The Weird, Analog Delights of Foley Sound Effects

Several years ago, musician Thomas Dolby attempted a documentary about a lighthouse from his childhood which turned out to be influential in his work. However, he hadn't the expertise and ended up losing most of the audio that was outside because he didn't know how to mike it properly (which would be especially tough given the weather there).

So what did he do? He toured a special evening performance (The Invisible Lighthouse) with the video only in the background, him narrating, and then a helper, Blake Leyh (sound design for The Abyss and such) across the stage, providing live foley effects where appropriate, with just a handful of props, instruments, and the like.

Really fascinating to see in person.

I absolutely love foley in music. I haven't updated it in a while, but I have a playlist of music that contains foley that I like: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/41uMIYCFV2XXaFtPWSNo9V?si=...

I find that adding foley to music makes it easier to engage in active listening of the song. For anyone who has ever produced or thought of producing music, adding foley to tracks is _really_ fun. Replace a snare hit with a capacitor pop or a noise build with an airplane taking off. It really adds depth to whatever you're making. It often forces me to step up my production game too because natural sounds come with all kinds of undesirable frequencies and spiky amplitudes that need to be smoothed out in order to cohesively fit into a track.

One of the many wonderful Jam Handy videos in the Prelinger Archive is Back of the Mike, showing a combination of Foley and voice acting techniques in an old time radio broadcast:

https://archive.org/details/Backofth1938

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zjemv7RypkA

(Same film on both; the one on YouTube seems to be a slightly higher quality transfer.)

Very interesting, would love a video documentary of their processes, when you can cut to the final sound in the movie.

Also, had to look it up since I realized I didn't know:

In filmmaking, Foley[1] is the reproduction of everyday sound effects that are added to films, videos, and other media in post-production to enhance audio quality.[2] These reproduced sounds, named after sound-effects artist Jack Foley, can be anything from the swishing of clothing and footsteps to squeaky doors and breaking glass.

From Wikipedia [1] of course.

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foley_(filmmaking)

I enjoyed the movie Ronin, then made the mistake of watching the "making of". They showed how they added sound effects in the car chase, like shaking gravel in a coffee can, etc.

Then when I watch the movie, and hear the sound effects, in my mind I see the foley artist shaking the coffee can.

It ruined the movie for me :-)

P.S. I watched "Night Sky" yesterday. In one scene, the truck screeches to a halt on a dirt road. Sigh.

On a (slightly) tangent note, check out a Peter Strickland film --- Berberian Sound Studio. Foley artist caught in a horror movie/reality.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berberian_Sound_Studio

The article forgot to mention: you can pet a dog, you can pet a cat, but you can’t Petaluma