Category: LO4

Foley Research

Joseph Pallot / / foley, LO4, research

http://www.marblehead.net/foley/specifics.html

This blog highlights the importance of maintaining a distance from the microphone to give the recording a sense of space but also to reduce the risk of hearing breathing through the recording. I made sure to do this while recording foley because in my opinion slight distance between the mic and the sound gives the recording a more natural and so easier to mix feel.

 

http://foley-artistry.blogspot.co.uk/

The very first answer in this interview relates directly to some of the foley that we did, for the dinner scene we bought some saucy pasta and recorded the cutlery sounds using that so that we could get the authentic splashes and squelches from the pasta into the film, we did try for reference what it would sound like on an empty plate and this interview is correct, you can hear the difference massively, the cutlery sounds tinny, and there is a lot more clattering sounds coming from the plate itself without the padding of the food to dampen it.

 

https://www.sound-ideas.com/Page/what-is-foley.aspx

This final post helped me to get into the right mindset to act out foley. The importance of foley is that you are trying to control the soundscape, so in a way this relates to boom operation aswell. While I was operating the boom mic I was trying to get clear dialogue while avoiding excessive background noise, whereas in foley I am trying to reconstruct all of the noise that I was trying to avoid during filming, except by doing it this was we are able to have better control over the volume and characteristics of each and every sound in the film, giving us the opportunity to create a fuller soundscape with a range of depth and clarity.

Editing Foley

Joseph Pallot / / foley, LO4

When it came to editing the foley our job was quite easy, because almost all of the sounds happened in the centre of the screen and needed to be low down in the mix because they weren’t important focal points in the film, such as miscellaneous cutlery sounds and other little sounds like that.

We did have a little bit of trouble though with finding the perfect level for some of the more important sounds, such as the car engine, the door slamming, and the gunshot sound. This is because I personally found it hard to gauge how much louder and more prominent these sounds should have been without having the atmos and dialogue tracks present as well to relate them to.

This meant that I had to go back three or four times purely to raise and lower certain foley sounds to find the right balance. This also had an effect on our LUF measurements for the broadcasting limits, because every  time we altered, the average loudness of the film would change slightly.

Once we did have the right levels though it was just a case of adding little bits of panning wherever I could to add more of a stereo feel to the film, such as an automation for the engine of the car to come across the screen, and for certain footsteps to walk off the screen in some sections.

Overall the foley mixing was one of the easier tasks of this film because there was no weird or overly creative sounds for us to attempt to recreate.

Learning Objective 4 Review

Joseph Pallot / / LO's and Evaluation, LO4

– To use foley acting to help create a realistic soundscape within a film

I was able to recreate about 90% of the sound effects that are in the film by using foley, and by using foley I was able to isolate sounds that we wanted to keep but wanted to control, such as bags being put down, which aren’t necessarily important to the main film but would still be noticed if they were missing.

Also due to the research I feel like we were able to capture the foley in the way that we wanted, rather than just recording foley because it’s what’s expected, I now understand that the foley is recorded separately so we can have better creative control within the mixing stage, which makes a lot of sense, and helped to put me in a better mindset while recording the more mundane sounds.

Again, the media team were very happy with the mix of the whole film by  the end of the mixing so I think we were able to successfully recreate the soundscape realistically.

 

Foley Day 5

Joseph Pallot / / foley, LO4

We started the final foley session with working through all of the footsteps on the film, this was challenging because of the different surfaces that were recorded on, the house was mainly wood and carpet but when Olivia got out of the car she walked first on gravel, then on stone and then onto wood in a very short period of time, which meant that editing her footsteps together would be a challenge.

I was in the Foley studio for this session while Callum recorded. I found this session to be useful because I was able to practise walking and stepping in sync to the actors, as well as being able to improvise on certain sounds, like using different layers of carpet and MDF wood to create a slightly more solid sounding wooden floor.

during this session I also acted out Olivia’s dress sounds, the sound was achieved by slowly stretching clothing out rather than scratching it against itself as we thought that a tight dress would make more subtle sounds than a looser shirt.

Foley Days 3&4

Joseph Pallot / / foley, LO4

During the space of these two days we focussed on recording sounds for all of the spot effects, using the list that we had created earlier we worked through the film in chronological order.

Starting with things like the button on the phone and working through all of the small actions in other scenes such as Luka drying his hands on a towel and the numerous different sounds that were needed for the dinner scene.

For the dinner scene we were able to use some of the sounds that we had recorded before but for certain sections different shots were used meaning that the performance was slightly different, with the actors interacting with their cutlery or glasses differently, so we had to be careful to recreate the performance fully rather than just dropping in the sounds that we had recorded before.

We were also able to look for certain sounds that we weren’t able to recreate ourselves to make a list for the editing stage, such as the gun sounds, and laptop unlock chimes.