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My foley techniques

To emulate the sound of running I used the lid of a plastic bin and placed a folded blanket under to get rid of the hollow sound while watching the video on my iPad for better accuracy and rhythm.

Here I have listed some of the props I used to make sounds for my project.  While archive sounds on the system are easy to get a hold of, this is the reason why I used one or two of them, it was difficult to match them with a lot of the visuals as many of them belong to the sci fi fantasy genre.  This did however allow me to create the sounds I thought best suited the action as most of them didn’t have any real world expectations to limit me.  However, I do feel that I should have managed my time better and made more use of the recording equipment available.  Still the sounds I created in my opinion were successful in reaching my expectations of the project.

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Pitch Shifts, Reverb and Echoes

For this project, I took into consideration different factors that would characterise sounds.  I generally gave characters affliated with the good side to have high pitched noises with the fight scenes and vice versa.  Moreover I gave deeper sounds to certain sounds like footsteps and jumps to give a sense of other worldly depth.

As for Echo and reverb, I should have used these much more sparingly.  I ran into a problem when I exported the Adobe Audition multitrack to Adobe Premiere.  There the audio had a ringing continuing throughout but no issues within Audition.  However, on closer listening, echoes and other effects I had used appeared very distorted and static like.

To rectify this I moved all my tracks into a new multitrack.

This issue was caused by the programme 'running out' of  processor headroom due to the use of 'real-time' effects such as reverb.  A warning I received earlier in the process indicated it but I was unaware of its meaning.   

The way I solved this issue didn’t take long and was successful.  However, below is another way I could have solved it without making a new multitrack. 

Select a track that you have applied processor-heavy effects to, such as reverb, delay, echo etc.

Go to 'multitrack' on the task bar and select 'bounce to new track' and select from one of the four options that best suits your needs.

This will create a copy/s of the selected track/s but with all the effects 'burnt in'. You can now 'mute' the original track/s, thus freeing up the processor.

I didn’t come across this method until much later but with some experimentation of moving around tracks in the original multitrack, I discovered that new tracks were devoid of any unusual echoes or delays and reverb problems.

The bounced track/s contains all the effects applied to the audio as one file(s) that do not need any real-time effects anymore.

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My Personal Experience in the Foley Studio

Overall, this went well.  I started off by being the floor manager.  This role involves getting cues from the sound recorder and giving them to the actors to best fit the sound they want to create.  Communication between the floor manager and the sound record is done with headphones and a talk button on the sound board.

When it came to me doing my recording for my own project, I was able to work Adobe Audition to get the sounds I wanted and timed it perfectly with the video on the TV in the foley studio.  However, I had left my multitrack on Adobe Audition running in another room.  This meant the recording didn’t save properly.  To resolve this I recorded these sounds again in my own time with the same props.  

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Foley Studio

Steps to records with Adobe Audition

Last week was my first time making and recording sounds in our university’s foley studio. Initially I helped others to create the sounds they needed, taking and the role of floor manager to pass information between those in the recording booth and those making sounds.

These are the steps we took, or would’ve taken if most of the studio wasn’t set up for us.  A lot of this process was specific to the studio we were using, for instance the fact that we had a display screen that was wired up to a television in the foley studio.

1: 16 input 1 and 2

2: Headphones go through auxiliary

3. Set up the mics, these will link to channel 1 and 2 on the sound board.

4. Gain at the top of the sound board - controls the loudness of the input of the clips. Can be configured left and right.

6. Split left and right channels

5. On Adobe Audition

Master fader is blue 

Monitor level is for speakers (also purple button) -

Auxiliary is green 

e.g. ch 1 = headphones are going to aux 1 , connected to aux master (e.g. talk to aux)

Use 16A

Check Bit Rate on Audition and Premiere - this should be 16 bit

Undock the movie from Audition in the bottom left had corner.

Drag the video window to the second display screen which shows up on the 

Go to Input > Audio Hardware > Default Input and Output 

Once done, close that window and arm the track you want to record on.  The ‘Arm Track’ function is represented by an R where the title of the track is.

To start recording, press the red circle in the Bottom Traffic Window (same bar as the play button)

Under input

On the track you want to record on, select Stereo > 16A (this is the same on the sound rack in our studio specifically) and set Audio to 1

Stereo Output > 16A > Audio Out (set to 1)

On Soundboard

Keep the Master up

Check the Mon Level (purple) is up

The sound bar (where 16A is) should show 48K

Set up TV with splitter 

7. TALK TO MAIN ENGINEER THROUGH TALK BUTTON

8. Ready foley actors

9. Start and cue video

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Final Assessment

For our final assessment we have to add sound to a clip that is at least 2 minutes long.  I have chosen two clips from Doctor Strange (to fit the time criteria), both clips are fight scenes and plan to use sounds already on Adobe Audition, ones we previously made during practices in class and sounds that I will create in the foley studio.  

To start the process I watched the clips once through without sounds to suss out the most basic sounds such as footsteps, cars going by, buildings moving past each other and the astral, fantasy weapons the characters in the fight scenes have.  I then listened again with sound to gain inspiration for more complex parts of what is on the screen which I plan to recreate myself in the foley studio.  

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‘Reading the book was an emotional experience, and I knew as a director, I had the kind of material to have fun with the language and the medium and play with music and silence and flashbacks’

Jean Marc Vallee

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Part 3: Foley

It was difficult to find a sole Foley artist for the film as many people were involved in the sound department.  Dan O’Connell was the crew member who seemed most in control of the foley in the film.  What interested me about this clip and what is present within the entire film is how within silence there is plenty of sound produced by foley as with the sounds of water, the bag behind lifted and things being put into it.  Along with the use of a free hand camera, there is a sense of realism within the scene, again linking to the fact that the film is autobiographical requires a sense of truth and relatability.  This is strongly depicted with the use of sound design.

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Part 2: Soundtrack in Montage

Another pattern within the film is music taking over any sound to imply a longer period of time briefly.  This is mostly done in the form of a montage.  In a similar way, music that takes over any other sound can also make the audience more aware of Cheryl’s internal reflective thoughts as with the final scene of ‘Wild’.

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Part 1: Sound in flashbacks

Throughout the film I found a recurring pattern of music or the soundtrack that carries over flashback scenes, this is often paired with the diegetic sounds of the flashback.  Moreover the reverb that increases gives the sense of being inside the protagonists head, this links to the autobiographical basis of the film.

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Week 7 Presentation

In this week, it was my turn to contribute to making a presentation on sound design.  For my part, I looked at the way sound is created and related to the narrative in ‘Wild‘ with Reese Witherspoon.  I included three main parts to my part of the PowerPoint 

Sound in Flashbacks

Use of soundtrack in montage

Foley

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This video also caught my attention for the more in depth description of the technical aspects of foley as a method of creating sounds for films and television and just generally what it takes physically and creatively to be a foley artist and to get into that mindset.

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I liked this video because it gave me some inspiration for my final creative project assessment. There are lots of video on what foley is on YouTube but I like how this one is a lot more technical in how it shows how foley is not just about making the sounds but making the, sound believable. Like when the sound editor at the end added the reverb to the sounds at the end to make them fit in more with the atmosphere of the scene being played.

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Week 4

In this session we did some individual work on Adobe Audition to better learn the system.  We were given two clips to focus on with no sound so that we may add our own sounds.  One clip was from Repulsion directed by Roman Polanski and Whistle and I’ll Come to You by Jonathan Miller.  Later in the workshop we looked more into Foley and its background and the different foley methods used to replicate sounds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVWhiiKD8vY

In this video I watched above, I got a sense of how sounds may be layered within Adobe Audition even within small clips and visuals.

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Week 3 Workshop

Again we experimented with more methods of recording sounds and the history of sound design.

In the same group as last week, we experimented with two devices used for recording sound.  First we used the iRig Pre.  By plugging it into our phones we could hear the different sounds that they make on using our phones.  This sound could possibly be used to get across the idea of something being highly electrical and volatile.

https://soundcloud.com/user-854926902/irig-pre-iphone-sounds

Next we used a hydrophone and placed it in a fizzy drink and later dragged it over the surface of a fishpond.  This sort of sound is most likely to be used for amplifying real life sounds, for instance, the pouring of a drink.

https://soundcloud.com/user-854926902/hydrophone-in-coke

https://soundcloud.com/user-854926902/hydrophone-in-coke

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Week Two

In this session we tried sound recording equipment for the first time using a directional microphone.  This sort of microphone better amplifies existing noises in various surroundings.

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My SoundCloud account

https://soundcloud.com/user-854926902

To be filled with sounds soon.

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Sound Design - Week 1

In this session, we explore the ways in which we may attain sound to use in our projects as well as the different types of sound.  We also delved into a brief history of sound in film.