Me, George and Lucas spent three hours in the foley studio on Wednesday morning recording for the opening clip of “We need to talk about Kevin”. In this time a process formed naturally, roles changed throughout the three hours with each of us taking turns performing to the screen.
Firstly, we made a list of what we set out to record:
- Footsteps
- Room sounds
- Outdoor sounds
- Door/Door handle breaking
- Curtains moving
- Clothes moving
- Standing up
- Pill Bottle
Typically, foley is broken down into three categories: walking, movement and props. I am unsure where the weather would fall into these denominations, however it is definitely foley, sound performed to the screen and recorded. My first instinct is that atmosphere should be its own section of foley however after thinking it over I think it might be related to movement, the wind waves the trees, the rain falls to the floor, lighting moves at the speed of light and thunder is the product.
In regards to microphone placement we aimed a Sennheiser MKH shotgun mic directly at the sound source and whilst somebody would act as the foley performer creating the sound the pro tools operator would give indication on whether or not the microphone needed to be closer or further away. We decided to record in mono as to display movement on screen using footsteps we could then just pan the track in relation to what was being displayed on screen. Recording in stereo would also give this effect however we would have replicate walking the same distance as Tilda Swinton’s character on the wooden floorboards, we only had a small wooden area available so stereo for the footsteps was not really an option for us and other sounds we recorded did not require the act of recording in stereo. I plan to experiment with changing two things in the future, microphone placement and the type of microphone, I will perhaps position the microphone off axis as I am aware that this can soften the high end of a sound, I would also like to try using different mics and maybe even use more mics, perhaps using a stereo pair for some recordings.
We used various objects for different sound and toyed with using them in different ways, for the pill bottle falling we used short thick sticks, chewing and mints dropped at different heights. The idea was that the chewing gum container being dropped would sound very similar to the pill box hitting the floor and the pills shaking inside the container, the mints and sticks would create he sound of the pills spilling. We started with them all at the same height and then the pro tools operator would listen and advise on how high each of the objects should be dropped from.
I think that to build a strong foundation of foley skills I would need to practice it a lot more, I think that I would like to spend time just playing with different objects setting myself tasks for sounds to replicate and put emotion into, with a limited knowledge of foley it was hard to view it as creating sound effects that are emotional rather than simply replicating. The only instances in which I felt able to insert any emotion into the recordings were when performing, using my own movements to try and display emotion. The question that I am left with is, how can I absorb emotion from the technical aspects of recording into the recordings that come from it?