What is Foley?
Updated: Aug 4
Some of the most crucial sounds in film and TV are the ones you never consciously hear. Every footstep, clothing rustle, or key chain jangling was probably recreated after filming wrapped by a foley artist, somewhere in a studio filled with sandboxes, heads of lettuce, and other miscellaneous objects.
Foley is the craft of recording custom sound effects in sync with picture during the post-production process. The sound team on set aren't recording the little things--their main job is dialogue. So, instead of relying on the audio recorded on set or solely pulling sound effects from a library, foley artists perform and record sounds while watching the final cut of scenes. The little details they add make every movement on screen feel more natural and believable.
One of the main reasons foley exists is because production audio is never clean. Normally, the sound recorded on set is full of unwanted noise, like the hum of a nearby A/C or cars driving by or the crew moving around. Even after the dialogue is cleaned up, many of the small sounds that make a scene feel real are either unusable or not there at all. Foley fills in the gaps and makes the viewer hear everything in the scene as if they were in the room with the actors. You don't notice the little sounds when watching, but you'd definitely notice if they were missing.
A typical foley stage is filled with different flooring materials, simulated outdoor surfaces, props, clothing, and other random objects used to recreate on-screen actions. Artists perform footsteps, object handling, and clothing movement while actively watching the picture, matching each sound to the actor's timing on screen. This process usually takes a lot of attempts, or "passes," to get every sound synchronized.
Most foley falls into three main categories: footsteps, props, and cloth. The footsteps category covers everything from walking on creaky hardwood to sprinting through gravel or wading through water. The props category includes objects like doors, dishes, keys, tools, food, etc. (anything the actor interacts with). Cloth is all about the subtle things like curtains blowing in the wind, backpacks coming on or off, or clothing items that would make noise with an actor's movement.
One of my favorite foley fun-facts is that a lot of gore noises (crunches, squelches, squishes, etc.), are recreated using vegetables. You hear a zombie's arm break? That was probably a foley artist breaking a stalk of celery in half.
Even though most post-audio teams have vast sound libraries filled with miscellaneous effects, custom foley caters directly to the performance on screen. The creak of chair or an artfully timed clothing rustle can help reinforce a character's predicament, emotions, or even motives, without the audience ever realizing it.
The next time you watch a movie or TV show, listen for the small details. It's likely many of those everyday sounds weren't recorded on set at all; 9 times our of 10, they were recreated later by talented foley artists. Like the best visual effects or even screenwriting, great foley is practically invisible. When it's done well, you don't notice the sounds, you're just totally immersed.
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