FOLEY SOUND RESEARCH

 

In film making, foley sound includes an induvial physically creating and putting together the ‘everyday sounds’ used in television and film sequences; these unique sound effects ultimately create depth to the sequences and immerse the audience's reality of the world of the film. Using day-to-day sound effects of as little as footsteps, enhances the audiences reality into the screen of the character.  

Audio in film and Tv are primarily composed of two main types; field recording (what is heard on the actual film set and recorded) and foley sound. Foley artists roles are to essentially replace the sounds given to them from the field recordings and create much more definitive and effective audio to replace these sounds whilst synchronizing to the action of the scene.  

The art of foley sounds originated from live broadcasts in the 1920s; the muffled and distorted audio from the broadcasts meant that it was unrecognizable for audiences to hear. This caused studios to hire artists to make these sounds on cue to improve listening, and thus creating foley artists.  

Their job is to essentially re-create the actions on the screen that the actors have already made and to enhance these ambient, day-to-day sounds to create a much more auditory experience. Foley artists have three main types of sound; feet, recreating the footsteps of actors on screen, movement and specifics which comes down to any other sound made on screen such as the phone ringing and picking it up.  

Foley sounds are made from artists creating these sound effects on foley stages which are big recording studios which contain masses of equipment which enable artists to successfully recreate the sounds given to them by visually looking at the sequence. In order to plan what materials and equipment they will be needing, foley artists watch the entire film or sequence and note down what sounds they must recreate in their studio. These sounds can be edited in later post-production over the clips by the editor using modern technology.

As mentioned previously, foley sounds role Is to enhance to auditory experience of audiences and in doing so, the sound effects improve a variety of effects within the film/sequence. The scene immediately feels much more immersive as the atmosphere is enhanced through the sound being created as the movements are also depicted through sound; this therefore creates much more realism for audiences as they are already ‘climatized’ to hearing these sounds within their own lives which are also known as ‘incidental’ sounds. Another reason for using foley sounds is that the field recordings on its own are far too quiet to have any substantial effect on the audio quality and many details would be lost.  

In order to fully develop my understanding on foley sounds, I have chosen to further explore making my own foley sounds for a clip I have found on the internet:  

This is the clip which I will be using  

Here are my notes of each sound that I need to recreate and what materials I will be using to do this:  

1- door opening (using my door in my house)  

2- door slamming shut (using my door)  

3- switching lights of (I can use my own light switches)  

4- running footsteps (film myself running)  

5- Back slamming into kitchen equipment (I can use a metal tray that I have at home)  

6- Dinosaur breathing and blowing out air (I can use wooded materials to scrape and make a slight purring sound and then using the floor and my feet to create an airy ‘sweeping’ sound