The fruits and vegetables used to create cinema’s greatest sounds
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that not everything filmed on a movie set is real. Mark Hamill was not sent into space for any of his scenes in Star Wars, and there’s a good chance that Hugh Jackman doesn’t have actual claws coming out of his hands when playing Wolverine. While it’s easy to get swept up in that suspension of disbelief and seeing may well be believing, some of the best ways to fool an audience come from the sounds they hear instead of the visuals.
Throughout film history, the world of sound has greatly impacted how viewers experience different scenes. Aside from actors dubbing their voice-over in post to suit the scene, countless Foley artists have made a living by getting creative with different household materials. Since most of the film that’s used in the final product doesn’t have sound to begin with, Foley artists have the job of building the sonic world of the scene, either using different mechanics to get the right effect or to sync up their sounds perfectly with what’s happening.
Sometimes this comes from fairly primitive effects, like using the sound of crunching sand to simulate a cold winter night as someone works their way through the snow. There are also some aspects of the film that viewers might not even think about when sitting in the theatre, like using different pieces of cloth to simulate wind or wave sound effects. Though most of the Foley deals with the natural elements, some of the most crippling sounds heard in theatres come from the produce section.
For instance, the infamous scene in Titanic in which Rose hears her piece of driftwood snapping doesn’t come from actual wood being split. To simulate the effect, most of the staff used pieces of frozen cabbage with the volume turned up on the microphone. Cabbage is a fairly useful sound for countless movies, often mimicking the sounds of broken bones to chill the viewers’ spines. Celery is another diverse vegetable for the Foley team, often giving a firm crack sound for broken bones.
Outside of the veggie assortments, gourds have also been used to simulate various sound effects. Depending on how the gourd is struck, Foley artists have been able to use the crack of the fruit for the sound of someone’s skull being cracked open. When stepping out of fruits and vegetables, gelatin is a great asset to science fiction films, often used for its disgusting sounds to simulate an alien morphing into something more threatening.
When talking about the art of Foley work, Foley artist Robin Harlan talked about the importance of sound in films, telling Atlas Obscura, “A lot of directors and writers know that sound has a really powerful potential to ignite the imagination in people, even more so than visuals sometimes. They weren’t allowed to show a lot of graphic stuff, so a lot of things that they would drop in had to do with sound effects. They would cut away, and you would hear it”.
Although sound effects might not be the first thing viewers pick up on when watching a film, the brain tends to pick it up subconsciously most of the time. The focus might be on the big screen for 90% of the film, but telling the story with knick-knacks and crunching fruits and vegetables fulfils the rule of ‘show, don’t tell’ without needing to show anything.
