Sound Design and Dirty Harry's Gun

This is a breakdown on some very intelligent and clever sound editing in the Dirty Harry films. Please note: there are a few passages without video; this is intentional.
www.stephenaltobello.com

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Altobello
• Dirty
• Harry
• Sound
• Design
• Clint
• Eastwood

[stephenaltobello]

(cont'd) To be clear: I don't particularly enjoy finding new mixes that "desecrate" the past, but I am a fan of creative sound editing, which seemed to flourish in the early 70s. And it certainly makes it easier to point out the good stuff when there's alternate versions on hand (albeit alternate versions that are being promoted as THE essential versions on DVD and Blu Ray).

[stephenaltobello]

Yes, jfriah, I made it. I took the original gun sound for the hijacking scene from the French mono track, which wasn't remixed. (Also brought to my attention by my friend, Tom, who's an editor in LA. All I did was string it all together and cook up the VO.)

[MrKilroy138]

FYI the .44 Magnum handgun is not the most powerful handgun.

[motoman2WH3]

...in other words, I agree w/ LastCubScout.

Also, the AutoMag in "Sudden Impact" had a distinctly different sound. Not in a good way, though....

(Rubber bands? You've got to be kidding! ;-)

[motoman2WH3]

While I understand your point -- and this is a great montage -- it has *always* bugged me that the airplane scene originally had the "44 Mag" sound effect. The DVD got it right.

Worse is how the "enhanced" bad-guy guns sound more intense, and therefore the uniqueness of Harry's gun is somewhat lost. I'll bet a box of 240-grain hollowpoints that the original "Harry" sounds were identical for technical and/or budgetary reasons.

Don't get me started on the remastered Spaghetti Westerns....

[LastCubScout]

I'm pretty sure the original sound mix was in fact a mistake. Perhaps the filmmakers got confused as to which gun Clint had on the plane. I liked that they corrected it in the new DVD/Blu-Ray sound mix. This is shown later in the same movie, 'Magnum Force', when Clint fires David Soul's .357 Colt Python after the combat match. The original mix had the gun making the .357 sound effect, not the .44 sound, so obviously not all weapons were supposed to sound the same when fired by Clint.

[Berni0707]

1:02 - 1:12 PRANGOO!! Love that pistol sound! A classic from the 70s and 80s movies. Including Dirty Harry series, The Terminator, Steele Justice, and more!

[Hunter17001]

@xalener i guess laugh?

[xalener]

@Hunter17001

I don;t know whether to laugh or cry...

[MrToinou2706]

isn't the .50 AE more powerful?

[Hunter17001]

team fortruss music

[sabre926]

Man, I always wondered how they got that sound effect for the Magnum. I've heard it in the Dirty Harry films, from Crockett's gun in Miami Vice, City Hunter's Colt Python and so forth