LO2: Constructing Gunshot Layers

So far, I’ve learned that the audio provided for guns in movies and video games is often exaggerated, or just completely made-up, as they tend to sonically display a variety of loose moving pieces even though guns don’t usually make much noise the real world.

My next step was to find out how to construct some effective gunshot sounds. I looked online for videos and found one that really helped break down what makes a good gunshot sound (Marshall McGee, 2017). The narrator broke gunshot sounds into four layers:

Weight – The low frequency sounds that make it seem as though the gun is hitting your shoulder upon recoil.

Thwack – The mid-range frequencies/the main body of the sound. This is the “attention grabber”/most noticeable layer.

Rattling – The mechanisms within the gun.

Tail – The sound that takes place after the gun is fired (e.g. the reverb and the sound of the bullet cutting through the air).

I decide to use these layers as references for creating my own sounds. To create the ‘thwack’ layer, I combined recordings of party poppers and CO2 weapons. The party poppers provided some higher-range frequencies and were distorted using VST effects to make them sound more like explosions than pops. The CO2 gunshots were pitched down to provide some lower/mid-range frequencies. Next, I created mechanical sounds by recording myself tearing apart thick pieces of cardboard.

Since the video demonstration mainly applies to first-person gunshots, I decided that the weight of the gun wouldn’t be too important of a feature within my sounds and therefore decided to use EQ effects to boost the lower frequencies of the CO2 gunshots as a substitute for an individual weight layer.

The final layer was the tail layer. I created the tail from two reverb effects. The first was a very short but also very wet reverb that very briefly extended the sounds of the party poppers and CO2 shots. The second was a longer but quieter reverb to help create a general echo as, within the narrative of the animation, the guns are to be fired outside within a big city.

References

Marshall McGee (2017) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dqU6JbubJQ