What is
the history of sound effects? Why should
we care?
Have you ever been camping or taken
a long car ride with someone who is not immediate family or your best of
friends? If you don’t have the luxury of radio and or music, you might have
been reduced to conversation. Story
telling can be a zesty, robust enterprise that not only teaches you personal
traits about the person your spending time with, it also allows you to listen
to their unique style of progressing a tale.
As conversation goes, besides vocal regurgitation of the main body of
the story and using hand movements to exaggerate details of the theme, sound
effects can make a causal palaver seem more personal and intimate.
I understand that the use of sound
effects can predate the records of traditionally human history. Discrediting the possibility of humans
gathered around fire or around a congregation demonstrating a story with the
use of added sound effects is to probable to ignore. The idea of story telling with inflection and
over exaggerated sounds and style seems to me to be a root structure for all
humanity; Joseph Campbell thought so, so why shouldn’t we entertain the
notion?
What does a sound effect do? While watching movies, sound effect heightens
the essence of what we watch. A war
movie without explosions, terror, and groans of freight?; boring. Watching a comedy without the slapstick or
well timed placement of a hilarious noise?; pointless. The use of a sound effect can make or break
the random conversation with you and newly introduced companion. Not for everyone and not always needed to the
degree that other might emphasize, sound effects give “brightness” to an
otherwise dull, dim, story.
For your entertainment, here is a
link to a clip of JAMIROQUAI - virtual
insanity. Without music.
It is amazing how even without sound effects the old silent films still have such an impact. The music was the sound effects in a sense.
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