ELi5: In a wild west movie or game, when a gunslinger puts their revolver into their holster it often makes a “click”. (for example in Red Dead Redemption 2). Would this happen in real life, and if so, what is it caused by?
In: 19
Movies use a variety of sound effects to convey information, many of which are not necessarily true to life but are so commonplace they’re practically expected at this point. Sound recording in movies is difficult. You want to record the actors cleanly with no interference as well as the sounds of the environment and their actions. Multiple microphones may be used for this but even then it can be difficult to keep each audio track clean from other sounds and this makes editing more difficult. For voice lines the microphones are usually placed as close to the actors as possible, often concealed in their clothing or in props close to them, and have small pickup, meaning they can only record sounds coming from very close to them. This helps audio engineers to get a clean track with only the actors’ voicelines in them. If the microphone recorded everything, then it would pickup other sounds too, like their footsteps, or objects near them. From the editing side it’s much easier to tweak sounds in post by editing a lot of isolated tracks together rather than trying to remove potentially unwanted sounds from an otherwise good recording. For this reason there’s a wide range of “quiet” props designed to help with this. For example prop paper bags are made of leather, they look the same but they don’t make the noise regular paper bags make. Ice cubes may be made out of silicone or resin. They don’t make noise and they also don’t melt so that helps with resetting scenes more quickly. Shoe soles may be lined with felt for quiet footsteps, billiard balls may be made of rubber so that they don’t clank together. Then the sounds of those objects can be recorded separately end edited back in but at the appropriate volume level and timing that the editors want, without interfering with the voice tracks.
So in a simillar vein a lot of the commonplace sound effects you hear in movies are there because, well, they’re commonplace. They’re so ubiquitous it would feel off to the viewer if they were not there because they’re so accustomed to them. Some modern pistol holsters have a metal clip that the gun slides into so that it makes a snug and secure fit, and some older leather holsters may have had internal inserts from a harder material to help them keep shape, however for the most part putting the gun back in is mostly silent. The clicking sound is usually meant to indicate the character has uncocked the hammer of the revolver, but many times he’s not actually shown to do that. Nevertheless the sound effect is added, because it’s always there. In fact a lot of the sounds armed people make in movies are not realistic. Sound effect engineers dangle leather straps and buckles to make all those click clacking sounds as the characters move around or handle a weapon to convey some auditory feedback, but the fact is that most of those actions don’t make a sound.
Latest Answers