How I Create Movie Sound Effects Using Food

To create the sound of an exploding head, melons are dropped from the second floor.

Tobi Pledger
Slackjaw
Published in
3 min readDec 26, 2024

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Credit: VinokurovYury, iStock®

Foley artists create all the sounds you hear in a movie, other than actor dialogue. Sure, we do a lot of walking back and forth on linoleum/tile/wood flooring in different types of shoes/boots/socks, but we use food to produce the majority of sounds. And, just like the shoes/boots/socks, we don’t throw the food away after we’ve nailed the sound. We end up with a lot of leftovers — some decades old, but still quite delicious — and need help eating them.

Here’s some of what we’re dealing with:

• Anytime an actor makes an omelet in a movie, we crack a couple dozen eggs to capture the right sound. We have gallons of raw eggs and a microwave to nuke them in after you’ve picked out the shells.

• Several dozen boxes of waffle cones we broke into pieces in 1993 to produce the sound of the dinosaur eggs hatching in Jurassic Park. They’re a bit stale, but you can still taste the blackstrap molasses.

• Sizzling bacon sounds more like rain than actual rain. Most movies have at least one rainy scene, so this is a staple. In 1999, we cooked over fifty pounds of bacon to craft the atmospheric sounds for The Perfect Storm. On New Year’s Eve of Y2K, we ate every one of those strips as we waited to see if the world would end at midnight. To this day, when we “make it rain,” I think of that night. Currently, we have a buttload of overcooked bacon.

• Violently snapped cucumbers generate a sound indistinguishable from that of a femur being gruesomely fractured. The pieces fly everywhere, even hitting the ceiling. It’s catastrophic. Celery works better for smaller bones: finger, wrist, forearm. We used loads of these veggies working on Jason Statham’s Beekeeper movie last year, so please help us eat the pile of mangled celery and English cucumber.

• A pitcher of something that looks like kiwi juice. It is, in fact, what’s left after you freeze a head of iceberg lettuce, crunch the leaves to make the crackling sounds of Rose’s frozen hair during the filming of Titanic in 1997, and put the leftovers in the fridge for almost thirty years. Come, taste the history. But just a sip. We want to keep this iceberg around for as long as possible.

• A few gallons of melted, refrozen ice cream. To create the realistic sound of dripping blood, we let a tub of ice cream melt and dribble off a bar stool onto the floor. The refreeze results in a pleasant crunchy texture.

• Three types of produce, all used to create various sounds of head trauma. There are several cabbages we whacked with a ping-pong paddle to mimic a crisp headshot, and bushels of Granny Smith apples we stomped to replicate the sound of a skull being crushed. Combine these for a heavenly apple-cabbage slaw. We also have a few buckets of watermelon pulp, juice, and rinds. To get the sound of an exploding head, melons are dropped from the second floor. We suck up the remains with a powerful shop vac. More than once, I’ve found bullets in my watermelon slushie.

• Nicely tenderized proteins — flank steaks and chicken breasts we’ve slapped, punched, and stabbed to get the realistic sounds of human flesh being egregiously mistreated. These literally melt in your mouth. Pop them in the microwave before enjoying as these proteins are raw and were unrefrigerated for up to a couple hours during recording.

• Chewing tobacco juice concentrate. We shoot chaw into a spittoon to make the sound of bullets ricocheting off metal. Diluting with water and adding sugar to neutralize the bitterness results in an intriguing cold beverage.

Noshing on tempting leftovers every day has ballooned my waistline. Please come help us eat all these decadent foods so I can lose a few pounds.

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Tobi Pledger
Tobi Pledger

Written by Tobi Pledger

Tobi Pledger lives in North Carolina with her husband and a flock of birds. Her spirit animal is the possum.

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