Foley is the art of recreating realistic sounds in film. Foley artists recreate everyday sounds like footsteps or gunshots that were not captured well during filming. This allows them to enhance audio quality and add missing sounds during post-production. Some methods include using shoes on a floor to mimic footsteps or speeding up recordings of grapes to sound like gunshots. Foley is useful for improving low quality audio, creating sounds from unexpected objects, and reusing recorded effects between projects. The technique originated from live radio broadcasts and got its name from Jack Donovan Foley, who synchronized off-screen sound effects for a 1914 film.

1. Foley
By Teri-Anne Chambers (TC)

2. What is Foley?
Foley is the art of creating/ re creating realistic sounds in a film. For example, If
the sound of human footsteps previously recorded were not high quality enough
for a final product, Foley artists will recreate the sound of footsteps using a
variety of methods, one example of a method they could use is shoes stepping
on a floor, they could record a close up of someone stepping or running on a spot
to gain the same affect as what you would expect to hear when someone is
walking/running.
Another example of the different ways Foley artists re-create sounds is with
grapes, which when recorded and sped up recreates a sound of a gun shot
effect.

3. Why is it useful?
■ Foley is useful as they can reproduce everyday sound effects in a number of ways, which would be
needed in post-production if the quality of the previously recorded sound with the scene was
low, as it allows us to enhance the quality of the audio
■ Oddly enough the art of Foley helps create realistic sounds from objects you would not expect it to.
This helps in post production as it is easier than trying to record close up to the sound while you
are shooting a scene.
■ Foley is also useful in certain scenes with little sound, for example if you only needed the sound of
the actors footsteps or rustling of clothes, it is easier to re-create them in Foley than to try and
find it in editing, as you can decide on the length you need in the scene.
■ Sounds can be recorded at different times allowing them to be re-used in post-production.

4. History
Live sound effects were originally used in live radio broadcasts, the
struggle with these was there was no previous recorded sounds, so all
sounds used had to be created live.
Foley got its name from Jack Donovan Foley, who created live sounds for
Universal Studios in 1914. He worked on a previously silent musical:
Show Boat creating off screen sounds precisely at the right time so the
sounds of footsteps and doors closing were synchronised.