Peck also shared some details about how, exactly, he and his team managed to create the sound of a human head getting smashed to bits during that horrible, Pagan Whack-a-Mole ritual:We had to make the sound of the lungs filling, because he’s alive. The lungs are hanging out of his body, and to make the sound of the air going in and out through the lungs—breathing, basically—that was a challenge. I spent a lot of time on it, and I used this really large shammy made from animal skin. It was a really big piece soaked in water, and I spread it out on a flat concrete surface and plastered it down to the ground to create a kind of suction. Then I picked it up by the middle, and, as it pulled off, there was a scchhhheeew. That was a pretty good one.
The entire article is full of stories of how sound effect geniuses crafted everything from Godzilla's bellows to the different footsteps of CG rabbits, but nothing is quite as ghastly as the Midsommar bits. Give the whole thing a read over at Vulture.When the head gets pounded, there’s really nothing else you could use besides a big side of beef. We did happen to have a pig head available at that time. I think I used a wooden stump to hit it, and it was pretty grisly. You know when you hit something, often you get little particles that fall? Yeah. So then it’s like, “Oh boy, I need to wash up after that!”