Calico Rudasil is a feature columnist for Sssh.com, the award-winning porn site for women & couples. With over 18 years’ experience under her belt, writing about and for the adult entertainment industry, Calico qualifies as something of a Web Porn Dinosaur; similar to a tyrannosaurus, only with far more attractive arms and a less pronounced overbite.
Like most people, there have been countless times I’ve been watching a movie and thought to myself (or, to the great chagrin of those watching the movie with me, said out loud) “How did they do that?” when it comes to an impressive special effect, or a particularly spectacular stunt.
One thing I hadn’t wondered before today – and which I probably should have wondered, in retrospect – involves not visual elements, but auditory ones.
I mean sure, I was curious back in the day about how they constructed the deafening roar of the T-Rex in Jurassic Park, but not once had I pondered the source of a certain class of more subtle movie sounds – like the creaking of the bed springs in famous sex scenes, for example.
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Evidently, the reproduction of everyday sounds in a movie is called “Foley” art, named after Jack Foley, a movie-sound innovator and developer of many oft-repeated techniques for producing such sounds.
When it comes to sex scenes, Foley artists employ a variety of techniques, most of which seem intuitive enough when you read about how they do it.
“The basic Foley elements of most sex scenes are the same: A Foley artist will, for example, rub their hands against their arms for skin-to-skin contact between two people,” explains Rebecca Pahle in a recent post for Vulture. “They’ll run fingers through hair (theirs or someone else’s) or against facial scruff… A creaky bed or sofa is a must — the best way to create the squeaks needed, explains Foley artist Alyson Dee Moore, is to sit on the bed and press down with your hands. Kissing? Centuries of teenagers practicing their make-out skills have it right: lips, meet back of hand.”
This is great and much appreciated info, of course – but it only scratches the surface where my “How do they do that?” sex-sound questions are concerned….
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It’s nice to know how the sounds of kissing and squeaky beds are made, but when it comes to the sort of movie sex acts I’m interested in, I’m still not sure how a Foley artist would approximate those noises.
For instance, in the porn world, when a dominatrix cracks her whip in the air, or better yet, brings it down hard on the back of her slave, what you hear typically is the sound of the actual event, as picked up by the microphones on the cameras used on-set.
Presumably, in the world of mainstream film, those same sounds would be rendered by a Foley artist, in part because the potential legal liability of for-real smacking around some hunky A-lister like George Clooney or Brad Pitt would make a Hollywood studio’s lawyer shit himself right there in his fancy, Corinthian leather office chair.
I don’t recall the scene well enough to remember if it even made a sound, but when Ted (Ben Stiller) was masturbating before his date with the titular character in There’s Something About Mary, if they did simulate the sound of masturbation, I bet I know how they did it.
No – I’m not talking about the classic technique of rapidly pulling the flesh of your cheek back and forth (something my older brother loved to stand next to the couch and do while I was reading, just to irritate me), I’m talking about repeatedly ramming in, then withdrawing, one’s fist from a jar of mayonnaise.
Hey – don’t take my word for it that doing so will yield a sound which perfectly approximates the sound of male masturbation: Head down to Costco for a sufficiently large jar of Miracle Whip (or, if you’re a mayo purist, Hellman’s) and give it a try yourself! Just be sure when you do so, you live-stream the event on social media for the rest of us to enjoy….
Calico Rudasil is a Sssh.com (@ssshforwomen) columnist and Sssh will be on Peeperz for fun times again in the near future, meanwhile why not check us out:
