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OK, we've covered "favorite sounds" and "best sound in a thiller", but what about comedies, where the sound effects usually cower in fear of dialog and music? And what is it about those moments that sell the comedic for you?
A couple bold, in-your-face quickies for me are:
What say you, forum?
My favorite is the opening scene of Bolt.
Favorite element of that is when the humongous explosion happens and it pulls out to a shot across the river to a park bench with an empty coffee cup and it tips over, so after this humongous explosion you hear this tiny tip-over of an empty paper starbucks cup. I laugh every time. This You-Tube video has it at 2:45.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-WzN1jCnMM
The two cats who haze Bolt in his trailer...
The pigeons - my god the acting and stereotypes for the voices as well as the pigeon sound effects were great.
Then the sounds of the hampster's roller ball. The air-tight seal when he opens it, etc. etc. etc. You have to see the movie - comedic timing and sound effects are great.
But then again, there is always Up. I loved the kid's clunky boyscout attire and the bird's sound effects. I also loved the voice treatment on the big mean guard dog and Doug's voice. I love how the leader of the dog's voice gets pitched up too high when it malfunctions and he loses his intimidation.
Oh yeah - and then there's the little guy in Ice Age who's always chasing the acorn. (I don't know it's name or species - forgive me, Mr. Thom).
The Simpsons has brilliant sound design, almost every episode has some very funny sound design moments.
A common technique they use for comedy is to repeat the same sound effect several times in quick succession, the obvious lack of variation makes it funny
I think I saw a recent episode where Mr Burns was playing a WWII video game, all of the death screams were Wilhems :D
EDIT: An honourable mention should go to Monty Python & the Holy Grail, King Arthur didnt have a horse so he used coconut shells instead
For me it has the Business Card duel scene from American Psycho.
All those internal sounds from Bateman expressing his surprise and rage at being so quickly beaten in designing a tasteful card.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cISYzA36-ZY
[youtube]cISYzA36-ZY[/youtube]
Comic genius!
I reckon for me the best use of sound in comedy would have to be in the British 50s radio comedy the Goon Show, which was surreal to say the least. Sound designers were required to create the sounds of someone driving a piano or an organ, so they managed to make it sound as if it were changing gear and everything; the inside of someone's stomach, numerous explosions and crashes where after the commotion had died down there would be the tiny tinkle of the last bit falling over and many more. They had so little to work with and made so much of it. they managed to communicate the idea of depravity through the sound of a donkey and were always speeding things up and slowing things down. They never knew what challenges they'd be faced with from week to week - from thrown batter-puddings to jet-propelled cafes.
I recently rediscovered Ren and Stimpy on my netflix. Mixes were pretty rough, but man the sound design is genius throughout.
My vote goes to IT Crowd, episode 1, hilarious use of simple white noise at 17:30 and onwards.
