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“BRAAAM”: The Sound That Invaded the Hollywood Soundtrack
- ericabiz 10y agoThis reminds me of "Trajan Pro, the movie font": https://studiobrow.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/trajan.jpg https://studiobrow.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/trajan.jpg Once you see it, you'll see it everywhere. So, too, with BRAAAM--it seems like you can't get through a preview of any "action/adventure" movie without several BRAAAMs these days. Lazy, but also apparently effective.
- Qwertystop 10y agoEh. Some of those have more work put into them, even if they do use the same core typeface. A.i. has it as a subtitle and uses a custom design for the main title; LotR has deliberate misalignment and chipping that at least doesn't appear to be an automatic filter; Star Wars seems to only use it for the (admittedly largest) "Episode II".
- jws 10y agoI wonder if I just ruined a bit of movie watching. Like back in the days of film, once I saw the reel change dot in the upper right I could never unsee them. No matter what was happening on screen the little man in the brain would pop out and say "reel change coming". Now the little man will pop out and say "BRAAAM!".
- dmix 10y agoThis happens to me all the time. For example, I absolutely loved the Dunkirk's trailer the first time I watched it. Until someone pointed out an actor in the Dunkirk trailer (bottom right side, second guy to look up) who appears to be holding back laughing. Once you're taking out of the films emotional experience it's hard to get back into it. https://youtu.be/rJePvN_4T_E?t=38s https://youtu.be/rJePvN_4T_E?t=38s Same with the time I was a kid watching Jurassic Park and noticed the cow they fed the T-Rex looked had a stuffed-animal looking toy eye clearly visible during a close-up. It seemed less scary. There's a lot of this type of stuff in movies that can really take you out of it. When I hear directors like Stanley Kubrick or Riddley Scott spending 10 hours getting a single shot perfect in Blade Runner I can understand why. The details really do matter. Reusing this sound effect is just lazy IMO. Just like the jump scare sound effect in all hollywood horror films. It might be pointless to hope for more care to be taken in big productions but I'm still saddened that prioritizing safe easy bets like an obviously reused prominent sound effect is seemingly becoming common practice. Regardless the best option might be to either stop paying such close attention as ignorance is bliss and/or stop reading reddit comment!
- bitwize 10y agoMy sister once described to me in very vivid detail the puppet-like manner in which the whale's mouth flops open in Moby Dick (1956). She was only about seven at the time. Now I can't help but laugh every time I see the great white whale breach the water and open its puppety jaws.
- talmand 10y agoIn the industry, we call them cigarette burns.
- gmarx 10y agoI learned about that from the commentary on a LaserDisc of (I think) "The Graduate". The dick film professor mentioned the reel change circles and then said something like "now that I told you that you will always be conscious of it (hehe)".
- s_kilk 10y ago> "now that I told you that you will always be conscious of it (hehe)" Also, your jaw is affected by gravity and you must hold it up manually.
- WolfeReader 10y agoYou just ruined my day. Maybe my entire life. Kudos!
- woliveirajr 10y agoRemembers me the Wilhelm scream (not the sound, but being used everywhere). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_scream https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_scream [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdbYsoEasio https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdbYsoEasio
- Biganon 10y agoYeah but it's for comical reasons nowadays, like a signature. It's not laziness
- buckbova 10y agoSaw The Arrival the other day and it was constantly blaring this at me. Kind of off putting. When I was at all taken into any moment throughtout the film I was jarred out immediately by this.
- 1123581321 10y agoMy issue with those sounds in Arrival was that I wasn't sure in a few places whether the alien ship was making them, or whether they were part of the soundtrack. This is a hazard of going for the same effect, but trying to do it differently.
- buckbova 10y agoAt first I thought it was the ship too. Then I came to realize they're trying to get me to have some feeling for a scene where most times I had none. I'd just think "there's that loud sound again."
- WorldMaker 10y agoI happily imagined most if not all of the score was diegetic from the ships, somewhat like the Birdman score.
- iamed2 10y agoI think that was the aim; I think the composer was trying to illustrate the ship using music. I can see how one might find that confusing, but I enjoyed it.
- 1123581321 10y agoInteresting idea. I'll certainly be thinking about that the next time I see the movie.
- ohwello 10y agoThere is an episode of Song Exploder with the composer: http://songexploder.net/arrival http://songexploder.net/arrival
- jredwards 10y agoI'm starting to hear the 'Transformers' noise everywhere now, too. It's some algorithmic creation of noises that I would describe as insectoid and metallic.
- bitwize 10y agoThe "Transformers sound" is distinct and unmistakable; I hear it only in relation to Transformers themselves, and only rarely in the films. It may even be a trademark of Hasbro.
- DanBC 10y agoThere's a bunch of it in Spectral.
- duncanawoods 10y agoGame of Thrones uses a sound effect for dragon attacks like some of the Transformers sound effects - shame really, spoilt it a bit for me. GOT: https://youtu.be/56oIsum8HQc?t=1m57s https://youtu.be/56oIsum8HQc?t=1m57s Transformers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JySDiW0psM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JySDiW0psM
- adamkittelson 10y agoI didn't get the sense that the sound effect for dragon attacks was meant to be interpreted as being produced by the dragon, I took it as being in the same vein as the "BRAAAM" effect in the article.
- duncanawoods 10y agoYep. They had dragon vocal effects which were fine but this extra effect was played at the moment of each attack - the incongruity (no obvious cause) + recognition (from other films) broke immersion for me.
- nrclark 10y agoIIRC, that's true for the 'classic' transforming sound. The "wub---wub---wub--wub--wub-wub-wubwubwub" from every Michael Bay movie ever is a different story.
- bitwize 10y ago/r/movies calls this BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA and the loathing for it is intense. Other clichés favored by movie trailer editors are a dubstep-like "bass drop" just before something explodes, and the creepy five-year-old singing an echo-ey, unaccompanied version of some happy classic tune to give it a tense, unsettling secondary meaning for a horror film trailer. (I first saw that last in a PSA for some sort of cancer research fund back in the late 90s; the song was "They Can't Take That Away From Me".)
- jszymborski 10y agoI never really was conscious of, but completely can see in retrosprect, that bass-drop-before-explosion thing you mentioned. It actually is used a bit in the new Wolfenstein game (The New Order). Save for the creepy singing 5yo thing, I have to say I enjoy these cliches... even though I know they're meant to manipulate my emotions in a fairly unearned and lazy way, if the rest of the movie/game/piece is compelling and supports it, it works to great effect. I will say that the solemn girl's choir singing pop-songs (a la Social Network/Scala Choir, or Scream Queens/KTT Pledge) is another one that I see fairly often and very much appreciate.
- bitwize 10y agoThe "solemn girls' choir" was particularly moving and powerful when it was used for Suo Gân in Empire of the Sun (and it was a boys' choir in that film). Time hasn't been kind to that one for me (though it still fares better than the creepy five-year-old).
- Declanomous 10y agoMy friends and I have taken to imitating it to "add drama" when we are being jerks to each other. We basically use it as a sort of combination punchline/justification in a situation when someone would ask "why"? Want to unplug someone's controller right as they are about to win in Smash Bros? BWAAAAAAAAAAA Want to interfere with a gimme putt to win a round of disc golf? BWAAAAAAAAA At this point, the sound basically is used as a justification for drama that otherwise mundane and has no real point.
- 10y ago
- mazelife 10y agoThis doesn't necessarily take away from some of the points that the article was making about how film music is used as a status symbol or method of signaling how a film should be received, but there's a nice simple reason why "BRAAAM" is everywhere these days, particularly in a lot of big-budget, CGI-heavy franchise movies. As if often true, time is money in this business; if you're a composer who is brought in to score these films you likely have a shorter-than-average amount of time to do it in and you're well aware that you're not being paid to make art. In other words, there's an enormous amount of pressure to just crank it out quickly. This is how you get scores that sound so generic, and are in fact, the equivalent of aural wallpaper. Studios don't expect anything more and even if they did, composers probably don't have time to write that kind of music. Better to crank out some generic filler and thrown in a few surface-level effects (e.g. "BRAAAM") stolen from better, more interesting scores.
- Analemma_ 10y agoIf you watched Tony Zhou's recent "Every Frame a Painting" episode about why the Marvel movies all have such unmemorable soundtracks (where he blames temp scores), you should also watch the response by Dan Golding where he claims Zhou has misidentified the real culprit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcXsH88XlKM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcXsH88XlKM Carefully avoiding saying whether it's good or bad, Golding (like this article) says Hans Zimmer is almost solely responsible for why films and trailers sound the way they do right now. Whether or not you like it, and see Zimmer as a musical villain or not, it's kind of interesting that we're living in the middle of a one-man revolution in a particular artistic field.
- mazelife 10y agoDan Golding's response seems pretty on-the-nose to me. Although I think he's right to cite Zimmer as someone who pioneered a certain method and style that has become prevalent in a big chunk of movie genres, I think the real culprit here (if you want to lay the blame somewhere) is just the economics of the Hollywood filmmaking system, which prizes cost-control, speed, and consistency of product above all else. It's sad to see the composer Patrick Doyle get cited in both of those video essays for his music for Thor (which I agree, is generic and boring) because it illustrates the extent to which really talented film composers can get absorbed into this system. His scores for Henry V [1], Dead Again, and Carlito's Way all stand out as really shining example of 90s-era film scoring. [1] Great example of his work here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-yZNMWFqvM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-yZNMWFqvM
- dublinben 10y agoZimmer is often accused of scoring more movies than he actually does, because other composers are told to simply copy him. Whether you're actually paying for the real deal or not, your movie is going to end up with the same sound.
- twoodfin 10y agoAs this article points out, Zimmer "scores more movies than he actually does" because he's built a kind of film score workshop where dozens of collaborators turn out scores in his style by the bushel. I first discovered this when Pandora spun up a rousing number from Klaus Badelt's Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack and I swore I was listening to Gladiator. Badelt is a longtime Zimmer collaborator. It's interesting that Zimmer himself took credit for composing the music for the Pirates sequels once the franchise was an (unexpected) smash.
- DanBC 10y agoThey don't mention Koyaanisqatsi! https://youtu.be/r4WlNj1TTqA?t=30m20s https://youtu.be/r4WlNj1TTqA?t=30m20s etc To me the Braaam inception sound is Koyaanisqatsi + loudness wars. They do say this, to be fair to them: > Zimmer is in good company: over the last thirty years, film composers have pressed the sound of Philip Glass, Steve Reich, and Arvo Pärt into service for their soundtracks. Their compositions rely on simple, repeating, and varying patterns that tend to avoid melody. They reduce or remove those foreground melodic elements that would normally carry a scene’s emotions. They rely on smaller ensembles, often entirely made up of strings. Films seem to mostly use two Reich and Pärt tracks. That one from Glassworks https://youtu.be/6Stu7h7Qup8?t=27m20s https://youtu.be/6Stu7h7Qup8?t=27m20s and Spiegal Im Spiegal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hV4LlCtvgwE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hV4LlCtvgwE
- woliveirajr 10y agoOne problem is that you can't stop hearing it, after you know. Like Pachelbel Canon [1]. Like orange and blue scenes and posters [2] [3]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdxkVQy7QLM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdxkVQy7QLM [2] http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrangeBlueContrast http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrangeBlueContras... [3] http://www.slashfilm.com/orangeblue-contrast-in-movie-posters/ http://www.slashfilm.com/orangeblue-contrast-in-movie-poster...
- Freak_NL 10y agoAnd of course an honourable mention for the Wilhelm Scream, which will delight/haunt you for the rest of your film watching life after learning about it. I wonder if it is being used less these days?
- woliveirajr 10y agoIt was part of another comment, then I left it out of this list... But I have it on some of my contacts, very easy to know when some specific people are calling me :)
- Declanomous 10y agoThis article is fantastic, and really brings together the thoughts I've heard expressed about this in a way that is mostly accessible. I think it's a bit dramatic though. It seems like people in every era look back and say "Why don't we create things with the same care things were created with in the past?" The existence of the question implies that what is being made now is somehow worse than what has been made in the past. While it's possible this is true, I think it's more likely that this is just survivor bias at work. Nobody remembers the terrible summer blockbusters from years past. This years robots destroying cities were the Westerns and Noir of years past. Everybody remembers Casablanca, and The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, and these titanic movies overshadow the Noir and the Westerns that they were deconstructing. At some point somebody is going to make The Searchers of robots beating everyone up, and another genre will step in to the role of mass-market crap. I think the actual argument in the case of the "BRAAM"[1] sound is that Inception is a genre defining movie, on the level of Jaws or Il Brutti. It's become a shorthand for Earth-shattering collisions, in the same way Sergio Leone's soundtracks are synonymous with the west, and the Jaws theme is synonymous with being stalked. You already hear people imitating it to give additional context to stories. [1] Sidenote, because it bothers me: The sound seems much closer to "BWAAAAA" than "BRAAAAM". This is not important, but it bothers me.
- hood_syntax 10y agoI completely agree with that sidenote, in particular where did that "M" come from?!
- Declanomous 10y agoI suspect it has something to do with the author's accent. My ex-roommate was a brit with a semi-received pronunciation who majored in linguistics, and we had a lot of conversations about what words sounded like to each other. It's weird how often we were just completely unable to understand each other. In this case, I bet the R is the clue. The author probably has some sort of non-rhotic accent where the vowels sound much more rounded. The R would give a bit of the brassy trill sound, and they would probably add the M to color the sound of the vowel so that the word has that bassy ending. I'm guessing that if they tried reading BWAAAA it would sound too rounded and lyrical, and BRAAA would start to capture the early timbre of the sound, but would still probably end of a higher, less aggressive note. I can't really imagine exactly what accent causes his BRAAM to sound like our BWAAA, but you can kind of imagine what I'm talking about by imitating a guy from Boston saying BWAAA vs. BRAAAM. Edit: It appears the author went to Swarthmore. My brother went there, and the general consensus is that it should be pronounced non-rhotically. To my ears, the way they say the first phoneme sounds like "SwaAH"[1] (like a person who is surprised, but also non-plussed), whereas I would say it like "SwaRRR", in kind of a gutteral/piraty way. So I wouldn't be surprised if he thought BRAAM approached the gutteral/brassy sound of the effect much better than BWAAA. [1] I don't know IPA. If any linguists are reading this, I'm sorry. Please feel free to correct anything I've said.
- bcjordan 10y agoAnother: the "bwooo", aka "winding down". https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/37hnx8/same_overused_sound_effect_in_newer_action_movie/crmu9gf/ https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/37hnx8/same_overuse... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yP3uXtFozv0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yP3uXtFozv0
- neilk 10y agoThe podcast "Reasonably Sound" recently released an episode on the Braaam (originally performed live in September, so I wonder if this is somehow related). https://soundcloud.com/reasonably-sound/the-braaam https://soundcloud.com/reasonably-sound/the-braaam However, it's not the same take at all. The Longreads piece is focused on non-melodic minimalism, and Reasonably Sound is focused on what the Braam really means and its history in storytelling.
- niccl 10y agoAn unspoken concommitant of this: we don't actually know what things sound like any more. For most people, horses sound like they do in movies. But what we hear in the movies is what the foley artists and the sound designers think horses ought to sound like. It is, as a sound designer friend said 'hyper real'. This was brought home to me when I was watching one of the Lord of the Rings movies. Gimli puts on an over-large suit of chain mail and we hear it falling to the floor. The sound is, I think, either a bunch of Slinkies or some small chains. I know what chain mail sounds like, and it wasn't that. I find myself getting really annoyed with movie sound design now because it's so aritficial. </rant>
- ryandrake 10y agoTo be fair, this is true for anything where you're a subject matter expert. Movie depictions of horses don't sound like real horses. Movie depictions of computer hacking don't look like real computer hacking, either.
- TheOtherHobbes 10y agoIt's "Every non-modern weapon goes ZZZZHING!!!!!" when you draw it syndrome. Tiny daggers, big swords, it's all the same sound. Often it's the same sample. And it's nonsense, because nothing actually sounds like that, outside a sample library. The article also misses the real point of the music - which is that it's quick and easy to write. It's infinitely easier to get paid by filling space with A GIANT SAMPLE, some repetitive minimalist noodling, or GIGANTIC EPIC DRUMS than it is to write the complex full orchestral counterpoint John Williams is famous for. It's also easy to sequence this stuff. You can literally copy/paste the same sections over and over in your DAW. Basically it's filler with a coat of pseudo-classical emulsion to add drama and gravitas. It does the job to meet the budget and create the theme park ride movie experience, but that's all.
- GrinningFool 10y agoIn a similar way, I've been seeing and hearing a lot more of the skirling screeching ascendant strings sound since Lost began using it to indicate high drama just before a commercial break. I know it existed before then (perhaps its earliest progenitor came out of Psycho) but it seems like this specific use has become more popular in TV scores since Lost started doing it.
- leviathant 10y agoSee also: Krzysztof Penderecki - Threnody to the victims of Hiroshima (1960) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu371CDZ0ws https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu371CDZ0ws
- Tharkun 10y agoSomething of an audiofile. This noise bugs the hell out of me. But so do a whole bunch of other "standard" noises in movies. Thunderstorms in most movies sound exactly alike, for instance. I get that movies are primarily a visual medium, but endless sound recycling and fog-horn tooting is really getting on my nerves.
- WorldMaker 10y agoI think there is a technological argument that the article doesn't quite get too, as well: the use of subwoofers as an "instrument" to play/score for. Admittedly, theaters have had subwoofers for a long time, but I think its actually the pick up of subwoofers in home theaters and stereo systems that has pushed the trend (in hip-hop/R&B/rap/dubstep) far enough to convince somewhat slow to adapt theatrical composers. Inception seems like the point where Hans Zimmer finally realized he could score for the subwoofers, and in finding a new toy he pushed it to an extreme. It's been interesting to see what film composers (especially, Hans Zimmer) have been doing with subwoofers since Inception, but of course its hard to escape the orbit of that first extreme try and how iconic it was.
- internaut 10y agoIf you want to hear a truly unique soundtrack, check out Utopia (British television series): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2f6MfEzhvo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2f6MfEzhvo I've never heard anything like it. Highly creative and matches the show's sinister plot perfectly.
- truth_sentinell 10y agoI suggest the same but with Interstellar's soundtrack. I personally think is brilliant. No other soundtrack makes me more emotional.
- internaut 10y agoIn case you haven't seen this: https://youtu.be/zg5QMysuSYg https://youtu.be/zg5QMysuSYg Interstellar strikes a nerve with myself also. I take the dysfunction theme seriously because we are in a Stagnation. There's a thoughtful essay on the subject by the science fiction author Neal Stephenson. He also wrote a book based on it. Surprising few people are aware of that. http://www.worldpolicy.org/journal/fall2011/innovation-starvation http://www.worldpolicy.org/journal/fall2011/innovation-starv...
- truth_sentinell 10y agoI definitely have. Pretty much everything that is on Youtube about it. Although I personally like much more the originals. They were also made with an organ. It's an incredible complicated piece of instrument. Edit: awesome read, thanks.
- 1_2__3 10y agoI know this just sounds like me being jaded and cynical but being completely open and honest: I feel like filmmaking lost me some time in the last 10 years or so. Might be because of age, I don't know, but I used to be a huge film buff, huge. If you had me filling out a bio about myself and asked me to list interests then "Movies" would be right up there at the top of the list. I loved going to movies, I loved watching them at home, I loved talking about them, I loved knowing little facts and details about them. I used to be able to tell you the name of any major production company from the first half-second of their intro. I used to watch individual scenes over and over again until I memorized them. Filmmaking was always a delicate balance between creators and business, and I feel like the 2000s are when business finally took over. I'm reminded of the famous morning meeting scene in Robert Altman's "The Player" where a new hotshot producer explains why he thinks creativity should be removed entirely from the filmmaking process, and proceeds to describe an alternative that is horrifyingly close to what we have today. I have absolutely no illusions about Hollywood prior to my disillusionment. It's always been a cesspit, but it was a beautiful cesspit that seemed to create wonder in spite of itself. Now it's basically just Disney-in-screen-form, everything - and I mean everything - is carefully driven by the beancounters. The last little vestiges of creativity and brilliance were finally squeezed out by the arrival of global markets. Bland, boring sells. And I read threads like this where people argue about how lazy filmmaking isn't really lazy filmmaking because X Y or Z and all I think is you're moving deck chairs on the titanic. This isn't about soundtracks or sound effects, it's about movies-as-business rather than movies-as-entertainment. I get it makes the companies major bank, and I get that there's no going back. I'm not ranting saying we should regress. But speaking personally movies went from a big part of my life to something I find extremely off-putting, boring and frankly a little stupid. I miss enjoying movies.
- eutropia 10y agoFilm Buff in the making here: there's a lot of fast-food movies out there, but there's also still a lot of art being made. Maybe your local theaters stopped showing indie releases? Maybe you eventually saw so many movies that 'heartfelt, based on a true story feel-good movies' lost their sheen because the tropes are just too familiar to you? Not sure. I feel like I go and see plenty of good movies (admittedly, I can sometimes see the commoditization in the blockbuster releases trying to be deep), and forgive them their flaws and consider their virtues. Check out those indie releases!
- TeMPOraL 10y agoI can live with that and most of the other audio clichés. Hell, I sometimes even like them. But one thing that pisses me off is that everyone is using the same goddamn sample for wind effect.
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- deskamess 10y agoNot an audiophile or amateur by any stretch but this sounds familiar/similar to tripod sounds in the War of the Worlds (2005 edition). That sound has stuck with me. Great visuals in that movie... that train!! Tripod sound: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzY099ihULs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzY099ihULs
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Kayou 10y agoAt the end of the video, the inception sound made me think of the first few seconds of Horsepower, by Justice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQqnL38d0GY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQqnL38d0GY But the song came out in 2011, so they probably were inspired by the movie soundtrack. Also, the "BRAAAM" makes me think of a warhorn, and it's probably why it's used in movies, BRAAAM means to freak us out, like a warhorn.
- noonespecial 10y agoI live in an industrial park nearly right across the street from a place that casts cement paving stones. The braaaam sound is exactly the sound that the huge vibrating platform makes when settling the cement in the molds. So much so that I think it might actually be what inspired this sound. The interesting thing is that every day sounds like an apocalyptic alien invasion around here!
- dghughes 10y agoI'll add it to the list: Teal and orange tone movies Super hero pose on one knee Braaam
- jeffmcmahan 10y agoBRAAAM is first heard in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (8 years before Inception): https://youtu.be/3ME5jhsgmB4?t=53 https://youtu.be/3ME5jhsgmB4?t=53 (two in a row spot-on BRAAMs)
- sehugg 10y agoReminds me a little of the Blaster Beam, surprised that the article didn't mention it's very throaty BRAAAM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3q_rIrjJuP4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3q_rIrjJuP4
- intransigent 10y agoVGER.