RitM: Poor Man's Foley
No sound effect is called for in Rain in the Mountains that sounds like a watermelon being split with a sledgehammer. But we had a spare watermelon and sledgehammer.
There are lots of philosophical approaches to sound effects. Some people want the sound to be absolutely literal. I heard tell that Ang Lee made the sound designer for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon break into a Nebraska greenhouse in the middle of the night to record the sound of a particular type of bamboo. On the other end of the spectrum, it is a common practice for Hollywood sound designers, according to a book I just read, to mix in animal sounds with non-animal things. Oliver Stone's movies are especially known for this. Listen for the lion roars in Any Given Sunday.
What Joel and Christine did is watch through all the dailies and make a list of sounds to record, just like a Foley artist might do for an already-cut scene. Then they went out and recorded the sounds. Individual footsteps on gravel. Walking footsteps on gravel. Running on gravel. Individual footsteps on pavement... etc. They noted on their list what tape the sound was on and at what timecode. They will use these tapes to build a sound effects library that will hopefully cover 99% of the sounds. Will it sound just like a Hollywood movie, done by a professional foley artist? Probably not. Will any audience members notice? Only if they are bored by the story.
RELATED: Poor Man's ADR
META NOTE: My days in Washington state have come to an end. Posting will be sporadic as I bounce around the country. Bear with me.
posted by J. Ott @ 9/01/2005 09:13:00 AM
Permalink |
3 comment(s)
| 
3 Comments:
i still have watermelon on my pants.
I have to disagree about the quality of the sound. I have done foley for films both in the studio watching the film (stepping on cat litter to make gravel sounds etc...) and out in the field, and have found no difference in the final quality of the sound - it is all in the editing, sweetening,and manipulation of the sound in post that matters. A clean gravel footstep will work no matter where it was recorded as long as it is tailored to the picture afterward. That's why we record a ridiculous number of them. We use extremely high quality microphones like most foley artists (even switching the type of microphones used to fit the quality of sound) and most of the time we record in very quiet, controlled surroundings - except when bashing watermelons. For our last film, we recorded hundreds of unique skiing noises and by playing with combinations of them, we were able to come off with a very rich sound effects track. The hardest part is finding the right combination of sounds or the right match. We will often use many different kinds of materials and props to record a single sound and we make sure it's the right one. The only difference is that we end up recording many more hours of sound effects than most foley artists do(but extra is always useful for later projects), but that at least gives us a large selection to choose from.
In fact, many of the professional sound designers I have met utilize sound effects libraries for many of the sounds they use on projects. The libraries are very useful unless you are looking for very specific, unique, or original sounds (aliens screaming while eating people or whatever...) I even knew one sound designer who could guess what CD and track number a certain door slam came from in movies. We will also utilize these libraries for RAIN IN THE MOUNTAINS, but I prefer to record unique sounds when I can.
Post a Comment