Last Saturday I had an intensive foley session in the studio, where we manage to record the essential foley material under three hours. We where two sound engineers in the control desk and one foley artist in the foley room. It was my first time in the studio as well as for the foley artist so our approach was very intuitive instead of methodical. The recording went through all of the film, recording steps, clothes, breathing and some special effects like the movement of cutlery and plates. We managed to be very efficient in our work, I think this was due our great communication throughout the session, we regularly spoke on the talkback and everyone shared ideas equally.

For the session we used a stereo pair of Neumann KM 184, positioned in the lateral sides of the foley room, and a Neumann U87 in the centre. It was crucial to use condenser microphone to get a very clean signal, specially for the high end of the sounds. The film is going to be mixed down to stereo because it is intended for streaming platforms, so low end was not really needed.

In the picture above you can see the right position KM 184, the centre U87 and the foley artist dealing with some props in the middle (guy with grey shirt). In several occasions we made use of the foley pits that the studio has to record footsteps and other sounds, for example in the picture we can see a box over the foley pit that created a specific sound when moved around.

For recording the steps taken on an electric staircase, we used a small steel lather with metal steps and some old prop shoes. This gave us a very realistic result that was what we where searching for. Also in the picture above you can see the left KM 184 that could not be seen in the first picture. I don’t know yet if I’m going to mix some of the foley stereo but it is nice to just have the recordings for just in case, those recordings could even used to create special effects in scenes where the main character is walking through specific environments.

Finally we recorded everything into a single session. In the picture above you can see that we projected our film in the tv of the studio, this made the recording process much more comfortable since I had only worked on a laptop before.

The next step in the production is to correctly organise all the sounds recorded in the sessions in clearly named tracks, so it’s easier to work with. Then I will have to edit each audio clip to be correctly synced with the film, this might take a while because we recorded a lot of sounds and after that the diegetic sound section of the film will be completed.