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What
does a Foley artist do? How do the sounds you make become part
of the movie?
When the filmmakers shoot a film, they have a production track
with all the dialogue and production sounds - what they pick
up with a microphone. We add sound to enhance the movie and
bring out the drama, the energy or creativity. Sometimes a scary
moment or an action detail needs to be intensified. When filmmakers
make a movie, they’re concentrating on the dialogue of
the actors, so you lose a lot of those natural sounds. We enhance
the soundtrack and bring it to life.
On a normal day - and let’s just say it’s TERMINATOR
3 - I’ll go through and do Arnold Schwarzenegger’s
footsteps first. They usually want those to sound big, so I’ll
do these big-sounding footsteps with a pair of heavy boots.
The mixer also uses an equalizer to beef up the sound. I have
to watch the character, get into the rhythm of the character
and match it in "sync." In other words, my footsteps
have to happen at the exact time that they’re happening
on the screen. After we’re done recording all the footsteps
on a reel, we’ll go through and do the props. We make a
sound for anything in the film that’s moving or making
sounds - anything that your eye catches on screen that’s
moving. If Arnold is fighting, we make the fighting sounds,
his leather coat movement, his gun movement, crashing through
walls, breaking the walls down, and all the debris. |
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