Freesound - SSE Vintage Vehicles

The “SSE” sound effects come from the Sunset Editorial collection which was donated to USC Cinema in 1990. Sunset Editorial had a low-key history in Hollywood. They were active from about 1964 to 1987. They mainly did episodic television. Shows like “Bewitched”, “I Dream of Jeanie”, “The Partridge Family”, and “The Waltons.” They have 569 credits on IMDB!

They were a very simple operation. They only edited sound — no mixing. And they worked on a tight budget. Sound editors came and went. There wasn’t much budget for creating new effects, so they depended on effects that sound editors had been using for decades. Freelance editors brought their own collections, and then copied effects to take as they went on to their next job.

The good news is that this is an incredibly diverse and rich collection. The bad news is that a lot of these analog 35mm mag elements were copies of copies of copies. So they had a fair amount of noise and distortion. Because of this, I did much more restoration on these sounds than usual. Most sounds cleaned up nicely, but I eliminated about 20% of them.

The results are quite good. There are a lot of amazing sounds here ranging from the 1930s to the early ’80s. Check out the ambiances. Even if a sound seems a little odd to you, try layering it with other sounds to create something unique.