SOUNDS LIKE winter
When I think of winter, my mind immediately goes to the sound of a warm fire crackling in the fireplace, stepping outside to hear icicles crackling as they dangle off the roof warming in the winter sun, and hearing the sound of my footsteps crunch in new-fallen snow. These auditory memories immediately put me in the winter mindset, and can be used to do the same for your audience when designing sound for a winter episode or movie.
But, what do you do if you don’t have these sounds readily available in your library? Of course, you can always purchase a library. But, for us, it’s way more fun to re-create them with custom recordings. All three of these are cases where Hollywood tricks of the trade can result in even better recordings than if you opened up a mic in front of the real thing.
So, we set out to do just that—use tricks of the trade to recreate these classic winter sound effects. Here’s how we did it!
Tips and Tricks
A warm fireplace
To recreate the sound of fire, you need to recreate crackling using a variety of objects. This can include saran wrap, twigs snapping, popcorn crunch, ramen noodles crunching, or bubble wrap. We decided to separate these sounds into two categories: fire pops (individual popping sounds), and fire steady (a more ongoing bed of crackling to create the “meat” of the fire).
First, we recorded our fire pops, which consisted of crumbling popcorn and ramen noodles.
Then, we created our fire steady by recording the sound of the twigs straining when tried to break them. We gathered twigs of all different sizes and slowly snapped them.
Then we layered these two pieces together to create a steady, consistent fire!
Crackling Icicles
Icicle sound effects can be a great addition to exterior ambiences. To make this sound, we filled a bowl with warm water and added ice cubes to it (in our specific case, a GIANT block of ice cubes that we found in our freezer ice cube bin). When the ice hit the water, it immediately started to melt and emitted amazing crackling sounds.
Another way to go about this, or another layer to add, would be breaking up styrofoam. It gives off an amazing squeaky crack similar to ice. This can be an especially great layer when you’re designing a larger piece of ice cracking, like a glacier.
Footsteps in Snow
The sounds of crunchy footsteps in snow is an integral part of the auditory memory of everyone who grew up in a snowy winter location. To recreate this very specific sound, we started by filling a Ziploc bag full of corn starch and manipulated the bag with our hands to make the footsteps. This method sounds like the crunch of new-fallen pillowy soft snow.
To create wet, slushy snow footsteps, we tried a few options. Our first attempt was to use a rock salt and cornstarch. Before adding our rock salt to the cornstarch, I added a little bit of water to it and then crushed it between my fingers to encourage it to dissolve. But, when I added this mixture to the cornstarch, it created a mess and did not produce the sound we were looking for.
Our second attempt was to use coffee grounds and rock salt. We scooped used, wet coffee grounds out of the coffee machine into a bowl and repeatedly pressed my fingers into the bowl. This created the perfect sound that we wanted!
WET SLUSHY SNOW FOOTSTEPS
After this, we added rock salt to the coffee grounds to get a gritty, rocky, slushy, wet footsteps. Again, I pressed my fingers into the bowl containing coffee grounds and rock salt to create the footsteps. This worked well.
Try these tips and tricks yourself, and let us know how they work in the comments below! And as always, if you are looking to expand you sound library, I highly recommend taking a look at the sound collections on Boom Box Library!
IF YOU HAVE AN IDEA FOR HOW TO DUPE ONE OF THESE SOUNDS, LEAVE IT IN THE COMMENTS BELOW! ALSO, LET US KNOW WHAT winter SOUNDS LIKE TO YOU!
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