LO2: Know the Techniques and Processes Used to Create Sound Elements

The art of foley is the art of recreating natural sounds for the purpose of increasing engagement to a media product such as a film or a tv show. A foley artist is the person who is responsible for creating the sounds. Usually, two foley artists will work together to create the various sounds required while a sound artist/ sound mixer will edit the sound using effects to make it sound more realistic. The sounds that this team produce are then layered over the media product. This makes the product more interesting and therefore more engaging.

Being a foley artist mainly demands a microphone in a large, soundproofed room. This allows echoes to be reduced and makes the intended sound more precise. However, arguably the more important part of a foley artists job is the collection of random, everyday objects such as cloths, plunger heads and old chairs, that can either be crafted into new objects, broken down into different assets or used on their own to create new sounds. Furthermore, the majority of foley artist use various liquids and materials to create the impression of walking on different materials. An example of this is corn starch to create the sound of walking on snow.

The finished audio file is generally exported as a WAV as this is a high quality, lossless file type. This means that regardless of how many times the file is sent around, opened and resaved, it will not loose any sound quality. As the potential for loosing the file could cause a massive delay in the production. Therefore, it is likely that the foley artists save the finished file in various places. On the computer, OneDrive and on a USB Drive. Doing this will prevent the file from being lost due to the many backups.

Soundtracks and scores are often edited together in similar ways that foley is. The main difference is that soundtracks and scores, especially for radio/ podcasts/ audio adverts, have an instrumental melody (often piano or guitar) with sound effects and dialogue layered on top.

An example of a Foley Artist is Brian Hodgson. He is most famous for the creation of the TARDIS noise in Doctor Who, which he created by scraping a front door key along the bass string of a broken piano. Furthermore, he produced the Dalek voices by recording the actors' voices and then running them through a ring modulator and applying various other audio effects. Brian Hodgson has also produced scores for many Doctor Who episodes as well as a few other media products.