Were the thunderclaps specially recorded, are the sound effects available commercially?
A. All the sound effects come from a company called World Backgrounds, an audio library located in Borehamwood near the studios and the thunderclaps can occasionally be heard in other productions. The distinctive sound of Rover in murderous flight was also created here by overdubbing several different sounds including a slowed-down lion’s roar, ball bearings rolling round the inside of a car tyre and a monks’ chorus played backwards! Like music tracks, film companies “buy in” sound effects – crashes, car engines, explosions, footsteps, crowd noises & etc. Because it’s time-consuming to get them sounding right, it’s cheaper and faster to simply buy a professionally recorded sound effect off the shelf. I doubt, for example, that the Mini Moke engine noises are actual Mini Moke engine noises. Who could tell? As to whether you could ever buy a CD with specific Prisoner sound effects on, unlikely. It wouldn’t be a commercial proposition and I doubt that records still exist of which ones wer
