99% Invisible - 345- Classic Cartoon Sound Effects!

Episode Date: March 12, 2019

Cartoon sound effects are some of the most iconic sounds ever made. Even modern cartoons continue to use the same sound effects from decades ago. How were these legendary sounds made and how have they stood the test of time? This story originally appeared on Twenty Thousand Hertz Subscribe to Twenty Thousand Hertz in Apple Podcasts, RadioPublic, or wherever you listen.

This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars. The podcast 20,000 Hertz tells stories about the world's most recognizable and interesting sounds. It is a great show that you should definitely subscribe to, and I'm pleased to present one of their episodes here today. It's all about these sounds, which almost need no introduction. From 20,000 Hertz, here is Dallas Taylor.

If you watch cartoons as a kid, you probably knew instantly that the sound you just heard was from Looney Toons. You probably also know that sound met Wily Coyote failed to catch the roadrunner. Again, it's pretty crazy how we can fill in the whole scene based solely on the sound effects, even without a single meat meat from the road runner. Wily Coyote started falling off cliffs in 1949. Yet we still hear that falling sound effect in modern cartoons, like Teen Titans. I wouldn't stand there if I were you. Titans. I wouldn't stand there if I were you. Here it is in Justice League Action. And here it is even in Family Guy. guy. Ow! It's been almost 70 years since the first Wily Coyote cartoon, and that sound, along with many other cartoon sounds, remains constant.

The beauty and the joy of cartoon animation is that the characters do not have to obey the laws of physics. They also don't have to obey the laws of logic, and therefore sound doesn't have to obey those laws either. That's Mark Mangini, an Oscar-winning sound designer who works with the Formosa Group. I don't very often get to talk about my early days in cartoons. That's Mark Mangini, an Oscar-winning sound designer who works with the Formosa group. I don't very often get to talk about my early days in cartoons. Mark doesn't get a lot of questions about cartoons because he has an impressive resume

designing sounds for Hollywood blockbusters. I've worked on 142 live-action films. Most recently Blade Runner 2049, Mad Max Fury Road, which I want an Oscar for, and I'm very proud of. Warrior, Gremlins, Four Star Trek, a die hard, a lethal weapon, the Green Mile. But before Mark did sound for films, he worked for one of the most famous cartoon studios in the world. My first job in sound was at Hanna Barbera Studios in their sound department.

I started as a track reader, which is a subset of sound editing where you're charged with transcribing the recordings of the voices so that the animators no-went to open and close the mouths of the characters. Just keep your eye on the ball, Bonnie Boy. That led to subsequent promotions to becoming a sound effects editor in that department at Hanabar Barbera, and an apprenticeship with a number of really amazingly gifted sound editors. Back then, this was 1976.

I didn't know anyone who was called a sound designer, but I would argue that everything that we were doing at Hanabar Barbarra was every bit as designed as maybe something more profound that was being heard in a motion picture. Mark worked on some of Hanabarbara's most famous cartoons. The Flintstones. Come on, Bonnie. Let's go. Some Huckleberry hounds.

Far to far, my aunt. Oh, did I have to make up a tap, Bob? I was trying to. All right. A whole raft of Scoooby-dos. Scooby-doo! Where are you? The super friends. They're a mission to fight injustice,

to write that which is wrong, and to serve all mankind. And my personal favorite because it starred Mel Blank, Captain Caveman. Captain Caveman! Long before Mark worked for Hannah Barbera, and even before Wiley Coyote was falling off cliffs, Walt Disney made history with Steamboat Willie in 1928. This was the first cartoon with synchronized picture and sound. Walt and Roy and Ab-Iworks themselves would be the sound effects guys in their live orchestral recording sessions for those early

steamboat willies. In the early days before there was multi-track recording or mixing, you had to perform the sound effects live with the orchestra in one straight pass. So these sound effects guys had to assemble props, put them in front of microphones, and perform anything that they could acoustically live and ensync with the orchestra. Music and sound effects had to be performed at the same time in the same space. Musical instruments were used to make the effects because they were easy to find and easy to manipulate.

In this Tom and Jerry clip, the sound of a frying pan hitting Tom's face is played by a simple crash. And that falling whistle from the beginning of the episode, that's played on a slide whistle. The percussionist would probably have it as part of their kit, and it was just a natural to convey going up... or down. You could manipulate them in any one of a number of ways for a quickly or very slowly. Sound effects played by musical instruments became an iconic part of all cartoons. Then new audio technology in the 1930s allowed sound editors to add sound effects after recording the orchestra.

They could use any prop to make a sound, but often still shows musical instruments. And because sound effects and music were tightly linked, they worked together to create unique soundscapes. Listen to this audio clip from the very first Bugs Bunny cartoon called Porquies Hair Hunt. In it, you can get an idea of how effects and music can come together. Don't get them, Jero! Get that, Rero! I'll get it! The sounds for Porquies' hairhunt were created by an editor named Treg Brown.

Treg worked on Looney Tunes for decades, and created many of the iconic cartoon sounds we still know today. Once we divorced ourselves from the need to record live to picture, Treg had this fundamental understanding of how to decontextualize a sound, how to take the sound of your finger in a coke bottle and make that the sound of the Roadrunner, Tung Flip. Pfff. Or why the sound of an inertia starter,

the sound of this motor that makes a biplane engine start, why that's the sound of a spinning Tasmanian devil. He learned to be a genius at taking sounds out of one context and placing them in another context. And that's what made him so amazing. And when you listen to those looney-tunes shorts, there isn't a lot of cartoon sound in those. There isn't a lot of comedic sound. It's all blood and his ability to take a sound from somewhere else and put it where it didn't

belong, creating this bizarre juxtaposition that made it funny. And I don't think there was anybody better than he was at that. Around the same time, Treg was working at Warner Brothers. William Hanna and Joseph Barbera were creating the Tom and Jerry cartoons at MGM. Mark's mentor, Greg Watson, was a sound editor on those early Tom and Jerry cartoons. When I met him as he was in his 60s, late in his career, but immensely proud to be still working in cartoons, he still saw it as an art form. Something he's very proud of. And he would never take credit for anything unless I asked him, he'd Greg where did this come from? And he said, oh, I remember back. And 51, when Bill did this one funny scene with Jerry, and we needed a funny sound,

and we thought it would be good to do this, he was a man that was just thrilled to be a part of the process. Bill Hanna and Joseph Barbera eventually created their own studio. And during their 30 years of making cartoons, they created a massive library of totally classic sounds. I think they're unique, at least because of their own merit, they're just silly, so many

of them, even out of the context of the cartoon, just sound like that's just the silliest thing I've ever heard. But then, within the context of the cartoons and the way that they were used and the life that they brought to those cartoons, they just get better, basking in the limelight of the animation. For instance, this sound is pretty silly on its own. Now imagine Tom hanging from his whiskers in the unavoidable fall as each one is plucked from his cheeks. There were hundreds of familiar sounds like this created at Hanaparbara Studios.

They had such a signature quality to themselves that it made them stand out as a unique piece of quality artwork, sonic artwork. In the 1960s, Hannah Barbarra started selling their sound library. Other production companies like Warner Brothers use these sounds to this day. The popularity of the Hannah Barbarra sound library has given cartoons in almost universal sound language, but Markfield feels some sounds are overused. I was on a one-man campaign to eradicate head take. It was this in name noise that was again I think a recording accident that you would use whenever a character all of a sudden caught themselves in the

midst of thinking or experiencing something bizarre and it was way overused. And did you ever notice how it sounds when a cartoon character runs? Mark's not a fan of that one either. That running sound was called Blob Gallup. And again, a sound that was, I felt overused and I tried to not use it as often as I could. It's illogical, but I tried not to use it as often as possible.

It's a testament to its effectiveness. But even in 1976, I was training into an elitist, I suppose. Hello, Barra Singh. Of course, there are plenty of sounds that Mark loves, like a tiptoeing xylophone. Oh, that's a classic sound. I have actually used that sound. I did the two Flintstone live-action movies, and I did use it in that, because that was a sound that Brian Levant, the director and I just loved,

and we just couldn't avoid using that. Hi. My favorite was the Jetson Spaceships. And I never found out what those were made for. I tried to deconstruct them. I asked around the studio if they know who made them and nobody knew, but that sound always brings a smile to my face. Sadly, some of these old techniques have been lost, but remember, this was a busy studio,

and everyone was focused on getting the work done on time and getting cartoons on air. It was a real machine. It always started with track reading. This is Ballpoint PUNS, line one. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. The thing which is to say the voices would be assembled in a studio with a script and storyboards. The director of that show would walk the talent through the recording session so that you captured all the voices speaking all the lines that you needed for that particular episode. Just watch the birdie! Get it on your head. OK.

Then the animators would go off and then draw the characters doing these things. Then a month later, all the animation would come back in short roles of completed scenes. Then we in the editorial department would assemble them in their storyboard order and then cut them down to show length. There wasn't like animatics in between like we have in live action. We disemble a show and then cut sound to it.

When Mark was working with Hannah Barbera, they didn't have a department dedicated to creating new sounds. If he wanted an effect that wasn't in the library, he had to find it himself. You were just kind of on your own. I was the most adventurous, especially for the super friends. I would go across the hall to talk to the two composers, Paul DeCourt and Hoit Curtin, and I'd ask them for musical sounds and especially synthesizer sounds. So they would give me long recorded stretches of just weird noises they'd make with their synthesizers.

And they would always be used as the science fiction components if I had a spaceship or a flying saucer in an episode. That's what I used the electronic sounds for because that felt futuristic to me. And if Mark couldn't find the sound he wanted, he had to create it, even if he had to use his own voice. If you can't find it, you do it with your voice. It's the easiest tool to manipulate. You have total control over it. I use it for creatures, and animals, and funny noises. I did a lot of Gremlins voices for the Gremlins movies. Have fun.

Pretty neat, huh? What is this with us? Holy fadget. It's just something where you feel the character inside of yourself and you think, I can do this better. And you just do it. Mark also went on to work on some of the most classic animated films. I did Beauty and the Beast.

They can sing, they can dance. After all this, this is France. Aladdin, I can show you the world. Shining, shimmering, splendid. And the Lion King. The circle of light. And the red moon of the sun. Mark's experiences with animated films were different I'm a man who's a soul. Mark's experiences with animated films were different from the grind of televised cartoons.

If nothing else, you get much better schedules. You usually get the time to design and create something that no one's ever heard before. Another sort of unique distinction is that you have the option to create sound first and then have animation be done to what you did. It's not that often that we get to actually drive the image.

And on the Disney animated films and the Pixar films and the Dreamworks films and others, they're smart enough to know the value of sound and how it can be the inspiration to the artist to draw something that they might not otherwise have drawn. For example, in Beauty and the Beast, Bell's dad was this inventor and he had built that funny acts-chopping machine. That was a sound that we made before animation. Let's give it a try. It does. It does.

It does. It does. It does. It does. It does. It does. It does. It does.

It does. It does. It does. It does. It does. It does. It does. It does.

It does. It does. It does. It does. It does. It does. design, that's when you get to let your imagination run wild. You can see a picture from a storyboard, and then you just get to dream up what it might sound like. And that's just gold for a sound designer when you're sort of allowed to design unfettered. With all the cable channels and streaming services available today, there's more animation than ever before. So how does sound design work in modern cartoons, and which iconic sounds are still used today?

We'll get to all of that when 20,000 Hertz on 99% of visible continues. If you haven't watched a cartoon in years, it might surprise you that sounds from decades ago are still being used today. I used the older set effects quite a bit still. The Hanna Barbaria library, the Warner Brothers library, it's still kind of the go-to for certain gags and certain shows. That's Heather Olson, an Emmy-nominated sound designer for animation. She works at Advanced Audio.

I'm working on Star vs. The Forces of Evil for Disney XD, trolls the beat goes on, and spirit writing free for Netflix. Hey! You'll say Adamy, huh? I worked on the fairly odd parents. Tough puppy. Bunsen is a beast. Big goat, banana cricket for Nickelodeon.

Yeah! Big gop, banana cricket! I also worked on the adventures of Puss & Boots for Netflix. I am Puss & Boots! Gravity Falls for Disney XD. Rest assured, there's a perfectly logical explanation. And the Boondocks for Sony. Chop, chop, chop, chop!

Heather is an expert in modern cartoon sound design. Cartoon sound effects are different from live action sound effects because with live action you start with production sound. You're recording a picture and the recording the audio at the same time wherever the actors are. So if they're on a street, you have cars going by. It wasn't a cartoon. If you're doing a street scene you have cars going by, it was in a cartoon, if you're doing a street scene, all I get is dialogue, it's just the actors

who are recorded, and I get to start with a blank slate. I don't have to try to hide production backgrounds, I get to get the dialogue, and I get to create a world around it. It's kind of the best thing, and the worst thing at the same time to work on a cartoon, because you're not trying to hide anything, but you have nothing to start with, so in your head,

you have to think what would this sound like? Much like Mark's time at Hanabar Barra, Heather gets a fully animated show and often adds sound effects from a ready-made library of sounds. This includes many from the Hanabar Barra and Warner Bros. libraries. Here are some of her favorites. It's called the Tube Thunk Sound Effect. I think everybody knows who this sounds like. Maybe not what it's called, but it's that sound,

like when a character gets your head stuck in a jar, you hear that funk. I love that old sound. It's just so clearly conveys, my head is stuck in this jar, and it's not coming out again. And I also love all the old running sounds. And I'm using the xylophone blink all the time.

Those sounds I think have just persisted in everybody's mind and in every show because that's the language that we've started to understand. So when someone blinks, you kind of expect to hear that xylophone at this point. And of course, Heather uses the falling whistle. I think in our side of X-Liber, it's called bomb drop, but it's the same thing. I mean, that's another piece of the language that everybody knows. Since some of the show she works on are more realistic, Heather wants us to hear the sounds of the characters moving around and interacting with their world, kind of like a live-action movie.

The Foley department really brings a show to life. They record footsteps, things, characters, touch, which we call props. They do more of the smaller sounds, and it's great to have fully do that step of library because then you're not hearing the same footsteps over and over. They really make it sound more real. And just like in the past, if you can't find a sound, you have to make it. One of the stranger things I've actually recorded and done myself for a sound effect is we had a bit in robot monster where everyone was in a crowded restaurant, so it was supposed to be this crowd of people gagging and grossed out by something. And that's not exactly an effect I had to sit around my library.

So I grabbed a bunch of people around the office and we recorded ourselves gagging in lots of different ways. And then I kind of pieced it all together into a crowd. Sometimes layering multiple sounds together is the best way to create something new. An odd combination that you might not expect, and I did not invent this, Animals and Engines is a really great one. You put animal roars under engines, growls, it really kind of brings a view of the life.

A lot of shows do it, but Star Wars, definitely the tie fighters, there's some growls under there as they go by. Directly phone one of these four five. Oh, yeah. It's fantastic. Inspiration. Another option Heather has is to take a classic library sound and change its pitch to make a new effect. Take this cartoon boing sound effect. She can pitch that sound up or down.

Heather uses a lot of classic non-literal sounds while working on cartoons, but some modern cartoons are more realistic than slapstick. Her choices really depend on the show. So especially when we get a new show, we'll do what we call spotting the show, where the clients come in and we watch it together, and we kind of talk about what they'd like where, and just the overall feel of the show, like is it going to be kind of a realistic show, like spirit, or is it going to be really cartoony, like fairly odd parents? So I'll be able to dodge the whole lab in an easy way. Fairly odd parents taught me how to speak cartoon.

I'm not going near that thing without the appropriate protective gear. It's just non-stop cartoon, cartoon, cartoon. Where's the little like spirit? It feels more like you're making a movie with, you know, horses out in the fields with girls. Because Spirit Riding Free has more natural sounds than a cartoon like Fairly Odd Parents, Heather needed some new sounds. We got a whole new horse library because in that show, there's three characters who are horses, so there are no actors voicing them,

and they each have a different personality, so we had to find different vocals for each of the horses. But even Spirit writing free still sometimes needs a dose of the vintage cartoon sounds. A lot of times people will come in with their show and say, I don't want to use those old Hanna Barbera sounds, I want to do something completely different, but they've kind of animated the traditional way. So when you put new sounds to that, it just feels wrong, and a lot of times they eventually go back to using the older sound effects. When it comes to cartoon sound design, Mark and Heather both agree that the medium pushes

the boundaries of creativity. Characters stretch a naturally out of their body shapes. You know, those are just the simplest examples of visually what's happening with these characters. So in a way, it gives you permission to break the laws of what sound you should hear when you see something. I really like working for animation because I like to build a world with sound from the ground up because in animation the best part is you're designing a world from nothing, a world that no one's ever heard before. And sound design I think is a huge part of

the process for animation because there's no sound except the talking. So you get to do the backgrounds and sound effects and the fully and I think it all combines to really bring the animation to life. So now there's so many tools that anyone can get their hands on. You're really free to design sound in any way your imagination desires. It's important for us to follow our hearts when we follow our heart and then we make a career out of that. We make a day-to-day This episode of 20,000 Hurtz was written and produced by James Introcasso and Dallas Taylor, with help from Sam Schneebley out of the studios of De facto Sound.

It was edited, sound-designed, and mixed by Nick Spradlin. All the music in this episode was provided by Music Bed. You should subscribe to 20,000 Hearts. They're a great indie podcast and a big fan. You're totally dig it. We'll have a link on our website in the show notes. 99% Invisible is a project of KALW 91.7 in San Francisco and produced on Radio Row in Beautiful, Downtown,

Oakland, California. We are a member of Radio Topia from PRX, a fiercely independent collective of the most innovative shows in all of podcasting. Find them all at radiotopia.fm. You can find the show and join discussions about the show on Facebook. You can tweet me at Roman Mars in the show at 99PI org. We're on Instagram, Tumblr, and Reddit too. But our forever home on the web is 99PI.org. Radio TepiRX