My First Foley Session...Aah, What Fun!

I spent the better part of the day this past Tuesday in Track Headz Entertainment, Inc.'s studio recording foley for PARALLAX. It was an impressive experience and I'm pretty proud of the outcome.

When I filmed PARALLAX, my plan was to use my Rode Video Mic. I did, but the audio did not come out clean. I had to settle on using it as placeholder audio that we'd recreate with ADR and foley.

Gregory Vilfranc, my star, is responsible for scoring the film. Since he's an able engineer (a graduate of SAE), he is also responsible for the audio post work. He introduced me to Cliff Hicks, a good friend of his and fellow able engineer. Together, they handled the foley session.

I'm sure that most of my readers are beginners, like myself. For your benefit, I'll detail how the foley session unfolded.

Schedule
We had to, naturally, find a mutual schedule. Since all or us are of the entrepreneurial spirit, getting our schedules to sync was a challenge.

Once on the calendar, Gregory requested key props that we'd use to recreate the sounds with.

I brought a pair of lady's shoes, the gift box that is used in the movie, and a the ribbon. We also used a pair of men's shoes, some coins, plates, a fork wrapped in paper towels, and a bed sheet.

Review
Both Gregory and myself are familiar with PARALLAX, but Clif was not. In order to quickly bring Clif up to speed, we had to let him see the movie (he's under a severely restrictive NDA!). We spent time reviewing the raw movie on Clif's wall-mounted monitor, while Gregory itemized all of the sounds that we would use. They had a free discussion about what sounds to get, and how.

Once we had our foley list it was time to begin.

Action
The first sound that we recorded was of the lady's shoes. This is for "The Woman", the female star. She walks, in high heels, across a hardwood floor. At different points she shuffles, steps, slides, and jumps.

Two microphones were used to record this. Later, in post, they will be blended. Gregory "wore" the shoes on his hands and "walked" across the floor with them. He stomped, strode, slid, and whatever else he believed would yield the best sound.

Next, we performed the same tasks with the man's shoes. This time, Clif wore shoes and Gregory put the microphones at his feet. Clif's steps were to be deliberately different: cool, stately, suave, confident, even defiant.

Each character in PARALLAX has a different personality, so we had to make everything about them as different as possible.

We recorded the door sounds similarly. There were several doors in the studio and we spent time opening and closing, and knocking on them all to get the best sound.

They produced different sounds because of the materials they were made from and what was on the other side of the door. One of the doors covered a shallow closet. One of the doors led to a hallway that led down three flights of stairs.

Once the best door was determined, we set the microphones in place. One mic was mounted and the other was to be handheld.

The door was opened and closed in combinations, such as fast and angry, slow and graceful, energetic and vibrant, etc.

I enjoyed doing the sofa foley. This was a very creative solution. In the film, the actress sits gently on a leather sofa, then scoots a bit to reposition herself comfortably. The first part was done gently, but the repositioning involved more body English.

It reminded me of how I had to choose the tee shirt. Equally, this time we spent a few minutes using our hands on material to simulate a human body sitting on a leather sofa.

We ended up using a leather car bra. Cliff put one hand in and one hand on the bra, caressing and pinch-pulling it to get the desired effect and sound.

We also recorded the sound of pages turning in a Bible. There's an illustrative part of a scene where "The Woman" thumbs through her Bible and interacts with "The Dude from Downstairs". We literally disected how many pages were turned, and in how many groups, so that we could record it correctly.

Mix
This part is out of my scope. I believe, with the sound recorded, Gregory will mix everything to perfection. Then we'll add it to the timeline in Final Cut.

The foley session was both fun and informative. I look forward to doing more work like this. We have the ADR session coming up, which is similar. I know I'll enjoy that, too.

Blessings,
Scott Hampton

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]