Ever wonder how movies create such memorable sound effects?
I’m not talking about Godzilla’s roar or the beep-boop-beep of the aliens in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”
I mean the crisp sound of someone unwrapping a package, or the sfffft! of a bottle being opened. You can thank Foley artists for that.
The term was coined to honor Jack Foley, the former head of Universal Studios’ sound department, according to “Movie Speak: How to Talk Like You Belong on a Film Set” by Tony Bill.
Foley artists recreate sounds on Foley stages, which then get added to a film by the Foley editor.
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My first job after graduating from The Film School (SVA) was at a motion picture sound company. Most of my work was boring – filing away with proper notation the tape recordings of a thousand car doors slamming and the like. But occasionally I was given and add chore and this article brought one of them to mind. The studio was dubbing the sound effects to the Burt Lancaster film The Swimmer. After listening to umpteen foot falls in hope of finding an appropriate one to use when Lancaster walked poolside with wet feet it was determined by someone (not me) that we’d have to record our own and I was enlisted to be mr. Lancaster’s feet. So there I sat, for several days, in the recording projection room dipping my feet into a basin of warm water and then flopping them on a small patch of concrete (made – if memory serves – from several patio blocks) to match the pace and rhythm of the actor’s steps.
Hmmm… does this make me a “Foley Artist?” Or was I in fact just what I felt like: A flat footed fool.
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Great story! You doubled as Burt Lancaster’s feet … your place in Hollywood lore is secure.