Have you ever wondered about the sound in the movies you watch? Why you can hear that footstep or that stream so clearly when it’s so far away? Its Foley artists you can thank for that. Their job is to manually create sound that the camera does not pick up. That’s what the word Foley means, to produce sound effects for motion picture manually (Collins English Dictionary). The term Foley artist is named after a sound producer for Universal Studios, Jack Foley, a pioneer of his time, (Collins English Dictionary). Enough about what it is; it’s time to tell you what they do. It takes a very special person to be a Foley artist, the work conditions are hard, one must have to have a special ear for it, but without them, the movie experience would be dull.
The work conditions of a Foley artist are different than normal jobs. One must work in a studio or a warehouse with tons of props and recording devices. They watch the footage and try to recreate that sound; sometimes they have to deal with loud noises that they create. Their work schedule can vary, and deadlines must be met. They are known to work all night but if there’s plenty of time they work a normal nine to five day. Foley artists are picking up and throwing down props all day to make sound. One might slide a cinderblock across the room or anything else to accomplish the desired sound. The job can be quite strenuous at times, but as a Foley artist you get to play every character in the film. They play every characters footsteps, every scratching movement, and all the sounds of any person moving the artist has to play out and time correctly (Splish, Splash). That part isn’t as bad, its even fun at times.
In order to be a Foley artist one has to have a special ear, as well as a good imagination. They have to see something on screen and ask themselves “What would that thing sound like?”, and then make that sound using other items. So when one sees a giant stone rolling down a hill they might record a car in neutral rolling down a hill or see a thousand rats in a tunnel and record lots of chickens and change the pitch (The Sound of Indiana). That’s the fun of Foley, one gets to make anything sound like anything, within reason of course. Because the sound must match the image on the screen, if it doesn’t the audience gets confused. So a Foley artist has to have an imagination to make sounds that sound like other things. In some movies such as Indiana Jones and Star Wars there are things on screen that the audience has never seen before and t
he artist gets to make up what this thing might sound like. In Raiders of the Lost Ark when they take off the lid of the
When one is a Foley artist, it’s a good idea to keep a library of sound (The Sound of Indiana). If they have a chance to get sound to put in their library they don’t pass it up because one never knows when it will be needed. There is already a big library of sound out there in the world, and there’s no problem in using it. That’s what it’s there for. However the movie seems to have an extra something when a Foley artist uses their own library or records something specific for that movie.
The best thing about being a Foley artist is that without them the movie experience would be dull and uneventful. Imagine if every gunshot, explosion, and footstep sound was not heard at all. The quiet suspense of a horror movie would not be suspenseful. An action movie would not be as thrilling without the bullet sounds whizzing by the main characters face. The movie experience in general would not be at all the same, that’s why we need Foley artists in the movie industry today.
