TheatreArtLife: In my journey to learn more about different jobs in audio, I have decided to share what I learn within these article posts. My first topic is one that I am most familiar with: Foley. As a Foley mixer and editor, I am often asked: what exactly is Foley?
If you’ve watched a film lately, you’ve heard Foley. Foley is the reproduction of sound for any visual medium. Foley is in film, television, video games, VR and digital media.
2 comments:
I have seen a fair few gag videos about Foley artists, but the crux of the article rings true to me: although I know it is there, I never actually notice it. While reading this article, I was wondering what the world must sound like to Foley artists. Technical designers are attenuated to structures, machines, linkages, etc., and notice these things more than most people. I have noticed lighting designers to casually declare the Rosco number of the light in various non-theatrical situations. I imagine that Foley artists notice things that no one else does; they have a strong sense of the sounds of life. I wonder if it might be oppressive, sometimes. We are rarely, if ever, not surrounded by noise. If one has a heightened sense of the components of that noise, I imagine that it might sometimes be exhausting. In any case, as a technician I empathize with the idea that if their job is done well, the work of a Foley artist should be invisible.
I think Foley art is so cool. It is so interesting to read about and watch videos about how this process works. I read an article in a previous week about how Foley was designed and created for Star Wars movies, since so many of those sounds were attached to props that were imagined and designed for the Star Wars universe. Becoming a Foley artist must take so much skill: being able to match a movement to a sound and then be able to recreate that sound in a sound lab setting with the right timing and speed. Expanding off of what Chase has said, it is so interesting to think about how these Foley artists are as attuned to sounds that most people so not even notice in the same way that I look for seams in award shows or think about the engineering and fabrications of the structures I see around me. I admire Foley artists and their craft.
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