Foley artist

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The Foley artist on a film crew is the person who creates many of the natural, everyday sound effects in a film, which are recorded during a session with a recording engineer. Before the session, a project will be cued, with notes kept about what sounds need to be created during the foley session. Often, the project will have a sound supervisor who will dictate what sounds need to be covered in a foley session and what needs to be created by special (audio) effects, which is generally left to the sound designer.

Sound effects and foley are added during post-production to dialog and real effects that were picked up by microphones on-set. Sometimes (especially in the case of cartoons, many Italian films, and almost all Bollywood films) there is no sound recorded on-location, and all the sounds need to be added by the foley artist and sound designer, and dubber. The Foley artist may also accent existing sounds to make them more effective—enhancing the sounds of a fistfight may require thumping watermelons or cracking bamboo. Many Foley artists take pride in devising their own sound effects apparatuses, often using simple, commonly found materials. Some making-of featurettes show Foley artists at work.

The term Foley artist is named after Jack Foley, one of the earliest and best-known Hollywood practitioners of the art. Foley began his career in the film industry as a stand-in and screenwriter during the silent era, and later helped Universal make the transition from silent movies to talkies.

The Universal Studios Hollywood theme park presented a demonstration of a Foley artist in its World of Cinemagic feature.

[edit] How some effects are made

Effect	How It's Made
Galloping horses	Banging empty coconut shells together^[1]
Kissing	Kissing back of hand
Punching someone	Thumping watermelons
High heels	Artist walks in high heels on wooden platform
Bone-breaking blow	Breaking celery or twisting a head of romaine
Footsteps in snow	Squeezing a box of corn starch
Star Wars sliding doors	Pulling a piece of paper from an envelope
Star Trek sliding doors	Flare gun plus sneakers squeak
Bird flapping its wings	Flapping a pair of gloves
Grass or leaves crunching	Balling up audio tape
Car crash	shaking a metal box filled with wood and metal scraps
Fire	Rapid opening and closing of an umbrella along with the crackle of thick cellophane

[edit] See also

[edit] References

^ This method was parodied in the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, when due to budget limitations the actors mimed riding a horse while banging coconut shells onscreen