Gamer's guide to the Wilhelm Scream
We've posted before about the "Wilhelm scream," the singular screech heard in hundreds of movies and TV shows since it was recorded in 1951. Over at Boing Boing Offworld, Brandon notes the scream's transition into the video game world. "The gamer's guide to the Wilhelm Scream"
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In SimCity 2000 the police stations would make a radio-voice that sounds like: "say-this suspect 128 9" (one-twenty-eight nine). I hear it all the time on cop shows or whenever a cop pulls up in a movie, ect. Anybody happen to know if that's a named sound? Or a sample?
I'm actually disappointed when I hear the Wilhelm in movies or games now.
What was once a funny little inside joke quickly turned into sound effects abuse.
As soon as I hear it, I immediately loose my suspension of disbelief and utter a groan.
Another one is the sound of a clip being loaded into a gun. I heard it a million times playing Counter Strike and now I hear it all over the place in movies too.
Don't be lazy. Record your own sounds.
To me the most annoying universally used sound clip is the hawk screech. I'm not sure when or where it was first recorded, but it's always exactly the same screech. I've been noticing it for years and years.
One of my favorite generic sounds is one I first heard as the doors in X-Com:UFO Defense. The sound of a large futuristic door opening by some smooth hydraulic system appears in almost every Sci-Fi TV show at some point or another and in commercials as well.
It is a distraction in movies for sounds to be reused, although it is a nice added bit of camp on occasion. Sound men are getting too lazy with the sound effect sample cd's they buy.
#4 Yes! finally someone else that notices. I also keep hearing the button click and window open/close sound from X-Com in commercials and some movies. It haunts me.
I'm right there with you, jbettineski. I paid full price for a movie, you had a budget. Why don't you make some sound effects? Once upon a time it was funny, just like being Rick Rolled.
Now it just makes you look lazy.
Is there guide somewhere to all the over used sound effects?
There's one i've been trying to track down the origin of for while that goes
"skronkrunchwhack......skweeki, skweeki, skweeki, gbang"
usually used for the destruction of something mechanical, followed by its death rattle.
i know its in waterworld when an airplane crashes and then the wing falls of.
its also often used for a wacky inventions suffering a fail, or evil robot that blows up, falls over trys to get up again, and then falls for the final time.
Or comedic relief as a cute-retarded droid has a mis-hap
Kind of a symbol of our collective loss of imagination, we are turning into a culture of stereotypes, sound bites and cliches.