Beach sound effects

The broad swell-and-ease hiss of water running up a flat sand slope and draining back. This is the take most edits reach for, because it fills a shot without asking the audience to listen to it.

Pebbles rolling back down the slope behind each wave, a rattling counterpoint the sand version does not have. Reach for it when the shoreline needs to read as stony rather than tropical.

A single wave with a beginning, a collapse and a runout, so it can be placed on a frame rather than laid underneath one. The one card here that behaves like an event instead of a texture.

The fine crackling fizz of water sinking away through wet sand once a wave has passed. It is the detail that tells an audience the camera is close to the water rather than watching it from a hillside.

Three harsh laughing calls over the water. One vocal element does more to place a scene by the sea than another minute of waves, and it gives you something to cut against.

The same rolling water with the high fizz gone and the tone dulled, so it sits behind dialogue instead of competing with it. Distance here is a colour change, not a fader move.