Media Glossary : Sound : Foley Sound...

Jack Foley

We have once again explored the elements of sound, however we have developed out knowledge from AS by focusing on Foley Sound. Foley is a term that describes the process of recording sound affects separate to the action, this sound is created by a Foley artist. It is added to the film within post-production, and the reason is to enhance the quality of audio for film. The Foley sound is all created within a Foley-studio, which is where the Foley progress takes place. The term "Foley" is originally named after Jack Foley, who lived between 1891 to 1967, he was a sound editor for Universal Studios in the 1950's , and became a famous for his advancements in synchronized sound effects.

Foley sound is either used to complement or replace audio which was recorded on set within filming. A Foley artist will use creativity in order to make the audience believe that the sound affects are actually real, therefore the audience should not actually know that the sound was not actually part of the original filming process. The reason why Foley sound is used is because during the actual production the original sound can be obstructed by noise such as from the weather or not actually convincing enough to underscore the visual effect or action (example = many crashes and explosions are actually added during post-production). By adding the Foley sound during post-production an editor has complete control over the noise, its quality and the relative volume, therefore adding depth and realism to the audio quality. Foley sounds also feature within scenes where the dialogue is replaced through the use of automatic dialogue replacement, this therefore meant the need for Foley rose dramatically when films began to be distributed internationally, due to the all the audio had to be replaced for dialogue within the given language this also meant all the sound effects were lost so had to be duplicated.

In order to explore the element of Foley sound we created a one minute film (as we thought we better add some element of media as we are after all doing media studies!). We were given the task of constructing an original film, which had to include a piece of diegetic and non-diegetic audio, an interior and exterior location, five elements of Foley sound and cross-cutting editing. My group consisted of me, Caitlin, Georgie and Nicole. Firstly we had some discussion on what we wanted to do and we decided to reconstruct a spoof horror, we then had to think about how we were going to ensure we corroborated all the elements needed. Our storyline consists of following a girl doing her homework, she then gets a phone call of an unknown caller and when she answers the only response is deep breathing, she then hangs up in frustration and hears a tap on the window, turning round she is met with a strange male character pulling a "scary" face. One of the boys in year 13 was very kind to do his scary face for our film, and in order to save time looking for actresses Nicole volunteered to be the female character. This is a list of how we incorporated the necessary elements:

• Non-Diegetic Audio = Our sound track used to overlay our title
• Diegetic Audio = The telephone conversation between the two characters
• Interior Location = The girl sat inside doing her homework at the desk in front of a door
• Exterior Location = The male character stood on the outside of the door where the girl is sat in front of
• Five Foley Sounds = Sound of girl walking up the stairs; Telephone ringing; Tapping on the window; Girl saying "hello"; Sound of pen writing on paper

We were given, an hour to film and then half an hour to edit before the big showing (which involved lots of giggles) in front of the class. Here is our "talented" Foley film for you to enjoy (and also have a few giggles at):