That Foley sound!

[smsjr]

My guess would be that your mic of choice, the mic positioning, and how you are EQing and fitting the foley in to the space, i.e. reverbs, etc. are probably all contributing to you feeling like it's "not right". To me, the key is to make it sound like it's naturally part of the scene and all of the above can contribute to it achieving that.

Steve

[gsilbers]

that mic seems fine. im guessing that u might be close miking it too much. try recording it further away (in a quiet studio of course)

so what type of foley are u having problems with the most? cloth movements, steps, grabs, knocks, ?

[smsjr]

I actually think the ME66 sounds a bit noisy, but probably not a showstopper. Make sure to get the placement right and as Gsilbers mentioned, make sure the room is extremely quiet and acoustically transparent unless you are trying to use the room's acoustics to intentionally color the sound. Untreated rooms can really screw with you.

Steve

[Mikkel Nielsen]

Thanks guys. Much appreciatedthumbsup

Im having most trouble, getting the cloth and steps to sound right!

Thanks again.

Mikkel

[santacore]

Like others have said I would bet it's your micing technique and/or the sound of your room. Take this with a grain of salt as I've never mixed foley only recorded it. When recording I would try micing things a bit further away when possible. Either that or use a close mic and a room mic and mix the two sounds to taste. When you're recording stuff you want it to sound like the production track as much as possible. If there's no production to match then just record so that it feels like it belongs in that space. If you do that then later in the mix you will probably will only have to add a bit of reverb to make it sound natural.

Experiment with different fabrics for your cloth pass. I've found a nice old dress shirt works well for most stuff. I also really like flannel for a general purpose sound. Experiment and see what works with your mic. Timing and performance are going to be huge factors in how well it matches production.

As for footsteps-your room, surfaces, and talent are going to be the biggest factors in getting a good sound, and not necessarely in that order. Shoe selection is also crucial. Good Foley artists have a massive seletion of shoes to pick from, and all those have been hand selected for best sound over the years. The techinique of Foley walking seems simple but in reality it's a lot more difficult then we know. I've recorded Foley for years and I would never think that I could just jump out there and cut some footsteps. It's truly a talent that's been cultivated from years of practice and expermentation.

Good luck and have fun!!

One other thought-try using some LDC's for recording instead of the shotgun if you have them. I find that I prefer the sound. I recently visited one of the top Foley teams in Los Angeles and they were combining a U87 and a SDC Sennheiser to record most things. For a few characters they used a Lavalier and the U87. What an eye opener. Damn those guys were good.

[Stephen Muir]

Regarding EQ and compression: Other than a 120 Hz high-pass filter, I record our foley with a flat EQ and no compression. Occasionally, I'll use EQ to achieve a special effect (eg. simulating underwater), but not very often.

There isn't much you can do to improve poorly performed foley, but I've always found that recording perspectives make a huge difference in the mix. The ME66 isn't really one of my favourite mics, but it should be able to get the job done, just watch out for the mic's self-noise. The overwhelming majority of the time, I'm using a Sennheiser MKH416 as the primary mic.

As gsilbers pointed out, you may be placing the mic too close. A shotgun mic like the ME66 should rarely be closer than two feet or so. The closer the mic is, the more dynamic the sound will be, which can be a big problem: with footsteps, one part of the sound (eg. the heel or the toe) may overpower the rest of the sound. Avoid recording anything to dryly, even exteriors.

The addition of a second "perspective" mic will add greatly to the realism of foley interiors. I'll usually use a Neumann TLM103 or a second MKH416 on an Atlas stand over in the far side of the studio. Ballancing the primary and perspective mics takes a lot of experience, so you may want to record them to seperate tracks early on. This practice will succeed or fail based on the accoustics of your room, so put a lot of thought into studio design.

[gsilbers]

as for tricks

we have a "cloth" track in which the foley artist did a whole 45min of generic cloth pass.
cause we do som much of the same type of shows that the foley artist came up with a really good generic one and its always used for the MEs. there are also specific cloth passes and regular foley but the cloth track helps alot specially to fill in foot steps or or actors movements if there is nothing else besides them talking for a while and makes it seems there is more life to it which is the idea of M&Es.

then we have finger foley for footsteps. i already started a thread of footsteps with MIDI.
but the edit suite next to me does does footsteps all day long for a long long time now.
we have to do so many shows that foley couldnt handle it so we turned into finger foley in which the foley artist again did or does footsteps for the shows/series and later edited to be in battery3 with about 15-20 layers each block to about 9-10gb of diferent footsteps and footsteps nuances.

i mix the M&Es and it sound really good. for movies we use real foley session but with TV shows we jsut do the finger foloy stuff and it really sounds good. so the recording of the generic footsteps was really good, the artist is really good and the guy doing the finger foley has done them so much they confuse the engineers as to if its real or not. there are also 5 mix engineers that where giving constant feedback on diferent scenes as to "calibrate" the steps better, thus recording more steps and adding them to battery 3.

from the experience i know now it takes time to fine tune foley and that the recording engineer as the artist as the source material matter a lot, so does the input on the mix engineers. the mic they use is also an AKG production mic, dont rememebr the model but its the same one its used on most set recordings.
and the pres are avalon 737s .

[starcrash13]

Here's a quote from MaryJo Lang (one of the top foley mixers in the business) taken from the Yahoo! Sound Design forum. I've worked with her on two shows and she gets really amazing sounds using two Neumann KMR82i shotguns. One close, one distant.

Re: M&E Tracks

First of all, I'd like to thank all of you who recommended John Roesch and
his crew for Foley. I have been the mixer on this crew for the last 15
years and appreciate all the kind words. I showed them to John last week
and it made his day.
As to recording Foley, it is my goal to record cues so that they fit into
production as seamlessly as possible. Our job is to not be noticed. I use
two KMR 82 mics -- one as the main mic and one for room ambiance. It is
tricky to match the ambience of a particular room, especially if it is a
room that will probably have reverb added to it on the dub stage, so I try
to not lock the mixer into too much of my room's ambience, but I have found
that recording with some perspective makes it easier to work with on the dub
stage. I usually use only EQ and mic placement in recording. I have a
Eventide that I use when working on video games and weird sci fi stuff, but
for a "normal" film, I find I can accomplish all I need with EQ and two
mics. You have quite a job ahead of you using minimal Foley and effects for
an M&E with most of the sounds in the production track. Others have given
you more information on what to present to the foreign clients -- I have no
expertise on that -- but, as far as recording Foley, I wanted to share with
you what I do.

[davebl@dircon.c]

The comments are right. The job is not to be noticed ! Most our our work is for TV and features. Mosly we match to the location mics which are mostly Sennheiser MKH series and trams for Pesonal mics. So we usualy use an MKH 40 so it has the same color. (conversly we use LDC's for voiceover so it has a completly diferent color where thats appropriate.) The room and perspecitve are key, as the guys have already commented on, you need quite some space for foley work and a variety of acoustics to get the best results. I think the ME 66 would be fine, you could do a lot worse with other mics. Dont get it too close though.

[Mikkel Nielsen]

Hi all

Thanks alot, to everybody, for helping me. Its very kind of you
I will try to experiment with different mics and different mic distances, in the coming days. Hopefully it will work out.
Anyways, Im learning alot from this, and also learning alot from the hints and tricks you all have been contributing with.

Regards

Mikkel

[Chris G]

ok... newb question. What does "M&E's" stand for?

[santacore]

Music and effects

[Jazzpunk]

Originally Posted by gsilbers

as for tricks

then we have finger foley for footsteps. i already started a thread of footsteps with MIDI.
but the edit suite next to me does does footsteps all day long for a long long time now.
we have to do so many shows that foley couldnt handle it so we turned into finger foley in which the foley artist again did or does footsteps for the shows/series and later edited to be in battery3 with about 15-20 layers each block to about 9-10gb of diferent footsteps and footsteps nuances.

I love Battery for music but have never thought of it being used in this manner. Very clever!

[James Roper-Kum]

Hey guys some great advice here. I'm just about to partake in some foley work myself. A comedy short and a vampire short.

A word of advice for people doing short films who may not have access to a foley studio..........Find some space to work with.

I'm lucky enough to work at a school that gives me access to grounds whenever I want. I can take the laptop to any room in the building when every one has gone home and experiment away. For instance we have some sweet old creaky floor boards in the old part of the school, perfect for the Vampire flick.

[JohnnyFree]

I would agree with what most have said - the mic closeness, angle and the stage probably have the biggest impact on the sound of the foley. Performance obviously matters too, but even if it's bad, the sound should still be able to fit into a mix.

Having recorded foley and edited it and mixed it, if your cloth is sounding really weird I would check how close your mics are, play with distance and on/off-axis angles and maybe try some different cloths. Cloth and paper can be some of the more tricky things to record.

I don't think your mic choice is that bad, it's a basic decent shotgun...most stages here in LA use a shotgun and/or some type of condenser and blend mics for a close and "room" feel.

Hope this helps!

[marclop]

Are the surfaces you're using connected directly to the ground?

Marco

[Mikkel Nielsen]

Hi all

Thanks alot for replying.
Since I started this thread, I have been getting much better results, by experimenting with distance as you adviced, a new mic (a 416), and doing recordings out in the streets, forests late at night, walking, breaking things, etc in "sync" with an Itouch running the mov. Really fun and usefull!

Thanks alot for helping out.

Best wishes,

Mikkel

[apple-q]

many foley-recordings are not convincing because they miced much too close. This emphasizes the clicks and transients on footsteps etc. and makes it difficult to embed them into a mix. They will always stand out no matter how much you turn them down. Last minute solution is to compress them and take out the high end which leads to a flat and dull result

Transmod from Sony is a great helper to reduce extreme transients a bit without flattening the intended overall dynamics to get it closer to a natural production recording.

Remember: a dialog miced from overhead will have the mic placed at least 2-3m away from the shoes. It makes no sense to record them at 20cm and then expect them to sound anywhere close to that "natural groove" you get on your production track.

90% is mic placement, performance and the sound of your room NOT the type of mic, pre-amps and other gear...

[eastwestaudio]

if you didn't get the distance right in the studio then try world-izing it! or for cheap: altiverb.

with compression - pay really close attention to your attack and release time. sometimes a really fast attack and release will let you bring out the beef of the sound which was otherwise masked by the initial hit.

-greg-

[xmostynx]

a good preamp is key in making anything sound good- as is a mic and a dead room.

but i'm going to stick to a good preamp- i have had much greater success with sounds ITB by getting them warm and fat on the front end.

stuff like op amps, and the quality of the capacitors in your gear makes a world of difference when your trying to capture a sound.

before you go hog wild on a mic- try getting an API, or NEVE.


eq, and compression are backseat tools when you have a good front end.

my .02

[ggegan]

I haven't mixed Foley in almost 20 years, but I did a lot of it and I worked with some of the top artists in Hollywood.

I'd say that the two most important factors in getting great footsteps sound are first, the ability of the Foley artist and second the surfaces you use. A great Foley artist knows which shoes will produce the correct sound and how to move so that the recording sounds natural and fits what's on screen. The shoes themselves account for much of the sound and I have seen artists cheat the surface by picking the right shoes.

The surface is very important, but I have never seen a Foley stage that had more than a few of each kind of surface, so in order to get variation the adjustments often have to be made by adapting the surface to the intended environment - such as by muting the resonance, propping the surface up to achieve more resonance, putting something on top of the surface, sprinkling something on the surface, or carefully choosing the area on the surface that will produce the correct sound, etc. These are all tricks that an experienced Foley artist knows, so once again it gets back to the ability of the artist.

Micing distance is also important, as is knowing how to use off axis micing to match production sound. Remember that the production mic is aimed to optimize the voice, so the feet are generally off axis. Also, the boom man is often aiming the mic from above at the end of a long pole, so the chances of even the voice being perfectly on axis are pretty slim, which might also provide clues to how an ADR mixer might get the ADR perspective to better match a production boom recording.

[Jfriah]

Originally Posted by Pindebraende

...doing recordings out in the streets, forests late at night, walking, breaking things, etc in "sync" with an Itouch running the mov. Really fun and usefull!

Hey there you go! Glad to hear that (recording in the field with portable video).

And, yes to trying to match location sound with proper mic distances. (as always: to some degree---when you have to ADR for badly noisy/off-mic dialog, then you get noisy/off-mic foley. Just sayin')

And like others have said: foley artists can use the analogy of recording someone playing a Les Paul who doesn't know how to play guitar, vs. someone who has played for 20 years and is strumming a pawn shop special. It is often in the performance. Get a good pickup on a good performance, good place to start. But of course... that all comes with experience, too. So start by trying to match perspective.

-Jeff