Day Forty-Eight : Foley Art

Still Tuesday 14th January 2020

It is still Tuesday but we are also researching foley art. I have been quite interesting in this for a while since I saw a show where the main character was a foley artist. It seems like a really cool and creatively challenging job and I am really appreciative of foley artists because without them and other audio and visual editors, films would be quite boring.

Foley is the art of putting sound effects to a film after it has been made/produced and for the most part it is used to capture people moving - footsteps, rustling of clothes... Almost every film have human footsteps that need to be added in, some foley artists usually start with footsteps. The sound of the footsteps depend on the shoes you are wearing and they would use different shoes make different characters. Coffee grinds add grip.

Foley artists immerse themselves into the characters to help anticipate them. Sometimes there may be serious injuries. The voice is used a lot and they may use their voice to help bring objects to life. Foley mixers use audio files to enhance the sound.

Other than filmmaking, foley can be used in also in theatre. There are productions where actors create the sound effects that are heard live on stage and they can be seen creating the sound. The technique is named after Jack Foley who established the modern techniques that are still used today.

After this research, we were tasked to get into groups and then record sounds so that we could apply them to the silent films that we had sourced.