![]() I was off to a bad start, so I decided to pull back and start simpler: asking a friend. And it’s not as if there’s a Shazam-type app for sound effects - although I really wish there was. My first hurdle was simple how do you google a sound? Typing in ‘Lab door’ or ‘sci-fi door’ understandably brings back thousands of results that could take forever to wade through. Unfortunately, tracking a sound effect’s origin is not that easy. ![]() I’ve certainly never heard a door like it, but it always feels like it belongs, despite the situation. Perhaps it’s the almighty clunk, or the winding motors that pan left to right, but the more I dissect it, the more I believe it’s this simple sound’s ability to be completely diegetic yet almost otherworldly. So what is it about this sound? Why has it become stuck in my head so firmly? This is an answer I’ve really struggled with because I’ve found it hard to quantify why I find it so satisfying. Little did I know though that one of the more passive sounds, a simple opening of a laboratory door, would be the one I’m still obsessing about over 20 years later. Whether it was the shambling groans of the zombies, or the clickety clack of the typewriters, the use of sound in the series as a whole is something that’s stayed with me ever since. It's not that my parents were ever particularly strict about age ratings, but the idea of being able to walk into a store and buy a game about zombies and blood myself was liberating.ĭuring my playthroughs of what I still consider to be an all-time classic, I was constantly aware of how descriptive the use of sound was. There I was, a fresh faced 15 year old excited about being able to purchase my first ever 15-rated video game myself. The application of this simple sound effect is everywhere, and its endless uses are way beyond what any one person could track (but if you have heard it somewhere please let me know!).īut my journey with this sound actually started quite a bit earlier.ġ998. From ‘90s children’s TV shows, to a trailer for 2021’s latest looter-shooter, Outriders. From the Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies to Scooby Doo. But since then (and especially since starting this journey) I’ve found and documented it all over the place. As a teenager, I spent a good chunk of my youth watching and re-watching every cheesy 90s sci-fi action movie you can imagine, and Universal Soldier was certainly in rotation. It’s hard to pinpoint when I first started noticing this sound effect, but as an educated guess I want to say it was its prominent use in the Jean Claude Van Damme masterpiece, Universal Soldier. It’s been 22 years now, it’s time to get those answers. This innocuous noise has been in and around practically everything I enjoy and, every time it plays, it forces two simple questions into my brain: How was it made, and who made it? I don't know why, but for decades it's been burrowed into my brain. It's most often used as the effect of a futuristic lab door opening.
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