What if we told you that most slow-motion sound is fake? To give your snail paced footage impact, you’ll need to add some slow-mo sound effects.

One of the most solid ways you can add drama to your videos is by slowing things down. Smashed a glass? Make it slow-mo. Cracked an egg? Add slow-mo. Dropped a watermelon off a fire escape? Slow-mo that bad boy. Exploded your neighbour’s car (don’t do this)? Slow-mo.

There are a few tips for shooting great slow motion video. One main thing to consider is that if you want smooth footage, you’ll need to increase the FPS when shooting. This is so you can effectively capture enough still images to create a fluid sequence when the video is played back. Camera technology has come so far even over the last 10 years. It’s possible to shoot in 1 million FPS, without it looking too unfocussed.

As you can imagine, anything shot in 1 million FPS, or even 1000, will look pretty dramatic. But, if you watch it in silence, it will feel like something is missing. That would be the Foley.

I know what you’re thinking: You mean, the perfect bassy squelch sounds when a tomato is squeezed to a pulp in slow motion isn’t the actual sound it makes?

Sorry to tell you that, indeed, it is not the actual sound a tomato meeting its demise makes. Most sound captured whilst shooting slow-mo becomes indistinguishable and just quite muddy. This doesn’t serve to add anything meaningful to the footage, or help further immerse the viewer in the slothful action.

The Slow Mo Guys Method

If you’re any kind of slow motion nerd, you’ll probably be familiar with The Slow Mo Guys. This is a YouTube channel dedicated to creating offensively crisp slow motion footage. With over a decade of experience under his belt, Gav from the channel has broken down his approach to slow-mo sound effects and audio replacement.

Check out the video below for his demonstration.

Gav explains early doors that he is self-taught when it comes to sound design. So, although this isn’t necessarily a tutorial, it’s a brilliant demo of just how your own creativity and eye for detail can help you make something seriously cool!

Slow-Mo Sound Effects

In the video, you’ll have seen that Gav had thousands of audio files downloaded to then choose from for his videos. Aiming to use new sounds each time to avoid repetition is a great approach, but it can lead to you having to sift through a lot of files.

At Synchedin, we’ve created the Slow Motion Sound collection. Rather than being stuck with unusable slowed down audio, you can grab some high quality, time stretched sounds right here! There’s also a bunch of deep, low-end heavy samples, that will sound incredibly authentic when added to your footage.

With lots of impact sounds, creaks, and crunches, you can even edit and tweak these yourself to open up even more possibilities.

Sign up to Synchedin now to start collecting your favourite slow motion sound effects for your next epic or dramatic video!