Use of English PRO

Foley artists can recreate any sound, from the crunch of footsteps on snow to the rustle of a book. Named after Jack Foley, the first person to turn a silent movie into a musical, these specialists make an art of sound. When directors shoot a film, they’re worried about capturing the action and the actor’s voice. Nothing else. Not hearing a sword scraping against a tree or a court shoe tiptoeing across a marble floor. Well, the sword is probably made of plastic and the ‘marble’ floor is probably painted plywood. So when it comes to the edit, things don’t come across as they’re supposed to.
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During this process, known as ‘the Foley’, the artists are responsible for making the background noise sound as real as the dialogue. When done well, these effects are integrated to the extent that they go unnoticed by the audience. It helps to create a sense of reality in a scene, whether the noise is meant to come from inside or outside.
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Foley can also be used to rectify a continuity problem. If an actor is holding something, but forgets to bring it back into the shot, the sound of the object being put away off camera can be inserted later. It can fill in blanks, too. Foley artist Paul Hanks remembers a TV series in which they forgot to film a horse. So they used sound to create the impression there was one there. However, they don’t stop at just creating sounds!
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Things have moved on a long way since 1927, when the art of sound began in films. In those early days, microphones could only pick up dialogue, so Jack Foley had to add in the other sounds later. He projected the film onto a screen and recorded the footsteps and the movement all in one track. At that time, the sound had to match exactly what was going on. Digital technology has meant the sounds can be manipulated to fit
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It is dreamed up at Universal Sound – the only studio in Britain to specialize solely in Foley. From the outside, it could be an expensive home. There’s a swimming pool, where the sounds for the Harry Potter computer games were recorded. But the heart of the operation is in the middle of the house, where there are three studios with thick walls. The main studio, where Hanks and mixer Simon Trundle are working, resembles a student bedsit.
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Right now, he’s struggling with the sounds of table football. If this were a different project, with a different budget, he would have rented a table. Instead he’s slamming the handle of a broom into the spring mechanism of a toaster. ‘Too tinny,’ says Trundle.
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Alex Joseph, in the studio next door, has been responsible for the Foley on a wide range of films and television. What he likes about Foley is that it’s absolutely unique in every film. And, maybe because of his training as a psychologist, he is interested in subliminal messaging, using sounds rather than visuals. ‘You can really play with people’s heads,’ he says. ‘I set up characters before they even appear. It’s a bit of a dark art.’