Wikipedia [1] answered my question of why this is called the Wilhelm scream:
> The sound is named after Private Wilhelm, a character in The Charge at Feather River, a 1953 Western in which the character gets shot in the thigh with an arrow.
Getting hit in the thigh even now with the best medical care available is reasonably likely to kill you. Very likely to kill you if they hit the femoral artery. Back then, there was probably not much of a point in even trying to save him.
I appreciate this sound engineer’s preservation work, but cannot stand the intrusion of a Wilhelm scream. What was once a cute wink towards filmmakers and cinephiles is now an obnoxiously overused disruption to the flow of the film. You might as well flash the MST3K silhouette on screen every time it happens.
Maybe it's time to move away from simple winks, and instead make it a diegetic part of the content. I love the way it was used in DBZ Abridged: https://youtu.be/XMGdnof2Vfc
Maybe this is just me, but I think the Wilhelm scream works fine in the older movies where it was only supposed to be noticed by those in the industry. It just falls flat for me when it is done as a wink to the audience.
I've told people about the Wilhelm Scream, and every time it occurs in a movie or show, I'm flabbergasted that they still don't recognize it. It's just so distinct how does that not immediately stand out?
Makes me wonder what kinds of glaringly obvious easter-eggs (audio or otherwise) I'm missing.
If the movie or show is any good, most first-time viewers are likely too engaged with the plot to notice, and I suspect that the number who care to look out for it are fairly small. You seem to be in the position of a trained musician who cannot avoid hearing mistakes.
Have you noticed how every scene of a wide-open or mountainous landscape must be accompanied with the screech of some raptor? (It sounds like a red-tailed hawk to me, but that's just what I am most familiar with.) This, I think, is more noticeable because it is usually a scene-setting shot in which not much is happening, while the Scream is often backdrop to mayhem.
This kind of hidden cultural shorthand in movies and TV is one reason I find watching foreign produced entertainment interesting. The set of tropes used in terms of cues and plots etc are different. When you watch it and something feels off, it’s interesting to think well is this just this particular show, are the cues different; am I missing some shared reference here…
For bird sounds in movies the one to listen for is the loon. Admittedly a pretty striking call but it's everywhere in movies - and more often then not outside the actual range where you'd really find a loon.
There's one of a rat squeaking three times, and another of a door creaking open. Heard them both for the first time in The Elder Scrolls: Arena, and they're instantly recognizable anywhere else.
I'm not a gamer myself, but my wife is and she frequently points out the creaky door sound effect when we watch movies. It's amazing how often such a small set of effects is reused.
I've known about the Wilhelm scream and heard it in isolation online. I still can't tell you a single time I heard it in a movie or TV show. I just can't tell.
I’ve also heard the police dispatcher track from the original Grand Theft Auto in many other places, though I’m not sure if GTA was the original source or if it’s the same track you’re referring to
The phrase in the track that I notice is “5 George K”
I think it's worn out its welcome, and at this point it just takes you out of the movie. Sometimes just because it's so recognizable, but sometimes because it's being used despite not quite fitting into the actual movie and just being used because somebody in the movie's production wants to put it in anyway.
That you're too lazy/cheap to get a custom scream is indeed a little off-putting. Imagine if we did this with sentences, reactions or action sequences.
The Wilhelm scream is a classic, but I always find the Howie scream way funnier. It’s so much weirder and finds itself jammed into more diverse uses, I think cause it has a little bit of an inhuman or non-vocal quality to it.
I find it hard to believe you didn't believe it was real when it's still used in movies to this day, although that said, if you hadn't heard of it before it might not stand out. But once you heard it, and see a compilation of all the films it was used in, you can't unhear it.
I have the same with some sound effects, they were burned into me through (I think it was) Morrowind and I can't stop hearing them everywhere now - there's one of a door opening, and another of wind whistling that just has a very specific sound and progression. Reused sound effect libraries, aaaaaa
I wonder if it's the same wind whistling sound effect I've been hearing repeatedly since the 90's!
I think I first heard it in a very early game I played.
I'm going to say Ultima, but potentially Diablo.
I distinctly remember being stuck in a part of the game where my character was on a dock or sea shore type area and the wind sound just kept repeating over and over while I figured out how to get past that point.
Then over the years, I've noticed it in so many movies and other games etc.
You hear the initial wind noise, which quickly transitions into a curve that peaks up and down, a short gap of silence and then a second quieter part where the sound curves down and trails off.
I'd love it if there was a similar history I could learn about on it!
Edit: Amazingly, I've just managed to find the exact part of the game I was thinking of [0]
When I read The Invention of Sound I assumed it was largely fiction, perhaps inspired by real events. So it's not that I didn't believe is was real exactly. I hadn't considered certain sound effects might be re-used in multiple movies or been down this particular rabbit hole. Discovering now the sound effect is real makes the book way more chilling and increases my respect for Chuck Palahniuk
Willhelm scream is the most famous scream hands down. Last time I heard it was yesterday - in one of the first (maybe the first) cutscenes of Baldur's Gate III.
BTW, in the linked video:
> Hopefully people will continue to distribute them and share them
There is also a commonly used sound effect of crowd cheering. I don't know what it is called, but it is used everywhere. I can't find is easily on YT, so my guess it is copyrighted.
First time I heard it was in the original Tony Hawk Pro Skater game, every time you did a neat trick, you'd hear the same crowd cheer clip. I thought it was really annoying (I must have been ~14 yo at the time). Later as I got older, I started to recognise the same clip everywhere, with the same effect as you describe (immediately snapping you out from suspension of disbelief).
It is also used a lot in 'live' audience reactions, such as talent shows, stand up comedy, sitcoms, etc.
I don't know if they were stock sounds, or just lifted from the game, but so many bad shows use the police radio and fire engine siren from SimCity 3000.
Once I made myself a marathon of watching James Bond movies, I noticed a particular sound of a gun ricochet, reused multiple times throughout the series. Then I started noticing it in other movies as well.
I also often notice sounds from Heroes of Might and Magic III in movies, probably coming from some sound bank…
Yes, ever since I was cobbling together Counter Strike maps back when I was in school, I became aware of a bunch of stock sound effects as well (after browsing through them in Hammer Editor numerous times).
When you hear a toilet being flushed in a movie, it is the exact same stock sound. It makes me realize immediately, that I just watched an actor walk in frame (sometimes fidgeting with their belt), while the effect was added later during editing.
Same thing with doors. For a long time, movies and TV shows have pretty much universally used the exact same stock sound of a door being closed. The sound effect is fairly recognizable and about as subtle as the Wilhelm Scream. Sometimes, you can even see that the door is not fully closed, but we still hear the latch snap in place. Sometimes it's also fairly obvious that this kind of door can't possibly produce that kind of sound.
I guess people working at the studios have realized that too at some point, and in the past years increasingly (but not completely) moved to a different, more subtle door sound. It's now become a bit of a "will they/won't they" moment of suspense, whenever I see a door prominently in frame for a character to walk through it.
For me it's just part of the language of cinema, like a dolly zoom or a oner or slow-mo.
I can notice those things, particularly when they fit the scene well, and still appreciate them as a part of cinema on one hand, but still maintain my investment in the narrative on the other.
Like when my heartstrings are being pulled. If it's done well enough, it doesn't matter if you realise in the moment that it's something the filmmakers are doing deliberately; you still feel the emotion. I can appreciate the craft at the same time as being invested in the story. I enjoy appreciating a film on multiple levels at the same time.
To be sure, Wilhelm is more of a "heh, nice" moment than a "wow, what incredible craftsmanship" realisation. And, to my knowledge, it's never used inappropriately, e.g. in a historical tragic war scene. If it showed up in, say, Saving Private Ryan or 1917, I probably would be annoyed in a way that I'm not if it showed up in an MCU or John Wick installment.
I didnt know what it was called, but the use of screams like this across alot of tv and film did make it a bit laughable in some places. Watching the A-Team and some Westerns is where it springs to mind.
Its like the tyre screeching noise when watching things like knight rider, another sound effect that was perhaps used in excess in inappropriate places, like on dusty dirty tracks! Still as a kid, you dont care so much about that as it just adds to the experience.
It leaves me wondering if some sound engineers where trolling the audience in subtle but laughable ways.
Still if its a genuine thing, and not some Asch conformity experiment being carried out, its good that its been preserved for history.
For a second I thought this might be about the theft and recovery of one or more of Munch's "The Scream" paintings. I would argue they are at least more generally well known than the Wilhelm and Howie screams. Then I realised there was no "The" in the title.
On a related note I've heard/seen a few programmes over they years about Foley artists, the ones who create these overlayed sounds. Some of their techniques are very inventive and surprising how they come up with the ideas.
> The Secret World of Foley, a short film directed by Daniel Jewel, began as a project to shine a light onto one of the more obscure jobs in the film industry. So obscure in fact that even Jewel knew little about it beforehand.
>
> “While I was finishing another film, someone said ‘we’re going to get this Foleyed,’ and I didn’t know what it was,” he says. “But when they explained it to me it all made sense, and I think that’s the case for a lot of people.”
> The sound is named after Private Wilhelm, a character in The Charge at Feather River, a 1953 Western in which the character gets shot in the thigh with an arrow.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_scream