Foley Research

 Foley Research

What is foley and how can my group implement foley sounds into our horror film opening? Foley sounds are used to enhance the auditory experience of the movie. With foley sounds we can create sounds using different objects to enhance the sound of an object. For example making the sound of rubber being stretched can be made by rubbing your fingers down a wall to create the stretch of rubber sound. In my audio only project for aice media, I used this technique to make the audience believe that someone was entering the boxing ring through the rubber on the side. This foley sound worked perfectly in my project and I feel that foley sounds are a big part of creating a film. 

 Those who had worked at Universal Studios had called it “Foley” because of the man, Jack Foley, who had run that department for Universal for over 45 years. Foley is only a part of the sound effects component of motion picture sound. The other elements are background ambiances such as wind, city traffic, birds, etc., and “hard effects,” which include gunshots, car engines, and doors. Foley is generally broken down into two categories. These two categories are footsteps and props.

For fighting scenes, the auditory noise is used as an illusion to give the audience a sense of actual fighting. The sound of punches can be made with various objects to create the illusion that the people in the shot are actually fighting. In my opening film, we will be incorporating foley sounds to enhance the realness of the scene and make it seem like the sounds are actually coming from the camera shot. I chose to research foley as this is going to be a major part of our production and without the use of foley then the sounds being created from the shot be enhanced and will sound very. This research will benefit my entire production process as we know how to use foley sounds and most importantly the history behind it.