“What you see is not always what’s real.” “Things may not always appear as they seem” If you’ve been to a magic show before, disclaimers like these are usually given at the beginning of the act, almost teasingly, to prepare the audience for carefully constructed sleights of hand and manipulation of the viewers’ perspective.

In the world of film, this trickery also exists, though less likely with the general audience being aware. The One Thousand Birds team, the sound design group behind Hii Magazine, discusses prominent and historical uses of audio misdirection that create the movie magic we as audiences know and love.

Torin

Yeah like almost all nature doc sounds haha. Elephants are nearly silent when they walk they don't thump around.

Guns clicking around constantly.

Hayley

The MGM Lion is a tiger sound! (Smithsonian)

Dolphins also don’t sound like the classic dolphin sound. (Great usage by Spongebob)

KT

The whistling sound notoriously made by bombs as they fall was initially artificially enhanced to spike anxiety. (Great FACT MAG article on sound as a weapon. )

Jackie!

Objectivity in storytelling is a myth! Sound design is magic! When I think about audio misdirection (in terms of sound design/editing), I always return to the idea of “story truth” versus “happening truth”. Even in documentaries (sometimes even moreso), it would be almost foolish to try to divorce perspective and intention in any storytelling, I don’t believe it is possible, nor do I think it’s productive to strive for it. Without getting too woo-woo into philosophies of storytelling, the more common occurrences of “misdirection,” to me are attempts to evoke feeling or transcend what we have access to in reality. Sound design is magic!

In Planet Earth, very little sound is recorded during production “synced” to the visuals”, but the post sound team balances the responsibility of nature documentation with intentional storytelling--not dissimilar from choices to show hummingbirds in high frame rates, or dramatic narratives edited amongst animals; glimpses of things we’d never see in reality, but attempts at portraying their stories with emotion.

Another sound trend is that voices are always super “futzed” on telephone calls as if it’s still an old rotary phone--even though quality for phone calls actually has improved tremendously. Lightning round examples: the sound of space (space again), horror movies (in general), bombs always beeping, feedback from a microphone to convey awkwardness, the list goes on!

There’s a subcategory of sound editing that does get fuzzier, which is the world of frankenbiting in nonfiction work. I feel if the original message was preserved and the act of editing someone’s words is more for clarity, then it’s fair game, but if the intention is to manipulate, things can get sticky.

Kira

The Challenger disaster didn’t actually make a “bang” sound when it exploded but those sounds were added into the footage for docs later on for impact.

The sound you almost always hear when you see a bald eagle on screen? That’s actually a red tailed hawk cause eagles sound like shit lol. (NPR)

Spurge:

More foley magic to check out