DIY Foley Pit

[moink123]

Most of the work that I do is on Indie films that don't have large budgets. Hence, I end up with the pleasure of doing my own Foley. Most of what I do is very make-shift (but then again, isn't that what Foley is all about???), and sometimes it doesn't yield the best sounds.

Have any of you experimented with building your own Foley pits? Any tips or suggestions or pics?

[ggegan]

I designed the Foley and ADR stages at the Skywalker Sound South Lantana facility, now Todd AO, so I have a fair amount of experience on the subject, but without knowing the size, layout and location of the room (ground floor, second floor, slab or raised foundation, etc), I can't be of much help.

[BVoss]

Originally Posted by ggegan

I designed the Foley and ADR stages at the Skywalker Sound South Lantana facility, now Todd AO, so I have a fair amount of experience on the subject, but without knowing the size, layout and location of the room (ground floor, second floor, slab or raised foundation, etc), I can't be of much help.

That's my foley stage! Great job, Gary.

[ggegan]

Thanks. It was a fun assignment. I worked with architect Jack Anderson. He designed the structural shell and projection booths and I designed the layout of the two stages, the pits, storage area and control rooms. His original concept had the ADR stage where the Foley stage is now, but I switched them because I knew that foley needed more room. That was almost 20 years ago, but I think I still have the original CAD drawings and hand drawn blueprints somewhere, although I used ClarisCAD, so I'm not sure I could open the computer files anymore.

[philper]

I had to do Foley for several TV series at a studio that had no pits, so I built myself some plywood boxes 2 ft x 4 ft x 4 " for sand, dirt, sod, etc.. These worked quite well and I've used them at home (in a simple recording studio) since. The clean up is a little messy, but at least your surface materials are contained and the boxes are light enough to move around.

Philip Perkins

[santacore]

If it's on the cheap you can build boxes out of 2x6's and fill them with your preferred substance. Another alternative is to use plastic mixing tubs, like the one's Home Depot sells for mixing cement. Either of these options will allow you to do footsteps, but the problem with any solution like this is you will always hear the "pit".

To do it right you need to build directly on the earth. Ideally the pits should be unattached to the foundation or the structure. If you can swing it that's the way to achieve the best sounding results.

[danijel]

Originally Posted by philper

I built myself some plywood boxes 2 ft x 4 ft x 4 " for sand, dirt, sod, etc..

i did too (20% bigger and particle board - no plywood). they worked for sand and dirt, but i couldn't make concrete. i tried several times, and even when the concrete in the box turned out very solid, and i put the box on a carpet, the beginning transient was good, but there was a hollow tail (wood resonating).
did you try to do concrete in plywood? did someone have success with DIY concrete?

[ggegan]

Originally Posted by philper

I had to do Foley for several TV series at a studio that had no pits, so I built myself some plywood boxes 2 ft x 4 ft x 4 " for sand, dirt, sod, etc.. These worked quite well and I've used them at home (in a simple recording studio) since. The clean up is a little messy, but at least your surface materials are contained and the boxes are light enough to move around.

Philip Perkins

Long ago I worked at a studio in San Francisco (Studio C on Mission) that did something similar. They had these big plywood drawers that were below the screen on the dub stage that they would pull out for foley. I never actually saw them in use, and I can't imagine that the mixing console would have survived long if they had been used on a regular basis. Foley tends to make a big mess and raise a lot of dust.

I worked on the second season of the Simpsons and back then the Supervising Sound Editor told me he personally did the foley at his house. I think he just slung a Nagra or some other portable recorder over his shoulder and recorded himself walking around the house and in the yard. I don't know if he recorded to picture, I think he probably used the recordings for samples that he loaded into a Synclavier and then triggered. There was a fair amount of background noise but otherwise they sounded perfect for the show and the noise was never a problem in context. It was part of the unique signature sound of the show. I'd be kind of surprised if that is still the way it's done, but you never know.

[ggegan]

Originally Posted by danijel

i did too (20% bigger and particle board - no plywood). they worked for sand and dirt, but i couldn't make concrete. i tried several times, and even when the concrete in the box turned out very solid, and i put the box on a carpet, the beginning transient was good, but there was a hollow tail (wood resonating).
did you try to do concrete in plywood? did someone have success with DIY concrete?

The concrete would have to be very thick, which would make it non-portable. However, Foley isn't often played without a lot of other sounds like dia, bgs and music, so it's pretty amazing what you can get away with. If it is going to be featured or you have to match production sound, then that is definitely going to be a problem, but if it is played low as is often the case, then it might be okay in a pinch.

[philper]

Originally Posted by danijel

i did too (20% bigger and particle board - no plywood). they worked for sand and dirt, but i couldn't make concrete. i tried several times, and even when the concrete in the box turned out very solid, and i put the box on a carpet, the beginning transient was good, but there was a hollow tail (wood resonating).
did you try to do concrete in plywood? did someone have success with DIY concrete?

Concrete we did in their parking lot after hours. Low budg. We also did a couple of movies by having me or the director watch a video dub on a camcorder in playback and "walk the shots" out in the city streets etc.. while I recorded him. Not perfect but very fast and pretty good.

Philip Perkins

[dsteinwedel]

Originally Posted by ggegan

I designed the Foley and ADR stages at the Skywalker Sound South Lantana facility, now Todd AO, so I have a fair amount of experience on the subject, but without knowing the size, layout and location of the room (ground floor, second floor, slab or raised foundation, etc), I can't be of much help.

So what would you recommend for the following?

• 3nd floor
• Approx 2 in. of concrete used for the finished flooring over a plywood subfloor over a 2x12 joist system.
• Foley area is a piece of 'furniture' sat on top of the finished floor.
• Area of coverage is 6' deep by 13' wide
• Pits will be finished on top (wood) with real covers.

I guess I'm wondering what you'd suggest for minimum spec. construction materials to get a solid sound out of the pits. 2x4? 2x6? Double 2x4s? Hardwood, softwood, etc?

Cheers,
Dave

[danijel]

in case you don't know, there's an online excerpt from david yewdall's 'practical art of motion picture sound', with some info on foley pit construction:
Richard took the following films 12/29:
scroll down to 'It's really the "pits"'.

[ggegan]

I have never had to design anything for an upper floor, although I did mix foley for a while at the old Lion's Gate facility in West LA and it had a 2nd floor foley stage, but that was in an industrial building with steel beams supporting the floor so the pits were about 12" deep and had made out of concrete. They still sounded a bit hollow when running, but I recorded foley for some pretty big budget movies there and it always sounded good in the mix. With your situation, you are going to have more of a problem with hollow sounding exterior surfaces.

These are just some ideas, but I would defer to others who have done this before in upper floors.

Before you do anything, you need to make sure the structure can hold the weight, because it's going to be heavy. Is it an industrial space or residential? Are there vertical support posts directly underneath? This is a very important issue, because you could cause structural damage or injure people below you.

The other issue is whether or not you will have to move the pits once they are in place.

The deeper the pits the better, but if you aren't doing much running, you could go shallower. For concrete you could pour a slab 36"x36"x 3" and place it on top of a piece of 1" industrial isolation rubber to prevent it from coupling with the floor and transferring vibrations. That will help prevent a hollow sound. A bigger and thicker slab would be better, but I think you will find that the weight of even a 36"x36"x3" slab will be over 400lbs. Make sure you use steel mesh reinforcement.

For a dirt pit I would try to make sure the frame is at least 6" deep because you don't want to fill it to the top or you will have too much spillage. That would give you 4" of dirt, which isn't a lot, but I don't see how you could go much deeper. Most professional pits that I have seen are much deeper (12" to 24") and are made of concrete, so you might get a bit of a hollow sound, but you could try the rubber again to try to reduce it. As long as the dirt isn't wet, you could use just about any material you want, but I would tend to use Particle board because it has less resonance than plywood. Make sure it is sealed and the corners braced. You want to use decomposed granite dirt, not garden soil.

For a hardwood surface, just build a frame out of 2x4s with joists. Make it as big as you can, but a minimum of 48"x48". Top it with 1" plywood and oak or maple flooring on top of that. You probably will want to insulate it underneath between the joists or else it may sound too hollow.

Like I said, I dealt with first floor stages that had very solid foundations, so this is just going off the top of my head.