Foley artist

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Foley artist on a film crew is the person who creates and records many of the natural, everyday sound effects in a film, in contrast to the production of special (audio) effects, which is generally left to the sound designer. The roles of Foley artists, sound designers, editors, and supervisors are highly specialized and are essential to producing a professional-sounding soundtrack that is suitable for distribution and exhibition.

Sound effects are rarely recorded at the same time as dialogue and action, because the sound mix is difficult to balance. Instead, effects are created and added later by the Foley artist, who listens to the dialogue track for the (usually quite faint) sounds of footsteps, doors slamming, or other incidental environmental sounds and recreates them, with enhanced clarity, onto a new track (known as the Foley track) that is synchronized with the onscreen action. Sound effects such as these may also be drawn from pre-existing recorded libraries, but many directors prefer the direct involvement of the Foley artist.

The Foley artist also adds sounds that may not exist at all on the original track: for instance, enhancing the sounds of a fistfight may require thumping watermelons or cracking bamboo. Many Foley artists take pride in devising their own sound effects apparatuses, often using simple, commonly-found materials. Some "making-of" featurettes show Foley artists at work. Contrasts between the sophistication of the action on the screen and the simplicity of the methods behind the effects can be striking.

The term "Foley artist" is named after Jack Foley, one of the earliest and best-known Hollywood practitioners of the art. Foley began his career in the film industry as a stand-in and screenwriter during the silent era, and later helped Universal make the transition from silent movies to "talkies".

Because Foley refers to a person, the term should always be capitalized.

[edit] How effects are sometimes made

Effect	How Made
Galloping horses	Banging empty coconut shells together
Kissing	Kissing back of hand
Punching someone	Thumping watermelons
High heels	Artist walks in high heels on wooden platform
Bone-breaking blow	Breaking celery or bamboo or twisting a head of lettuce
Footsteps in snow	Squeezing a box of corn starch
Star Wars sliding doors	Pulling a piece of paper from envelope
Star Trek sliding doors	Flare gun plus sneakers squeak
Bird flapping its wings	Flapping a pair of gloves
Grass or leaves crunching	Balling up audio tape