Swords & Movies

You know the biggest difference between sword movies made in America and those made in Japan?

*Shing!*

It’s not one single noise, but a collection of noises really. In American movies, when a sword or knife is drawn from its sheath, there is a sound that accompanies the action. Little note about foley work, check out how often there is a sound that goes with an action that wouldn’t have a sound or at least not a noticeably loud sound in a movie sometime. One you know that between 30% and 80% of the audio is laid down later it makes the movies sound a lot different. If you really watch listen closely you can begin to recognize when ADR has been used to loop the dialogue. Don’t get me started on gunshots.

ANYWAY!

In American movies the drawing of a sword is audibly defined by the sound of something grinding against the blade calculated to make a sword collector cringe and scream “Something is caught in the scabbard! You should not have that sound!” at the top of their lungs until they are hoarse and hiding under their desk weeping. Okay, maybe that’s just me. There are actually a lot of sounds that blades have in movies that they just plain shouldn’t. Folders sound like they’ve got sand in them, knives and swords get ground against protruding nails, and of course there are all those wooshing sounds. I don’t mind the wooshing sounds so much, because swords can make a woosh if you swing them right. What I mind a little is the loud woosh-woosh sounds from people picking up a sword and moving it around at low speed. Xena is exempt from this complaint because I’ve always sort of assumed it was done as parody.

Japanese movies don’t do this. For the most part, the only sound is a tiny clink of the sword against the wood as the sword is drawn and no sound for the swinging of the blade. You get almost no added sounds from the weapons in a Japanese movie until you bring on the guns. I’ve only seen maybe three Japanese movies with anything even approaching even believable sound effects when it comes to guns.

There are also major differences in what each side of the ocean calls a sword fight as well. American sword fights can go on for days at a time, often running around the whole set while the two fighters (usually there are only two) smack each others swords together in a serious attempt to not hit each other. It’s greatly based on sport fencing and is as far removed from the martial skill as you can be while still holding a weapon.

Japan’s sword fighting, again, doesn’t do that. There is almost no blade on blade contact and the fight regularly lasts mere seconds after the initial sizing up period. Often an entire fight will only contain one actual cut. This is why your action packed samurai movie has to have the hero standing up to anywhere from 10 to 40,000* other guys in any given fight. If you want to keep the fight going you have to have more people for your hero to cut down.
*I’ve heard that in the last Lone Wolf and Cub movie Ogami Ittō killed more people that Chuck Norris and John Rambo combined.


Just as a note, I’m not mentioning Hong Kong movies here because until the 90s there was almost no recorded sound in HK films. Most movies would be shot as silent movies and would only have sound laid down later. As a result every sound in your average HK movie from before about ’94 is going to be completely made up of foley work and looped dialogue.