The Wilhelm Whinny
If you’ve ever seen a movie with a horse in it, you’ve probably heard it: the Wilhelm Whinny. I have no idea if there’s a real name for it, but I’m just gonna call it that in allusion to the famous Wilhelm Scream. Similar to the Wilhelm Scream, the Wilhelm Whinny is a sound file that film producers love to use over and over again. That horse neighing in the movie you just watched – probably the Wilhelm Whinny. (Unfortunately all of my movie editing tools don’t work, so I can’t provide you with a clip.)
But unlike the enjoyable Wilhelm Scream, I greatly despise the Wilhelm Whinny. I’ve hated it for as long as I can remember, and whenever I hear it, I’m distracted from the movie I’m watching. It happened again yesterday, as I was watching Goya’s Ghosts, a very captivating film with Natalie Portman, Stellan Skarsgård and Javier Bardem. The soundfile of a horse neighing is used in the movie, and as with all other movies, there’s no fathomable reason.
A horse doesn’t just whinny. Horses only whinny when they’re very excited about other horses, when they meet horses they don’t know, or when they’re being separated from a horse friend. But a horse being ridden through a town or a battlefield doesn’t whinny. This is a big factual error, which unfortunately, no one in Hollywood seems to notice. I used to be a horse person and I used to have my own horse up until ten years ago, that’s why I notice these things.
But what I find even more irritating about the Wilhelm Whinny than it’s randomness, is it’s artificial sound. Seriously, I’ve never encountered a horse or pony with a voice like that. To me, it sounds like some audio producer suffered from boredom (or lack of money) in his studio and produced this thing to sell it to the entertainment industry (a long time ago, it’s kinda old). I used to listen to audio books about horses when I was very young, and those always used that horrible Whinny to accommodate the horses with the story. Back then this Whinny was imprinted on me, and unfortunately I can’t get rid of it. I’ll forever be doomed in noticing that thing whenever I’m watching a movie with horses.
I wish there was some way to make film producers realize that a) horses don’t whinny all the time, 2) it sounds abysmal and c), or 3) they don’t make dogs bark or cats purr all the time out of context either, do they?! I’m just asking for a bit of realism here. It’s OK when pigs grunt or chicken cackle, because those animals do in fact do that all the time. But not horses. Horses, like all other Equidae, are on average very quiet animals. So let them be quiet. Please?!
The whinny sounds real enough to me, and I bet to most other people, too. It’s not like there’s any horses running around outside — I know where to find some but I see no reason why I would, and if I have ever heard a real horse whinny I certainly don’t remember.
This is not unlike many other factual errors that have become so common we don’t even notice them anymore, and probably wouldn’t be noticed by a layman anyway. For example, when they edit CCTV images to change perspective, cars explode after a crash, spaceships make noises, and computers… well, you know.
The point is that most people do not notice or, if they do, don’t care so in the majority of cases, those things do not hurt the movie. But they can help alot, like turning the viewer’s attention to something or advancing the plot without endless boring explanations.
Don’t misunderstand me: I like my movies without factual errors. But I do see why bad directors need them.