Happy holidays peeps! Monthly poll time!

This month, we'd like to know what your thoughts were on sound effects added in WAM vids. This is VERY subjective!

Effects could be one or more things; some examples include, but aren't limited to...

- Splats/messy sounds
- Canned laughter/crowd noises
- Other random noises that have to do with the scene

I like splat sound effects and similar sounds that exaggerate the mess. Not a fan of other sound effects though.

Totally gunged uses sound effects of many kinds to great effect..!

Agree that Totally Gunged totally nails the 'silly, naughty, squelchy sound effects' brief

Splats/messy sounds should occur once, then not again.

Canned laughter/crowd noises can occur, say at the beginning, but should not be unduly distracting. If these are persistent, it tells me that what's happening isn't really funny.

Other random noises that have to do with the scene. These are okay, but should be in the background.

Canned laughter? Sure. The rest? Nah.

The snack time skit -- the alarm was a nice touch.

I think that "random noises" is most relevant. E.g. if you have a scene set in a bakery, it might be nice to have a jingling sound and a door closing (off camera) before the customer appears. Basically, the type of thing that you'd hear in a radio play, when you can't see what's happening.

I've been looking into this for a custom video, and I've found a couple of royalty free websites (Freesound and SoundBible), although it might take a while to track down the specific sounds that I have in mind.

I am fine with canned laughter that adds to the "humiliation" of a scene but other than that, I could do without sound effects.

From a personal standpoint, the only sound effect I really like hearing is the sound of slime splattering on a tarp. I don't so much like canned laughter even. But then again I'm not a big "slapstick" lover. My origin story is the same as most people here but at some point I shifted to the darker, more bdsm-oriented side of wam and I prefer more intense and/or candid stuff these days.

PieZone's Megaslop Jackpot starring "Charlie" is one of my all time favorite videos and the sound effects work perfectly. There's a gameshow type premise and the sound effects enhance the entire experience: music, crowd laughter, glop/slime noise, the "whaa whaa whaaaaa" kinda noise, and a slide whistle right as the slime starts to fall. Something about all the production bells and whistles somehow enhances the humiliation. Poor Charlie is having a gross chunky bucket of green slop dumped on her while all these silly sound effects are going off and it all REALLY works for me.

Link of anyone's interested. The 2nd green sliming is an all time favorite:
https://pie-zone.com/products/megaslop-jackpot-charlie

Re: above, yep - Megaslop Jackpot is one of my favourite PZ vids - it's just great.

I do like sfx if well chosen - a lot of my customs have lines (generally written by me, sometirnes improvised brilliantly by the models) designed to up the humiliation factors, and I've been experimenting with adding some sfx to them myself, so I'm generally in favour of this as long as it's done and mixed well.

(Crowd reaction tends to be the bugger to get right because you need long stems to cover some gungings, or appropriately levelled moments so not everything is raucous clapping all the time. Also being a perfectionist I hate to reuse the same FX over and over. It's a work in progress.)

I dont care, as long as it doesnt drown out the the natural noises a girl makes when she's slimed.

I voted no but i must admit I had forgotten Pie Zone's offerings. I don't mind them in the right context, that being, not overtly sexualised and played in this sort of over-the-top, heavily themed, gameshow type setting.

I don't like sound effects when it's things like fart sounds and the Warner Bros. foley back catalogue played over women twerking, smouldering at the camera and fucking themselves silly.

Yup, the most important sounds are the sound of the victim squealing, groaning or nervously laughing. I'm also really fond of the sound of a girl trying to talk but having her voice muffled by slime as well as the sound of a girl trying to blow the slime off her lips to keep it out of her mouth.

Please don't add canned crowd stuff. One of the BEST things I own is the whole series of MASH without the canned laughter. Whole different viewing experience when you are not prompted to laugh.

Generally I don't like extra sounds. The big exception would be I do quite like sirens to mark the start of a gunging if it's a contraption/gunge tank set-up.

Andy Kaufman use to say that old sitcoms were just filled with the sound of dead people laughing.

Yes, depending of the sound.
A silly music, like those we hear on Circus.
Or cymbals being beated in the moment the pie intercepts the face.

But one soundtrack which would be nice in a pie scene is the Avengers song.

Imagine: The Avengers song starts... then the woman appears... And, in slow motion, she looks scared the pie coming in her direction... And, in the highest moment of the song... SPLAT! And, in slow motion, the woman opens her mouth widely...

Just imagine...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wYIbH2I5GZk

IMA

I like sound effects that add to the comedy humiliation factor. When the audience laughs at them, they should react as if they can hear the audience laughing at them and be more embarrassed.

Huh, my first thought was "no way". Pie splat sound effects and such just don't work for me - rather hear the actual sound from the scene itself, including any protestations from the victim!

However, giving it more thought I know there's a lot of scenes that use them to good effect - many have been mentioned already. Some scenes I myself have enjoyed have indeed been made better by them - one that comes to mind being the sad "wa wa waaaa" of a trombone at the end, to highlight the victim's humiliation just that little bit more!

So yeah, very subjective. I think if a scene was laden with them it'd be a hard pass, but they're not a lost cause if used correctly!

ABSOLUTELY YES!!

They work to stress the humiliation aspect...

I remember a Slapstickstuff cake face plant with a PFFFFF sound that was just amazing... actually I will ask that to Rich when he edit my last custom with him...

In "pete's dragon" a man falls in the mud face first and a PLAF is cleary added. Then, he spits out the mud and the sound of it coming out of his mouth is terrific... even I think this last sound was real...

In all scenes? No, gets to be a bit much.

But if there's a very silly skit that's clearly meant to be exaggerated and over the top, splat noises and canned laughter and such can be great.

It's no different from any other weapon in your producer arsenal. Use sound effects effectively in the right situation, and it works really well. Use them poorly.... Not so much.

If you're trying to "create a situation" (and/or have folks forget that 95% of all this stuff is filmed in a spare room with plastic on the ground and sheets on the wall), then sound FX and music help to create the mood. I won't use them for the "looser" skits, but if it's a gameshow or a restaurant scene, they really enhance the overall vibe.
https://slapstickstuff.com/SS259Trailer.mp4

I will also mention that editing takes a LOT more time when SFX are involved, and I get why certain producers basically sell their footage as-is, regardless of what the "scenario" is supposed to be. I guess I went the opposite route as I still try to create genuine "slapstick" skits with most of my work.
(Anyway, if folks hate the SFX, they can always buy the RAWHD clips where there's none of that.)

EDIT: Looking at the poll results... Apparently I'm doubling my workload to make the clips less appealing to 2/3 of the UMD! WOW! Next gameshow skit is just gonna be one angle of the model against a Home Depot tarp for half an hour.

If it is comedic, then yes.

I guess with anything this poll is probably too vague to get a fair reflection.

If i'm going with a gameshow type scene, then I think sound effects (like in the aforementioned PieZone) would absolutely enhance the experience.

However sound effects without context or in some situations wouldn't work, and you can see why people would vote no if they aren't into a gameshow (or alternatively a faux humiliating TV type scenario like a Kelsey special)

Oh I absolute agree, and I made the damn thing, lol. I felt like maybe in our past polls we were getting too specific with our options for answers. Like, maybe people should have chose between only x/y/z. NOW I think being more specific is absolutely better. Lesson learned!

As A Stooges fan I have always been a sound effects fan when done right. They had very loud pie splat sounds. So did Soupy Sales. In fact Soupy's almost sounded like a gun shot.

I originally thought of doing this with pie plats on WLP videos back around my second video with Dana and I kept saying "next time." But I was just too lazy to do it.

I even played around with it a bit on the first video I did with the paragraph lady (Jayce) but again, too lazy to actually do it.

Robby

*Maybe* some canned laughter (but even that I'm pretty iffy on) but everything else is a hard no.

I make my own "canned laughter" tracks for each of my videos, cause that's what YCDTOTV did, but I also make sure to keep it buried enough in the mix that it doesn't drown out the model's whining or moaning, and most importantly doesn't overtake the sickening sound of the green slime splattering and plopping down on them.

I also leave the laugh track out of the additional camera angles, so for ppl who don't want laugh trax, they still have 2 (sometimes 3 or 4) other opportunities to watch the video without it.

For other ppl's stuff, I agree with a lot of what's been said. When executed well, SFX and laugh tracks can be very effective. As mentioned, @PieZone has done a marvelous job with that a bunch, and I think the reason it works so well in his stuff is because all of the other elements fit that type of presentation as well. From the backdrop/green screen'd "sets", to the voice-over or POV title cards (depending on the video), to the video concepts themselves.

If it fits the rest of the video, and is utilized properly, I think sound design can be a great asset.

But if it doesn't match the video's tone or concept, or isn't executed very well, then it can become as distracting as the producer talking thru the sliming or another model having a phone conversation in the background.