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.