Hollywood Foley artists have messed with how we think the world sounds

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No doubt you’re aware that the sounds you hear in films aren’t the real sounds that happen on set.

Behind every great movie (and all the not-great ones too) is an unsung army of Foley artists, putting coconut-shell clops to each horse’s hoof that hits the ground.

While audio equipment on set might be cutting-edge, for some reason they point all the microphones at the actors mouths rather than the objects that the actors are interacting with. 

What’s interesting is that sometimes a real sound when recorded doesn’t sound like the thing it’s a recording of. In these instances, the Foley artists substitute the real sound for a fake sound that sounds more real. 

The sweet sound of…meat?

This supplantation of the real for the sounding-real means that we now have a perception of how certain things should sound that’s inaccurate. 

So, in Terminator 2, when the T-1000 ‘melts’ his way through the prison bars, that’s actually Sound Designer Gary Rydstrom sucking dog food out of a can. Whereas in real life, that would sound like… wait, maybe that was a bad example. 

A better example is how the sound of bacon frying is interchangeable with rain falling. And rain falling doesn’t really sound like rain falling. 

Don’t believe us? Check out the bacon-tastic video below: