How We Make Slow Motion Sounds (Exploding Tomato at 60,000fps) - Smarter Every Day 184

Video one: candle tomato. Video two coming up banana bottle. This is the Phantom V25 11; this is the ultra slow motion workhorse for Smarter Every Day - and sometimes on the Slow Mo Guys. This camera can record at two-thirds of a million frames per second.

But you'll notice there's no microphone on it, so the question we always get in the comments is, how do you record sound, so slow? Do you do it at an ultrasonic frequency or something like that? And the answer is: no. Welcome back to the garage where we shoot stuff and do fun things.

There's a question I always get on Smarter Every Day when I do a slow-motion video, and it's: how did you record the sound? Did you record the sound with the camera and then play it back? A lot of people don't realize that when you're recording with slow motion, it's just images. So today, Gordon from Canada, the guy that does all the magic with slow motion, is actually here.

Thank you for coming, Gordon.

GORDON: For having me.

DESTIN: All right, so I'm gonna challenge you today; you up for that?

GORDON: Yeah.

DESTIN: So you know nothing about what we're gonna do, correct?

GORDON: No.

DESTIN: Okay, so we have a gun, we've got some stuff here. I'm gonna record several things in slow motion, and then let Gordon walk you through what it's like to design slow motion sound because you do that for pretty much every Smarter Every Day with slow motion, right?

GORDON: Yeah, yeah, and you're good at it. Unless there's good voice over over top or something.

DESTIN: Yeah.

GORDON: Yeah, okay cool.

DESTIN: So challenge number one: a rifle. Going to be putting out a candle. What do you think about that?

GORDON: That would be great.

DESTIN: So, we are gonna record the sound because one of the questions we always get is: can you just record the sounds real time and slow it down? The answer is no, which we'll explain later. Three, two, one... oh, it didn't go out.

GORDON: That makes your sound harder.

DESTIN: Yeah, okay it moved like... the flame moved, but it didn't go out. So you can make sound for that, right?

GORDON: We can make sounds for that.

DESTIN: Oh wait, look at that! It went all the way out, go all the way out.

GORDON: That was high speed challenge number one rollin. What are you doing?

GORDON: Well, so we're doing some science. Yeah, I thought we could probably learn a lot of things by coring this tomato and putting an M 90 in it, which is ten bigger than an M-80?

DESTIN: What are these units? Do you know?

GORDON: So this is the M 90. I didn't even know M 90s were a thing...

GORDON: Neither did I.

DESTIN: All right, they're super illegal in Canada.

GORDON: Really? Well, probably not super. I've messed around with them, but I think they were brought up from Mexico somehow.

DESTIN: We need to protect ourselves from the... oh wow.

GORDON: So you're just gonna...

DESTIN: I'm gonna get it right in there.

GORDON: Oh, the fuse is coming out the top though.

DESTIN: I print... do we have to be careful not to wet the fuse?

GORDON: Probably.

DESTIN: I ordered gunpowder, not care.

GORDON: I don't think he cares.

DESTIN: Okay, so what are you doing here?

GORDON: Oh? Oh, you're gonna... you're gonna put it out the top, yeah. I want it and you're gonna put the plug back in the bottom.

DESTIN: I guess we could, huh?

GORDON: I came to Alabama for new experiences.

DESTIN: It's like a birthday tomato. (laughs) Blam! What do you think?

GORDON: Yeah, not sure about (inaudible) there? Or how much the tomato's gonna cushion the blow.

DESTIN: Do you want me to do it? I'll totally do it. You guys are around a lot more exploding things than me, and if you think that is safe, I'll go first, and you gotta promise me you're gonna make amazing slow-mo sound for this.

GORDON: I'll spend a little extra time on this.

DESTIN: Really?

GORDON: Yeah, promise.

DESTIN: Okay, thanks. Here we go.

GORDON: It's like nothing hit me.

DESTIN: Yeah! Oh, that's great. That's awesome. It's gonna look good, it was sick. You have a seed right on your face.

GORDON: Very good.

DESTIN: Okay, so how are you gonna make the sounds for that?

GORDON: I mean, we'll probably use some tomato sounds.

DESTIN: Oh, holy cow!

GORDON: Awesome. Do a little more than just tomatoes, Sam. So what would you do with the light?

GORDON: I don't know; we could probably get creative. I think like a really encapsulated sort of occluded concussion, like a sort of sort of thing.

DESTIN: Oh really cool, and it will record slow tomato sounds that are more met. They're gonna match the footage a bit better. So you record that tomato sounds, and then when there's another tomato, and we'll just like squish it up and throw it around and manipulate it.

GORDON: Yeah.

DESTIN: Yeah?

GORDON: Yeah!

DESTIN: Let me add a bunch of processing, reverb, pitch it down.

GORDON: You pitch it down so it feels slow?

DESTIN: Yeah, yeah. Huh, 'cause that's just psychoacoustics, really. That's what we want.

It's at this part in the process where I have to get the slow-motion files off of the flash that's here on the camera, downloaded, and then push it over the internet to Gordon and let him work his magic.

For the first video, the candle, Gordon has all the sounds he needs in a library of previously recorded stuff, so he simply watches the video and he lays these sounds down on the track as he sees fit.

However, when he does new stuff like the tomato exploding, sometimes he has to record new sounds, and he was so gracious as to record this incredibly complicated and precise process for us.

The tomato? I'm not actually going to use the tomato; there was a technical reason for that.

And here's an orange.

And that's because I looked in the fridge, and I didn't have tomato and I thought I did, and the grocery stores closed.

So we're gonna use an orange. It's another very juicy fruit. Squished tomatoes before us, scorched oranges before. They're pretty much the same thing when it comes to sound.

Believe it or not, I was one of the smart kids at the school.

After he's recorded the new sounds, they're edited, then they're cleaned up for imperfections and then brought into the session. They're cut to the picture, and then they're processed as one overall sound.

Then after he finishes all the magic, this is the final product:

Shhllllllllh!

Whoooosh!

Whooomkpppp!

demon sounds here

Stirring Macaroni

All right, I hope you enjoyed this episode of Smarter Every Day. It was sponsored by Audible. I love Audible audiobooks. It helps me reclaim my commute and get smarter while I'm doing it.

You really should be listening to audiobooks and Audible is the best way to do that. You can go to audible.com/smarter, get any free book you want as a trial, but I recommend this one: "Letters to a Young Scientist" by EO Wilson.

He's a Pulitzer Prize-winning biologist that has taught at Harvard for years. It's a great book if you're a young person and you're getting into the sciences. Go check out "Letters to a Young Scientist" by EO Wilson.

The way you can get this is by going to audible.com/smarter, or there's actually a new way: if you text the words smarter to the phone number 500 500, and they will reply with a link so that you can sign up for a free trial. It's awesome!

Anyway, that's pretty cool! Really neat way to do that. So, audible.com/smarter, or text smarter - 500 500.

And if you want to see all the books that I like, I'll leave a link down in the video description so you can check that out.

This was video one of two; the next one is gonna be banana bottle. So I hope you stick around and maybe subscribe so you can see that video.

I'm Destin, you're getting smarter every day. Have a good one!

Oh! Is the audio recording? What's happening?

(Destin laughing like a demonic angelic old baby of pure rage and happiness)

This is so scary!