Generally, people who have never heard of Foley really feel that all those sounds that
were made, were made when they shot the movie.
Any sound effect you hear in a film, good chance it was made by a Foley artist,
or a sound effects library.
A Foley artist is someone that makes sound effects for things that happen on screen.
To be a good Foley artist you need to have some eye-hand coordination, you need to have
a sensibility about what something should sound like, whether it's someone walking across
the screen,
maybe two cars colliding,
or slapping someone else in the face.
I've been working in film since 1983.
We worked on ‘Life of Pi,’ ‘The Wall,’ ‘Goodfellas,’ Silence of the Lambs,’
‘Ice Age,’ ‘The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’ this past year.
Yeah, I sometimes go blank here.
I know I've worked on a few things, but I can't remember everything right now.
Basically, I bang two sticks together.
That's my job.
George's job is, he needs to keep quality control because I can be sloppy, I can be
out of sync.
This is a symbiotic relationship between the mixer and the Foley artist because there's
it’s the two of us that are creating the sound.
I mean I'm loaded with props.
I have everything from wallets, I have jewelry, I have pearls, metal containers, pens, pencils,
plastics used for fire... um, anything that's a little pieces of wood.
Look at this.
little squeaks.
Everything's got something.
Little alien.
Small sounds are tough, um, blinks are very difficult.
Over the years I've been asked to blink animals and things, you know, like an eye blink and
you know, I would think something wet, you know, so it sounded like a, almost like a
windshield wiper... the supervisor will tell us, “Well, we're looking for a blink, but
you gave us a wet one last time.
It's gotta be dry.
It's the desert.”
So you know what, OK, we'll give it a try, you know?
Look, swords.
This is my favorite one.
Oh look at that.
Beautiful.
Razor sharp, it makes a great sound too.
Sometimes they'll ask for sounds that don't exist, like super, super smooth machines that
are whirring, not grinding.
It's such a hard sound, unless you have something that's whirring.
We had to do a movie with snowshoes and he goes, “Look what I just found in the garbage!,”
right?
I mean, the morning that we're doing it and he comes in with snowshoes.
The Foley pit itself has, you know, different tiles.
We have snow over there, and sand, and gravel, and grass, and cobblestone, and slate, and
concrete, and anything else we need, we'll put it in.
We're making a sound for every moment in the film and you know, it's a, it's a time consuming
process.
It's about the story and we fill in the background and it's really a very subtle, you know, art
and it's, it's very challenging and a lot of fun.