WRITTEN BY KATE FINAN, CO-OWNER OF BOOM BOX POST
Sound for picture has come a long way since its inception in the late 1920’s. In the beginning, synchronized sound effects were often recorded by a pit drummer or orchestra, and this method gave birth to many of the most classic cartoon sound effects that are still used today. For example, in animation, pizzicato string plucks can be used for surprised reactions, xylophone mallet hits for eye blinks, or jaw harp twangs for a bouncing ball.
But today, there is a whole world of live action sound which stands completely apart from this cartoony sonic palette, and even animated series and features and often looking for a more natural feel to their sound design.
This veer toward a natural palette does not wipe out the need to be funny. Comedy is alive and well in both live action and animation. And as any sound designer worth their salt knows, our job is to support the script, which often means supporting comedy. The best sound design can highlight what is already great about the picture and elevate it further by helping the audience to focus on it. So, how do we help the audience to focus on a funny moment without dipping into our toony toolbox?
My answer is to use a natural sound as your base element, and carve it into something funny using cadence and pitch. Yes, it takes more work and creative forethought than just reaching into the depths of your Hanna-Barbera sound effects library. But, I promise that it is also way more rewarding.
A Look Inside My Comedic Design Process
Recently, I worked on an episode in which a character was stumbling around on a pair of stilts for the greater part of the episode. Each time, the writers and storyboard artists had carved out a little moment in which the audience could focus on him and get a laugh as he bumbled from one place to the next, veering and then catching himself, swaying wildly with each step. I wanted to help the audience to notice how hilarious this moment was, but I didn’t want to turn it into a slapstick comedy. It was meant to be funny, but not utterly ridiculous. On top of that, the series has a fairly natural palette and the clients are always very focused on keeping the sound design relatable, modern, and not too silly.
The Toony Option
If this were an old school cartoon, we would have reached for a toony sound effect like this. It’s perfect for expressing to the audience that a character is unsteady on their feet!
However, as I said, these clients are against using classic cartoon sound effects. So that option was off the table.
The Natural Option
If we went in the opposite direction, the obvious solution would be to create a well-designed multi-layered wood creaking sound that matched the action on screen, like this:
A sound like this is a great piece of sound design because it’s well-balanced and well-timed. However, it doesn’t help to focus the audience on the comedy. Instead, adding a natural sound effect without any pitching or cadence washes over the comedic moment and actually makes it harder for the audience to recognize.
The Funny Option
Instead, I chose to start with a single wood creak. Comedic sound design is best when it does not use layers. It’s all about using your time to find exactly the right sound. After finding something I thought would work, I used pitch and cadence to mold it into a funny sound effect.
As we all know, comedy is all about timing. That means that you want to have separation between iterations of your sound to create that sense of perfect comedic timing. Yes, if a person is walking on wooden stilts, they are pretty much always moving the wood. But, a continuous wood creak is not funny. However, the EEE-errr-EEE-errr up and down of each step is funny. I separated each wood creak, used upward and downward pitches of each iteration, and matched them to the steps on screen. This focused the audience on exactly how unsteady and uneven each wildly veering step was. It supported the comedic timing that the animators had created.
This is just one example of how to create a funny sound effect. For a live action moment, I would have dialed back the pitching and chosen an even more natural sound effect to start with. Thus, the end result would be closer to realism on the sound design scale. But, my process of using pitch and cadence to support the picture would be the same.