but they may be worked on by designers who are hoping to get the final film so trailers are often well done. But it is an ad not a film so...
 
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