This week’s entry comes from frequent poster Don Sucher, who shared his own personal story about the work of the Foley artist.
Take it away, Don:
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 an odd 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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