- The sound team behind 2021's "Mortal Kombat" went above-and-beyond to create the franchise's famously gruesome sound effects.
- Foley artists relied on all types of food to create organic-sounding gore.
- Bone breaks and jaw unhinging could be covered by snapping celery and peppers, while smashing a melon with a hammer was used for an exploding head.
Following is a transcript of the
Narrator: In this scene from 2021's "
Warning: Spoilers for "Mortal Kombat" ahead. And this video is gory, so maybe don't watch around children.
Adrian Medhurst: "Mortal Kombat" may be the goriest film I've ever worked on.
Narrator: To make all that gore believable, the team needed everything to sound as organic as possible. They focused on capturing audio from real objects, so nothing was overly processed. And while the artists used some audio from a digital library, most of the sonic landscape was created with original sounds. [stomping and squishing]
Robert Mackenzie: There are very, very few digital sounds in the film. It's all very Foley-, analog-orientated.
Narrator: Creating new sounds was crucial for the "Mortal Kombat" characters, as they are known for their unique armor and weapons. Take that moment we showed you earlier. Jaw unhinging isn't something you'd easily find prerecorded, so the Foley team created it themselves. First, Foley artist Adrian Medhurst knew he needed a crunch to match the flesh separating.
Medhurst: The capsicum can add a little bit of a hollow sound to it, like as if it's in a jaw. [crackling]
Narrator: But Medhurst also wanted to get an ooze at the same time, so he turned to wet gravel.
Medhurst: And just moving that and grinding it in my hand gives a nice little texture. And depending on if you cup your hands a little bit, you can get a little bit of a hollow sound, like it would be in a mouth sort of thing.
Narrator: Play these all together, and you get: [crunching and crackling] These sounds needed to live up to the game's trademark moves, which involve unusual weapons beyond typical swordplay. Kung Lao's hat required a plate [fingernails scraping on metal plate] and metal strips to get the right weight and speed.
Medhurst: Depending on how you hold it, you can get different sounds out of it. It could ring more or less. And with your nails, you could get more of a [fingernails scraping on metal plate] shimmery sound.
Narrator: But the finishing touches came from sound designer Robert Mackenzie, who decided to scrape a cymbal with a knife and apply distortions like a Doppler effect. [knife scraping a cymbal]
Mackenzie: Which makes it sound like the sound is passing by us very quickly. [metal whooshing]
Narrator: These distinctive weapons also meant distinctive kills, many which involved multiple body parts. Take this mess created when Kung Lao splits Nitara in half. The scene involves cutting through flesh, guts, and bone. For the flesh, Medhurst started with a pile of wet noodles.
Medhurst: Sometimes I might start with pasta or even wet newspaper and just think of different things to add into the mix. [squishing]
Narrator: But he still needed more squish, so he added some grapefruit and tomatoes. [squishing and squirting] And for the bone splitting?
Medhurst: Good old celery and capsicum. [oozing, squishing, and crunching]
Narrator: Even typical sounds like punches had to be reimagined for characters like Jax, who has giant metal arms. This moment, where he repeatedly punches Reiko, required trial and error, especially because those punches drew blood. First, Medhurst tried punching grapefruit.
Medhurst: But just to get a bit more weight, I tried using the melon.
Narrator: He found he needed to do more than hit the melon with his hands for a sharper break.
Medhurst: So I grabbed the hammer and tried to smash the melon. [thudding]
Narrator: And in the most gruesome moments, they had to really break down every aspect of a kill.
Duncan Campbell: I think the hardest thing about it is providing enough variation to the different types of gore.
Narrator: So artists looked at the movement and viscosity of blood or body parts to help them choose their props.
Medhurst: The props is almost like instruments, and I sort of have to figure out what notes they can play. So, sometimes, I'm picking them up and tapping them.
Narrator: Take this moment, where Kano rips Reptile's heart out of his chest, a move he's known for in the game. Like with Nitara's death, Medhurst needed a flesh-ripping sound. He tried rubbing a grapefruit against cabbage but found it too squeaky. [squeaking] So he tore into the cabbage himself. [soft tearing] But he did need the grapefruit to capture squirts of blood coming out of the heart.
Medhurst: They've got a nice juice to them, which can be quite bloody.
Narrator: And to make it really over the top, he found dipping the grapefruit in water added to the gross-out factor.
Medhurst: It's not as thick as blood, but it just helps add a bit of extra liquid. [wet crunching]
Narrator: Now compare that to the blood that bursts out of Reiko's head after Jax smashes it. To account for the brain bits, this bloody hit had to sound chunkier. So Medhurst went back to the noodles and newspaper used for the body split.
Medhurst: It's just handy to have a big pile of chopped-up sort of bits and pieces.
Narrator: This explosion of blood and guts was so big, it required a boot stomp to add an audible impact. [stomping and squishing] These sounds created a fully gruesome symphony once they were layered together. [stomping and squishing]
Campbell: We were processing a few of the sounds to make them sound a little bit bigger and grittier. Beefy low-end kind of processes just to give the sounds a bit more roundness and depth and power.
Narrator: The final pieces of the puzzle came from sound designers like James Ashton. They added their own unexpected touches, like the sound of a slithering octopus for a little more slime.
Campbell: That's the fun part about it, is the experimentation and finding the sounds that really bring the picture to life.
[glass smashing]