Recording Action Sounds (Foley)

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Recording Action Sounds (Foley)

Once the dialog has been conformed from source tapes or created in the studio for narrations /animation, and has been corrected with ADR and proper editing, it is time to record foley sounds. You'll recall that foley sounds are those made by the people you see onscreen and their direct interactions with the things around them, such as doors, guns, keys and so on. Even the sound of clothing rubbing as the character moves is part of foley.

Using a Foley Stage

Most foley recording takes place in a studio that has a foley stage. Foley stages are usually larger rooms with a very low noise floor and low reverberation times to allow uncolored recording with medium distance miking (36 feet). There can be pits in the floor that are filled with different materials, such as dirt, concrete, tile, wood, glass, and just about anything else you can think of. The foley artist can walk, jump, and throw things into the pits in order to create all kinds of sounds. Almost anything can be used to make foley sounds. Much creativity and experimentation goes on in foley sessions in order to create the perfect effect. The choice of objects used to create certain sounds might not be as obvious as you think. A classic example is the recording of footsteps in cornstarch to imitate the sound of walking in snow. Try it yourself. It is amazing how real it sounds. But it is much easier to get a bag of cornstarch into the studio than real snow!

When recording foley, you'll need to have a large monitor or (preferably) a projection system in order to allow the foley artist to see what's going on in the picture. Be careful of video monitors ; they create a high-frequency whine that can affect your recording. Headphones might not be needed, as the picture is primarily used for cueing. The foley artist can be distracted by dialog. Watching a silent picture gives the artist the ability to focus on the sounds that he or she is creating. However, a talkback system that allows anyone in the control room to speak to the foley artist, will always be useful.

Basic foley can be broken down into three main items: moves, footsteps, and specifics. With a talented foley artist, these could take up as little as one track apiece. Specifics (sounds that are not moves or footsteps) will require more tracks depending on how complex the scene is.

The Moves Track

The moves track is mostly made up of clothing sounds, such as the rustling of pants and shirts as the actors move around. It will be necessary to view the scene first to determine what type of materials are needed and which moves need the most attention. One foley artist might be able to do the moves for several characters at once if he or she is really good and the scene is not too huge. This is possible because the viewers typically notice only certain key actions that need a correlating sound in the moves track. If 12 people are all walking at once in a scene, you might notice only three or four of them that actually need moving sounds. The rest may blend in the background. Again, a talented artist may be able to make the sound of all four people walking. The moves track is a foundation layer of sound on which the rest of the foley sound is built. Consider this the bed , or ambience, of a scene. During a moves track, the foley artist will most likely be sitting in a chair that does not squeak or make any undesirable noise. The mic can be anywhere from three to six feet away. Close miking of foley yields very unnatural sounds, as the proximity effect kicks in. You might have to find a compromise if your room is not acoustically optimal for this type of recording. Gobos and other sound- absorbing devices can be used to compensate for poor room acoustics. A typical moves setup is shown in Figure 5.21.

Figure 5.21. Typical setup for recording a foley moves track.


Footsteps

Next come the footsteps. After doing the moves track, the foley artist has a good idea about the general motion of the scene and can better re-create the footsteps. Footsteps are very difficult to re-create. The foley artist must do them while remaining stationary so that the mic can pick up each step the same, and it's difficult to match the pace of someone running while you're standing still! When you can only see the torso or head of someone walking, figuring out where to put the footsteps can be tricky. Experienced foley artists watch the actors' shoulders to cue them how to walk. Try this yourself: it works quite well. Foley artists are sometimes referred to as "foley walkers," as the footsteps track is so critical. They can use many different pairs of shoes and even their hands sometimes. With animation, footsteps, as with other foley sounds, can be made up and not sound realistic at all. Many of the foot sounds in Monsters, Inc . were made using hands instead of feet. The monsters usually did not wear shoes, so the sound of skin hitting the ground or floor was more appropriate.

The technique for miking footsteps depends on the location of the scene. If it is an indoor scene, looser miking of around 6 to 10 feet helps create the feeling of being indoors. Hearing more room tone does this. Even adding a second mic farther away and mixing it in can help create a sense of space. Try not to go overboard and limit your choices later when mixing. For instance, if you mix too much of the distant mic into the signal, you'll be stuck with an overly ambient recording that cannot be corrected during mixdown . With a drier signal it is possible to add artificial ambience later. When a scene takes place outside, tighter miking around 3 feetshould work well.

Specifics

Specifics are any sounds that are not moves or footsteps. Anything the talent interacts with that makes a sound will need a specific recorded for it. This includes doors, guns, cars , furniture, fighting sounds, eating , and anything else you can think of. Recording specifics is easily the most complicated of the foley elements. Each one might require several layers of sound to create. Use as many tracks as you need to get it right. These sounds are the most creative and can define the "sound design" of a project. If you're running short on tracks, remember that you can always bounce the layers of a specific down to a new file.

Once you have recorded all the foley, it is time to create a rough foley track for yourself and other editors to use. Bounce the whole reel to disk as in the earlier example with dialog tracks. The same SMPTE start and end times should be used so that importing these files into other sessions or even other workstations is painless and accurate.

Microphone Technique

Recording foley requires a very neutral style of recording. You're trying to capture a very natural sound so that it is believable to the viewer. Small diaphragm-condenser microphones are the first choice for recording foley. The directionality or pattern of the microphone depends on what type of sound you're dealing with. For instance, when recording small and quiet sounds close up, an omni-directional microphone is preferred because of its lack of proximity effect. When recording things like loud footsteps, a more directional pattern, such as a cardioid microphone, will help focus the sound instead of capturing too much room ambience. Experimentation will determine the best choice.

Using FX Libraries

Using sound effects libraries to create foley can be a cost-effective solution for lower-budget projects. Libraries such as The Hollywood Edge and Sound Ideas offer a plethora of prerecorded sounds that you can edit to picture to create a foley track. Doing so is no easy task, however. Editing precise footsteps for one scene could easily involve making hundreds of edits. What might take a foley artist one pass to disk might take you two hours to edit out of pre-recorded samples. You can find only so many samples of "male footsteps on concrete," so each footstep will not be as original as those created by a foley artist. Weigh these factors while budgeting in pre-production.

If you do use effects libraries to create foley, you must import those files into Pro Tools first before editing them. To do this, you need a CD-extracting application such as Toast Audio Extractor. This application will extract audio from a CD and convert it into data files that can be imported into Pro Tools. The preferences can be set to create mono SDII files, as shown in Figure 5.22, but only at 44.1kHz/16bit because that is the limit of CD sample rate and bit depth. Once extracted, you can import the files into Pro Tools and edit them to picture.

Figure 5.22. Options in Toast Audio Extractor.


The Import Audio dialog box allows you to use Pro Tools to import, convert, copy, or reference any audio file on your system or on a networked drive. Many larger facilities have taken all their sound effect libraries and extracted the audio to data files and placed them on a server that is connected to the LAN (Local Area Network). Any workstation on the network can access the whole library remotely. Pro Tools can import audio from a network drive and copy the selected audio file into the session's Audio Files folder. After you select a file to import, choose Add if you want to reference the file or Copy if you want to copy the file into the current session's Audio Files folder. If the file you have chosen does not match the format of your current session, then you can still add the file to the session, but it will not play back at the proper speed.

There is an option available to convert the file to the current session's sample rate and format, as seen in Figure 5.23. After choosing the import method, click Done. If any files need conversion, Pro Tools will ask you where to put the converted files. The location of these converted files usually defaults to the Audio Files folder within the current session. Be sure to double-check that it does, as having the converted file in another location might make archiving difficult.

Figure 5.23. The Import Audio dialog box. In this example, a file has been chosen that does not match the current session's file format. It can be added to the session but will not play back at the proper speed. You may choose to convert it to the sample rate and format of the current session.


NOTE

EXAMINING FILES WITH THE IMPORT AUDIO DIALOG BOX

The Import Audio dialog box offers a convenient way to examine and audition audio files. When a file has been selected, as shown in Figure 5.23, the file's attributes are displayed in the lower-left-hand portion of the window. No matter what file type, sample rate, or bit depth the file is, you can still hear it by pressing the Audition Playback button. The file will play back through whatever Pro Tools hardware you are currently using.

On Location

In The Godfather II, the footsteps you hear when Fanucci is coming up the stairs, just before being killed by Vito Corleone, have an echoey sound while coming up through the stairwell. Walter Murch actually went to an old marble staircase and miked it up to record those footsteps. He had timed the pace from the film clip using a metronome. With the metronome pacing him, he walked up the stairs and that is what you hear in the movie.

This is an example of using locations to get very accurate and characteristic sounds for foley. Even without a picture to look to for timing cues, it was still possible to record those footsteps and achieve a great result. Today, with systems such as Digidesign's Mbox and laptops, portable computer recording has never been easier. If you wanted to record those footsteps in an old building, it would be much easier today than in the 1970s, when Walter used a metronome to get the job done.

First of all, the entire recording systemthe Mbox, a laptop, and a couple of micscan fit into a briefcase- sized bag. Figure 5.24 shows the Mbox, which has built-in mic-preamps and is capable of generating 48V Phantom power for condenser mics, all while running off the battery in your laptop.

Figure 5.24. Digidesign's Mbox Pro Tools recording system. Using a USB connection, the Mbox runs off of the computer's power.


And using the Mbox-laptop system, you would also be able to bring the movie with you in the form of a QuickTime file. This way, you would even be able to time the foley action with the action onscreen while in the jungle , hanging from a vine a 100 feet up in the air. Now that's what I call a foley studio!

The movie K19 used this idea to create the very realistic sounds from within a WWII submarine. Larry Schalit, one of the supervising sound editors on the movie, came up with the idea of doing all the foley inside an actual submarine. Using a laptop, MiniDV recorder, Pro Tools, an early USB interface (Sound Devices USBPre), and some Neuman mics, the crew set up in the submarine and created some stunning foley sounds for K19 .

With or without a laptop, don't be afraid to get up out of the chair and go somewhere for that special sound you can't get in the studio. Getting into a real environment can stimulate the creative juices and help you make better soundtracks . On lower-budget projects, go on location and get the talent to run through the actions and moves, without saying their lines, right after filming a scene. This way, you can record the actual foley sounds on location without the expense of using a foley studio. Early Francis Ford Coppola films used this method. Do it by yourself if no one else can help you. The director will thank you later.

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PRO TOOLS R for video, film, and multimedia
PRO TOOLS R for video, film, and multimedia
ISBN: N/A
EAN: N/A
Year: 2003
Pages: 70

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