When recording your own sound effects for things, your first instinct is probably to stick a microphone by the actual thing you are trying to create an effect of. Sometimes this works, but other times there is too much other noise or it’s dangerous or implausible and sometimes it just plain sounds wrong. You have to think of what people expect things to sound like and not necessarily what they really sound like. Most sound effects you hear in movies and TV are cartoonish caricatures of real sounds (that’s part of why shots sound so unpolished when you hear them with the actual field audio).

Here’s a list of some sound effects and how to make them.

Biff! Bam! Oof!

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