Explaining Hollywood: How to get a job as a foley artist
LOS ANGELES — Back when silent movies gave way to talkies, filmmakers found that the microphones on their sets captured little more than the actors' dialogue. Without additional sound recording, their films would show an eerily quiet world with stealthy figures heard only when they opened their mouths to speak.
The solution advanced by Jack Foley, a writer and director at Universal Studios, was to project the film on a screen and create a soundtrack of the noises he made as he mimicked the actors' movements and actions. For example, he'd capture the patter of footsteps while walking in time with the actors, covering the floor with whatever material made the right noise. Similarly, he'd record the jingle of keys being drawn from a pocket, the smack of doors opening and closing, and the whoosh and crinkle of a chair cushion compressing under the weight of an actor sitting down.
His techniques were so influential, the entertainment industry named the practice after him. Today, foley artists work on foley stages and in foley studios, recorded by foley recordists and foley mixers and polished by foley editors.
These artists can now be found pretty much wherever movies, television shows or video games are made. That's true despite the vast improvement in microphone technology since the first time Foley mimicked an actor strolling down a sidewalk. And unlike the man himself, the names of modern foley artists show up in the
