POST-PRODUCTION: Do You Foley Around With Man Or Machine?

POST-PRODUCTION THOUGHTS: 

Do You Foley Around With Man Or Machine? 

By: Roberto Cardenas

Tech is ever advancing, but still ain’t perfect. Mics can’t pick up everything, so we still need foley to make up the sounds we miss. The question is…with the advancement of technology, do we still need foley artists (the human kind), or can we use digital foley to fill in the audio blanks?

Foley artists have been crucial to television and movie making since the end of the silent picture era, when people like Jack Donovan Foley (name sound familiar?) created techniques to replicate the unheard sounds they saw in the “talking pictures.” Over the past couple decades, the innovation in microphone, audio recording and editing tech has given foley artists the tools to be more precise, creative and speedy with their work. But it is also giving them a run for their money.

Now there are digital sound creation tools and digitally created sound libraries that film and tv makers are opting for over human-made sound. Digital can be faster. It can be cheaper. And, it can be easier to change – parameters can be adjusted and rerecorded in an instant using already made MIDI data vs going back to the drawing board with a foley artist. But, can it be as precise and believable as a human physically creating reality? 

If you have an indie project with a smaller budget, this debate may not matter…you get what you can afford. But if you do have the money to spend, will the time come when you choose digital development over human artistry? I would personally hold on to old school artistry for now. Though who knows…next year’s technology could change my mind.

To hear more about Foley life from the humans themselves, check out this IBG.org article and the mesmerizing doc short “The Secret World of Foley."