The Magic of Making Sound

In Hollywood, everything is magic and make-believe. Gloves with paper clips are dog paws. Even what you hear. We are storytellers with sound. Over here we have a feather duster used for bird wings. We bring sound into the story and we can create any mood with that sound. When you watch a film, much of what you're hearing was created. From footsteps on a snowy path to a vicious thunderstorm. Weather is a really interesting thing to recreate. And make it exciting. It depends on the elements that we're using and how it's filmed and what they want to hear. Here at the Warner Brothers lot, Foley artists practice their craft. And if they do their jobs right, you won't even notice. People take sound for granted, but you would miss it if it wasn't there. Foley is the art of sound. It's creating sounds in sync with what's happening on screen. The art of Foley goes back to the old radio days, where you would see the sound guys clomping with their coconuts. This is what we use for horse hooves. They're plungers. And we stuff them with cloth and a little tape. And here we go. Jack Foley came in and he thought, If I do those sounds in sync with the picture, I've just taken a whole step out. Jack Foley's legacy in sound began in the 1920s, as talkies swept Hollywood. Ever since, the reproduction of sound effects added to film in post-production is called the art of Foley. The Foley stage consists of different surfaces. This is walking on leaves or in a forest. For snow, what we normally use is regular play sand. And then to add to that, sometimes you hear that familiar crunch, which we use cornstarch. Your ear hears snow, but in actuality, it's sand. It's almost like a prop house. We have collected different things, because everything here should make a sound. Here's a classic squeaky hinge. Pine cones can be used for cracking ice. You have the three people that are on the stage, the mixer and the two Foley artists, which it's important that you have a team that's cohesive. You know, something's cracking, popping, I don't know what it is. Is it this? Sometimes it takes a little trial and error to see what works best. Hold on. We have a streamer that goes across the screen. And when the streamer gets to the end, that tells us when that sound should start. It's an interesting dance. There's really nothing that we can't do here, imagination-wise. Right now, we're in the control room, and it's where I mix. And I listen to them performing to the picture. I try not to look at them, because I really don't want to see what they're using. I want to see how it sounds. All sound is two elements hitting one another. With rain, if it's hitting a puddle or if it's hitting someone's face, that's all going to sound different. So those are very specific little things that we have to watch and look at. Okay, Mary Jo, here we go. Wind is interesting because it's usually what the wind is blowing through. Allison is going to use the Batman cape to create the sails, and I'm going to create the boat actually going through the water. Okay, let's go. If we're doing a boat going through waves, we would use the big tub that we have to get that slapping sound or churning up the water a lot in the tub with our hands. A lot of sound, like a lot of things artistic, is very subjective. So I have to make that judgment call. There's a great moment when you get the perfect sound, and they don't always know it, but I do. How was that, Mary Jo? Sounded great. When there are multiple weather elements involved, we might do all the specific things first, and then go back and do maybe a general sound. We have a shot here of a hiker coming down the waterfall, so I'm doing the sound of the carabiner and his rope and his equipment. How was that? That was cool. Great. So I'm going to play it back all together and see what we've got. We really layer everything so the mixers can mix how they want to hear it, and we do things also that are a little over the top because we have to fight with music, sometimes dialogue, but hopefully when you hear it at home, it'll sound just like it should be natural.