Origin of on-screen location sound in spy movies
In spy movies, there are often sequences showing an overview of the ocean or a city, with a location like "SOUTH PACIFIC SEA" being written, letter by letter (often uppercase / fixed width / green / segment-based) on the screen, with a tiny, morse-like, digital sound being played for each letter.
Examples:
- The Brothers Grimsby (03:30) -- digital sound, very close to the one I'm mainly thinking about
- The Dictator (04:50) -- a more mechanical sound
- Terminator 1/2 (whenever Arnold "scans" the room) -- a more complex, combined sound
Does this sound effect originate from some kind of historical intelligence apparatus, like a telex machine, a teleprompter, etc.? Or is it purely a Hollywood invention that is repeated by convention.
YouTube has some examples, becomingly called digital/military text typing.
Best Answer
Graphics styles change over the years; while they're popular, they usually refer to some currently popular theme or trope.
Right from the 1950s and even up to the 80s & 90s, 'secret spy computers' were "the thing".
By this time, the general populace would recognise what a computer green screen looked like - so they tended to be used for anything vaguely 'technical'...
It doesn't take much stretch of the imagination to see this kind of typography being used as an on-screen graphic.
The 'type it a letter at a time with noises' trope comes from the earlier days of the Telex, where someone would actually be sitting at one end of a telephone line, typing 'live' to a paper strip printer - actually an electric typewriter, in effect - at the other.
"Everybody knows" that computers make beeping noises, of course ;-)
With a bit of artistic license, you can overlay the methods.
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Why do computers in movies make sounds?
Filmmakers wanted audiences to marvel at the things these mystery boxes could do. And the sound input helps translate what's happening on the screen to ignorant audiences.Where do movies get their sound effects?
A Foley artist invents the sound effects that are dubbed onto the visuals. A Foley stage is the workshop in which the props used to make sound effects are used. ADR stands for Automated Dialogue Replacement, or a computerized method for looping, which is itself a method for redubbing dialogue.Why are spy movies always in Europe?
Europe is considered this place with loads of different secret services and lots of spies. Europe is a place outside the US \u2014 no killings, no terrorists, no danger to the US population \u2014 all the "bad" stuff isn't happening in the Land of the Free.How is sound added to film?
The most prevalent current method of recording analogue sound on a film print is by stereo variable-area (SVA) recording, a technique first used in the mid-1970s as Dolby Stereo.The Origins Of Sound In Cinema
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Answer 2
What you're looking for is called Telemetry. A short description is:
Telemetry is an automated communications process by which measurements and other data are collected at remote or inaccessible points and transmitted to receiving equipment for monitoring.[1] The word is derived from Greek roots: tele = remote, and metron = measure. Systems that need external instructions and data to operate require the counterpart of telemetry, telecommand.[2]
Telemetry has a long military history dating back to the 19th Century. Telemeters, the devices used to transmit the data, do make sounds similar to typewriters, as well as sounds similar to what you hear in the scenes you inquired about.
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