movie making tips/sound fx?

Hello all,

I'm looking for tips and advice for movie editing and sound editing, so far i've found an easy way to make the lightsaber sound. I made myself a talkbox and used the Saw/synth voice (hit 2 keys at once for good effect) then waved the tube in front of the mic backnamd forth to act as the blade swinging.

I've also made Transformers transforming effects by using random voices/ sounds and editing them similar to metallic sounds then mashed them up and sounds good.

Are there any other tips for sound editing for videos/movies? I was using simple Audacity recording software. Looking for any sci-fi effects that can be used generally. Any help will be appreciated, if anybody has any questions I'll be glad to answer them.

Thanks!

If you haven't already, I highly recommend checking out The Sounds of Star Wars book, in it, Ben Burt (along with others) goes into pretty good detail on on not only what sounds they used for what but how they mixed and modified the sounds to get what you hear on screen. They also discuss, to a degree, the hardware/software that they used for the mixing. While not exactly a text book on sound editing I'd consider it a must read for any student or fan of sound editing.

When it comes to sound effects, normally, most sound effects aren't just one sound, but is often a combination of sounds that are used to achieve a desired effect. So, this means that, in editing, if you're trying to get a particular effect that gets what you want across, then use layers of them when you're editing with video software (don't try to combine them using an audio editing program, so that way you can be able to make changes while your editing without being destructive).

For laser sounds, i used a paper ripping, a bb gun gunshot, and some bass. The ripping paper was tuned up and scaled down like a record slowing down, it starts high and quickly tones down. The gunshot was put at thw beginning along with the bass.
For robot mechanical joints turning, i recorded the motors from my truck's power seat. The motor that controls the up/down sounds different than the motor that controls the back/forth so they give a good choice of sound.

Different size zippers work for lots of things too, if edited enough, you wouldn't even tell it was from a zipper haha

I use the Ring Modulator plugin for various robot/droid sounds since it has like a hundred settings and sounds when all switched around. It was used for 8D8's voice in ROTJ, I figured out that setting too