Foley
What is that….?!
When you watch a movie or a TV commercial, you may think that all the sound was recorded on location, but actually in most cases only the voices were recorded live, primarily. All the sound effects were added at a later time and for the most part created by foley artists.
A foley artist is a sound actor who makes sounds for the movie – meaning that as the movie is playing they watch and then they make the footsteps that the person does, creak the doors, make the sounds for the fights, etc.
Sure, it sounds like a lot of fun to do, but the truth is that it is a very hard and demanding job. A professional foley artist needs one or two weeks (fulltime) to make the sounds for a movie. Then the sound that was recorded must be added to the film, trimmed, and timed 100% so that there is no difference between what is heard and what is seen.
A foley is definitely not irrelevant – it is THE element together with the music.
Foley example
In this quite “different” type of job, we had to create a visual illusion – coming from the audio.
This is how it sounded – and if you are interested, the voices actor in this, is GB-M-0188
Below you can hear a foley example of two different projects for same client. The projects are very different in style – but both job descriptions were: “Do magic… and create an illusion of the perfect atmosphere.”
Take a listen to this first example… first you can hear the raw voice over… then it gets build up with music… and finally the sound effects (foley) are add to give atmosphere and to add a kind of illusion of being in the room. We nearly just need to smell of coffee to fulfil this illusion.
- Raw voice over
- Voice over + music
- Voice over + complete FOLEY
…and yet another example. This first film is a little commercial without any foley – only Voice Over (in Danish). Then second film, is the same film… but this time with foley. The difference and the atmosphere is pretty noticeable.
- Raw voice over
- Preset with id 8 does not exist!
- Voice over + complete FOLEY
- Preset with id 8 does not exist!
Take a look at these two examples…
The first example is a commercial made in Italian. Later a foley sound was made for the commercial (nothing is original) after which it was dubbed by SpeakOnline’s competent voice actors. Then we delivered a so-called “M+E mix”, which stands for Music and Effects, for the movie.
The other example is a cinema commercial, where SpeakOnline made both foley and the background music based on the wishes of the customer. First, the commercial was produced in ordinary stereo, then the customer decided to try a second mix in surround.
– this commercial was later on recommended for the Cannes Film Festival for commercials.
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