Sonic Big Bang
music composition & sound design lab.
The foley artist
another man in the shadow
Who are you Mr Foley ?
The foley artist is the person who reproduces every "natural human sounds" of a movie as opposed to sound effects (see sound design).This includes footsteps, fights, door shut, clothes sounds, pouring a glass, horse rides etc... whereas laser guns, dog barks, car engines or explosions are created by sound designers.
This is done during a "foley session" in a post production studio. It means not on the set, and after editing, so quite lately on the movie production. Every specified sound is performed live and recorded while the image is projected. For that particular reason this job requires excellent synchronisation skills, a lot of "feeling" and of course the ability to reproduce a particular sound instantly. Sometimes it is very close to acting.
But why does the movie industry need them ?
First because of undesired sounds. Indeed as clear as a shooting set can be, there are always polluting noises that cover the original sounds that are to be replaced during the session.
Second because on the set almost everything is fake from the walls to the ground so that the original sounds need to be reproduced more realisticly for a deeper impact.
Third, when needed, original dialogues (polluted by unwanted noises) are replaced during ADR session (Automated Dialogue Replacement) to have a better sound. But when you do that, you create "sound holes" because there is no more "ambiance" (clothes sounds for examples), that implies that they recreate them to give the sound a taste of reality.
Fourth, almost every sequence is shot from several different angles in different places. So it becomes nearly impossible to have a complete sound coherence using the original recorded sounds, once more you need them.
To realise all this, they have a tons of tricks and their equipment is a huge collection of shoes, clothes, toys, tools, even vegetables...
Some interesting videos about their job and their performance
If you liked this page maybe you will interested in this one about sound effects ?