Foley vs Computers

Foley is the creation and recording of sound for film, TV and radio during post production. It's one of my favourite aspects of film-making and a career I'd love to go into. This feature about Foley on BBC's The One Show poses an interesting question: Is the future of Foley safe or will new technologies in computer generated sound take over completely?

The new technologies designed to generate sound are exciting and open up whole new opportunities for film-makers and sound designers to be creative and imaginative with their soundtracks.

The new technology demonstrated in The One Show's feature is explained in this article  on the New Scientist website. It talks about acoustically enabled animation software developed by two US based computer modellers. This software automatically generates sound effects by using the same physics used to create the animations. This can save so much time for a film-maker/sound designer when constructing their soundtracks for animated films. By having the more mundane sounds done automatically for them, they can focus their attention on the focal sounds. However, this technology is still in development and is yet to be perfected.

Be that as it may, I still favour Foley over any sort of computer generated sound. No computer can replicate the human essence of Foley and the simplistic realism of it. Films exist to share perception of the human experience, no computer, no matter how highly developed and intelligent can beat the unique and real sound of the Foley artist.

'The Foley Grail' by Vanessa Theme Ament

"The art of performing sound for film, games and animation."

One of the books I continuously took out of the library was 'The Foley Grail' by American Foley artist, Vanessa Theme Ament. However, over Christmas I managed to get my hands on my own copy to save trips to and from the library. 

This book is is so wonderfully written. It reads more like memoirs than a textbook which is a breath of fresh air. It includes in depth descriptions and advice on how to recreate everyday sounds using Foley. A classic example is horse galloping using coconut shells. Ament states: "I use them with the coconut still inside them and baked, then hot glued to the shell." and "The trick to horse feet however is the rhythm. Horses have many different types of walks and runs, and it is important to bridge the cut without jolting the rhythm."

This book is ideal for those only just getting into Foley as it explains a lot of the basics. Part one describes what it is to be a Foley artist. Why it is used and how it is used. It also goes into a brief biography of the creator of Foley, Jack Foley himself.

Part two of the book describes the rules and traditions in Foley, the various jobs available within the art of Foley and the places where Foley takes place (Prop Room, Mixing Room, Foley Stage etc). This section also explains what it is to spot and cue.

Part three is my favourite part of the book. This section goes into detail of the nitty gritty of how to create great sounds. Typical props are listed and dozens of tried and tested methods described. A section is also dedicated to the importance of being able to perform in sync sounds to visuals. Ament tells of how in television in the 80s often has Foley artists shoot the Foley a day before broadcasting day and editors expected them to be as in sync as possible to make final editing minimal.

Part four talks about editing and mixing Foley and also introduces ADR, a vital to tool to be able to "fix it in post".

The Foley Grail is one of my favourite film sound books purely because of the amiable and almost informal way Vanessa Theme Ament writes it. She introduces beginners to her art without sounding patronising or pompous. It's a brilliant read for anyone interested in Foley.

Does the process of Editing make Film unique to other arts?

"Editing is often regarded as the fulcrum of film art, since it is in this process that film most clearly separates itself from competing arts."
                                                       - James Monaco, How To Read A Film ( Fourth Edition, page 141)

This is a really interesting quote that jumped out at me in the book 'How To Read A Film' by James Monaco. I've never truly thought about film in comparison to other arts, in fact I've never thought about arts as competing at all.

However, after thinking about this quote I understand how it could be seen to make sense that editing is the thing that makes film unique from the others, although I don't fully agree.

Film editing is taking a number of clips and cutting, ordering and mixing them together to make structurally sound film. This is a similar process to recording music. Within a band's recording session the drums are usually recorded first, then the bass, rhythm guitar, lead guitar and finally the vocals. These are all separate recordings (similar to the clips) and are then cut, ordered and mixed together (also similar to the clips) to create a song. In writing for an orchestra, the composer is carefully choosing when to include an instrument and when to take an instrument away from the score similar to how a film editor would choose when to add and take away clips.

Even in literature, a writer is choosing what words to use, when to stop to end a sentence or a paragraph or a chapter, similar to how an editor chooses what clips to use and when to include a transition such as a dissolve.

Therefore, as interesting a quote as it is, I don't really agree with it because I believe that all of the arts are structured similarly. They're all a form of expression and are made up of lots of different elements that are carefully chosen, ordered and mixed up by the artist.

2001: A Space Odyssey (Match Cut)

Within editing, a match cut is when two consecutive shots have compositional elements that match. A match cut can be used for aesthetic reasons, for a greater flow of action or to show metaphoric or thematic connections.

One of the most famous match cuts is in the opening to Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. It opens with a sequence of apes fighting. One of the apes picks up a bone and realises that it can be used as a weapon and uses this to win the fight. Other apes catch on and use bones from the floor as weapons. This sequences represents one of the first discoveries of tools. An ape then throws a bone into the air. After a close up tracking shot of the bone flying into the air, the next shot we see is that of a space craft in space. The space craft is of a similar shape to the bone, in the same part of the frame and angled the same.

This match cut shows a vast temporal shift but represents the cause and effect of how that ape making the first discovery of tools led to the great technological wonder of a space craft.

Conspiracy Edit

As part of our post production work we were asked to create a three minute film simultaneously explaining a conspiracy and persuading the audience that the conspiracy is true. This film had to be made up entirely of archive footage.

Our film described the conspiracy called 'Big Pharma'. This is the theory that pharmaceutical companies include a small amount of illness within their medications to make sure the customers continue having need to buy it.

The editing itself was a really fun process. I mainly enjoyed working with the sound on the film. It gave me a chance to play with levels and fades as all the sounds we used were from different sources and of different file types. This made it quite a good challenge.

However, we faced quite a few problems when it came to the general direction of the film. We managed to find quite a lot of the same type of footage but not an awful lot of variety. This resulted in a bit of a 'samey' film with a similar pace throughout.

The feedback from the film confirmed this. Another point that was made during feedback was that the use of text within the film was a bit extensive. What we should've done was find footage and audio clips that explained the theory for us instead of having to write it all out. It was slightly slide-showesque.

If we were to do this project again I think we'd choose a different topic. A topic with a wider variety of footage available. We'd also create a set plan of direction before we'd even start editing to make sure that all points are made without need to include any (or little) text.