Foley Sound

Foley Sound is the reproduction of sound effects heard in films, videos and other media. The sound is recorded separate from the original recording as this enables the audio quality to be much sharper and enhanced. Foley sound is often created in a studio using sensitive microphones in order to pick up every sound wave possible. A well known technique of foley sound is to use coconuts to create the sound effect of a horse galloping across the countryside. Foley sound requires a lot of patience, time and concentration. Multiple takes are often required to make sure that the sound is just right for the video it will be edited onto.

Sound effects created are often done so by using obscure objects that have no relation to what you are seeing on the screen. A key example of this is car tires screeching across a road. What you see is the tires screeching as smoke comes out and you think that that's what you're hearing but in fact you aren't. What you're actually hearing could be a hot water bottle filled with air being rubbed back and forth across a wooden table. Below and to the left, what you're seeing is a very busy foley sound studio in which hundreds of props used to create foley sound have been scattered across the floor and every worktop. This demonstrates just how technical and just how much work and time goes into creating foley sound. Foley sound artists have to be accurate when recording and this can often take multiple recordings to get the sound to match up exactly with what you see on the screen. As a class, we decided to try and make our own foley sound. We were shown a list of different sounds that we could choose to make including: fire, rain, a crash, footsteps, keys and some other options. We did multiple recordings of each sound effect and tried different ways of recording such as walking on gravel and then walking in heels across tarmac. Each recording made very different sounds as in one you could...

hear the sharp footsteps as the heels walked across the tarmac whilst on the other hand you could hear the gravel crunching underneath some much heavier footsteps. We also tried recording the different types of rain by using a hose pipe to pour water on top of different surfaces like metal, concrete, gravel and water. After recording a variety of sounds we were told to put the foley sound to a film that either already existed, make one ourselves or just make up a narrative to go along with our sound effects, the video below is my example of how foley sound works, it's called "campfire chillout". The film tells a story of a girl who is simply leaving her house to go for a walk in he rain, she locks up, pops up her umbrella and starts to walk off, the rain suddenly stops and the scene becomes a lot brighter and sunnier. As she is strolling she hears a sudden smash of glass and it frightens her. She continues walking to find out what the noise was and stumbles across a young boy having a fire in a clearing, it turns out that all along the voice was in fact the young boy, the girl gives up her walk and decides to join the young boy in his little camp out.