Tune Up: The Hollywood Edge Sound Effects

posted in: Features • Reviews & Playlists

Beyond artists, producers and bands, there is a group of music/sound creators that operate in completely  different facets. Sure, it’s easy to license popular music to use in movies, commercials, etc., but there is also a viable branch of the industry known as sound design. While there are teams of people in Hollywood trained to do their part in films and commercials, for smaller projects the more aspiring composers and designers have to wear many hats. Scoring a video or animation can be quite the daunting process since you not only need to come up with themes, but also score videos with fully arranged music and even find (or record), process and sync sound effects.

Every sound designer and editor has their own set of tricks, rules and techniques. However, everyone will agree on one thing: you need the proper collection of sounds. In fact, I’ll spend days at a time walking around with field recorders or setting up mic’s around the apartment just to collect cool sounds I hear for future projects. Even though there is nothing more fun for a sound designer then setting up 5 mic’s in a room and throwing around objects to create Foley effects (the reproduction of everyday sound used in film), your scores and sound effects will probably need that professional edge.

Enter: The Hollywood Edge Sound Effects Libraries.

While we’ve talked about loop libraries, we have several other libraries of sound. Aside from collections that can be personally created using field recorders, the Hollywood Edge effects are some of the best that we’ve ever used while scoring. We’re sure you’ve even heard them in action as they’ve graced numerous major motion pictures with their epic swells and powerful impacts. Even esteemed director Oliver Stone (The Doors, Any Given Sunday) swears by them.

So, if you’ve been asking yourself how you can get your soundtracks to have that real Hollywood sound, then it seems only natural to turn to the collection that Hollywood is actually using. The collections come in different themes, sizes and price ranges. However, the most famous is their complete sound effect collection. This multi-CD library comes with everything, from high-impact sounds for car crashes to heavily-processed gunshot sounds for space-age weapon emulation to low rumbles that are so common in horror movies and thrillers. They all come in extremely high quality, stereo wave files for use within any standard audio or video editing program. Whether you need ambient beds like their fluctuating, wind-sounding effects or a quick, shocking explosion, they’ve got you covered. After all, there are only so many realistic Foley effects you can make yourself. You can’t exactly record your own explosion.

The sounds speak for themselves. Check out a recent trailer for one of The Edge‘s collections to hear for yourself:

While the video gives you some great examples and is certainly a well-done montage, we’ve spent literally hours exploring the sounds on the collection we purchased. Sure, they have some electronic indexing and lists that come with the collections upon purchase. However, one minor con to the collection is these lists are a little hard to navigate, and because the collections are so extensive, it’s easy to get lost in the sea of effects. We can’t stress enough the value of being a true student of using your ears. No matter what the sound file is called, if we like it and think it can fit somewhere, we’ll use it.

Even though we’ve paid for the license to use these effects, it’s rare that we’ll stick one directly into a project. We typically use these effects (and those of any library, for that matter), as a simple starting point. The sounds have great character, epic punch and a rich spectrum, but more can always be done. Otherwise, we’d be using something everyone has access to. Therefore, in order to make it your own, we recommend any number of processing techniques to tweak the wave files. You’ll obviously need some pitch/time shifting in order to make it logistically fit into the video. However, you can use these in addition to reverb, EQ, reverse functions, etc. to give these sounds your own character. There’s really no limit.

The Hollywood Edge offers a wide array of collections for many different visual applications. Not just movies, but games and animations as well. We recommend heading over to their web site and seeing what works for your applications in your price range.