Foley

Or is it Foly, Folie?

I wish I could remember who first demonstrated the concept. He had grid set up on the floor: several square areas of different textures. When he walked on them they produced sounds meant to resemble dust , leaves , sand and flooring . I don't know quite what else. He then told me that now I was a Foley artist.

Some film makers don't use foley , or prefer not to think of it by that name; preferring natural sound , nothing , or music composition. It probably became popular when actors began to overdub their lines, freeing the camera crew to make more adventurous shots without having to bother recording sound accurately, yet sometimes leaving the ambience unconvincingly empty.

The psychological state of the participants is often more interesting than the actual sound of frontage, machinery and nature. What a person wants and the composition taking place in order to drive out the din of the world selectively in order to accomplish something worthwhile being apropos .

Listening to mini disc recording from '99, some of which sounded rather thin , uncertain and unmelodius yet didn't psychologically negate the listener.I'm thinking it possible to use a carefully selected series of these psychological musical excursions in close conjunction not with the way a person moves so mach as the motivation for moving that way, the acting. The idea to create a feeling of empathy rather than a psychological onslaught.

Of course the technique has been put in practice many times , even as a commercial sound library. The efforts and titles for psychological description are often times simplistic and ineffective, sometimes admirable attempts at being placating or rather general. It hasn't been tried very much with my compositions because I have never been that organized. The pacing and the syntax are different . There have been organized desperadoes who produced empathy inducing mood music quite popularly; probably none with present day technology and experience.

The idea is to allow something else to exist besides that which kills us .It is where sound design meets dance ; foley isn't.