This episode was written and produced by Leila Battison.

When it comes to film sound, "Foley Artist" might be the most important job you've never heard of. These performers record custom, synchronized sound effects to create the sounds for characters' footsteps, movements, and much more. It's exhausting and delicate work, and when it's done right, the audience doesn't even notice it's there. In this episode, we tour the Warner Brothers Foley stage with Foley Artists Alyson Moore and Chris Moriana, and Foley Mixer Darrin Mann.

MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE

Float by Gentlemen Writers
Lissa by Muffuletta
Simple Things by Dexter Britain
From Scratch by Chad Lawson
Silvery Lanyard by Pitched
Heartstrings (Instrumental) by Stvn
Lo Margin by Glass Obelisk
ES No Clues Left by Arthur Benson

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View Transcript ▶︎

You’re listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz...

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You might not realize this, but when you watch a movie or a TV show, 99% percent of the sound effects you hear weren’t recorded on set. If you have a character running through the woods [sfx], breathing heavily [sfx], the wind blowing [sfx], and bushes rustling [sfx], all of those sounds were added long after they shot the scene.

Some of these sounds are put in by sound editors. They have access to sound effect libraries with thousands of recordings, and they often manipulate these using software. Other sounds are recorded live, in a studio, by people who use all kinds of objects and techniques to get them just right. These people are called Foley artists.

[music out]

Chris: My name is Chris Moriana...

Alyson: My name is Alyson Moore.

Alyson: I’m a Foley artist

Chris: I am a Foley artist.

[music in]

Chris and Alyson are part of the Foley team at Warner Brothers’ Studios, one of the biggest and most successful studios in Hollywood.

Alyson: What we're doing is performing live sound effects in sync with what's happening on the screen.

This might include the rustle of a character’s clothing [sfx], or the clank of their silverware [sfx].But Foley work goes way beyond just making noises—It’s a performance.

Chris: So a large part of our job is to look at a scene and get creative and then make it come to life.

Chris: We used to be called Foley walkers and now we're called Foley artists. And I think that's largely due to the fact that it is a performance that we are presenting.

Alyson: If someone is running in dirt in high heels [SFX] Chris or I will be in high heels in the dirt, running in sync with what's happening in the picture.

Chris: When we're walking a character, we can make that person more upbeat or more downbeat [SFX].

Alyson: It's not just getting the heel toe in sync. It's getting the emotion there and the little scuffs and you can just put a lot of personality into it.

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Chris and Alyson perform these sounds on a Foley stage outside of Los Angeles, which is also where they recorded this interview.

Chris: And the Foley stage is probably the size of two full sized garages put together.

To capture all of the different footstep sounds they need, the Foley stage is filled with all kinds of surfaces and materials.

Alyson: There's a big piece of concrete [SFX].

Next to the concrete are two large pieces of wood.

Alyson: So these wood pieces sound different. One sounds like a nice house hardwood [SFX]. The other one sounds a little more hollow, [SFX], maybe like an upstairs wood or an older house and these surfaces are large enough so that we can walk together side by side, [sfx] but we can also drag props onto those surfaces to make them sound heavier [SFX].

All around the room, there are monitors and projectors that show Chris and Alyson the scene they’re working on, so they know exactly what to do, at exactly the right time.

Alyson: We have some pits. They're called Foley pits. One has some broken glass in it for breaking glass [SFX]. Another one has some metal pieces laid on top that sound like a fire escape [SFX]. We have a water pit for water sounds, [SFX] swimming, bathtubs.

Alyson: Our dirt pit is the largest pit. Maybe a third of it is dirt [SFX], another third is gravel [SFX], and another third is sand [SFX].

Chris and Alyson have worked together on lots of different projects. Their partnership was born out of a long tradition of having Foley artists work in pairs.

[music in]

Chris: I know a lot of supervisors back in the day would prefer a man and a woman Foley artist because they preferred women to walk women characters, and men to walk men characters because there's obviously a different way they walk.

Having a partner also helps to lighten the workload.

Chris: Foley is very physical, and you're moving all day for an eight-hour time period, and for one person it's draining both mentally and physically because you're creating all day long.

Chris: And it gets very taxing. And so the ideal situation, in my opinion, is to have two Foley artists, two creative minds working.

Chris: I don't even think so much it has to be a man and a woman. Because we've gotten so good at changing roles.

Alyson: My idol was a woman named Katie Malone. And she was a tiny little dancer, but she walked Mr. T in the A-Team.

[SFX Clip: Mr. T: Then I’ll take my fist, and put my initials on your brain.]

Alyson: And so that always stuck in my head that this small, petite woman could do that.

[music out]

Chris and Alyson don’t work alone. They’re joined by another critical member of the team.

Darrin: Hi. My name is Darrin Man and I'm a Foley mixer at Warner Brothers. And what my job is, I run the computer and the microphones and capture what the artists are doing.

[music in]

Darren works in a recording booth, adjacent to where Chris and Alyson work. He communicates with them through a talkback, which is just a microphone built into his audio console.

Alyson: Darrin is a key part of our team because he makes sure that it sounds like dirt. It sounds like high heels. It's in sync.

Darrin: Some things I do is I tell them, "Oh, that doesn't quite sound right [sfx]. Can you change your shoes?" [sfx] I also change sync [sfx] I can add room.

Alyson: If we're doing car crashes [sfx] or things like that. Body falls [sfx: light body fall]. Darrin really can add some heft to it [sfx: same body fall with low end], so that we're not killing ourselves performing these sound effects.

Darrin: But one thing I always say is “Garbage in, garbage out.” I can't make the Foley artists better, but I can help enhance what they give me.

[music out]

Foley is a critical piece of the puzzle for movies, TV shows, video games, and sometimes even music videos. Chris worked on the video for Michael Jackson’s hit song Black or White.

[Music clip: Black or White Music]

Chris: We were working in this studio in Burbank, and it was at night. And in walked Michael Jackson, and we needed to do the dance sequence.

In the video, after the song is over, there’s a whole ending section where Michael Jackson dances without any music. Chris performed the sounds of Michael’s dancing feet. [sfx clip: Black or White Video (Foley Portion)]

Chris: And he sat there while we performed it and I didn't think about it too much, and I didn't get too nervous because I just did what I did.

[sfx clip continues: Black or White Video (Foley Portion)]

But when you’re performing foley, you can’t always just copy what the performers are doing on screen.

Chris: You can't move around the floor like you normally would because you have to stay in front of the microphone.

Chris: Anyhow, he came out on the stage and wanted to try foleying himself and he couldn't do it for that reason because he had to stay in one spot. And then I think it clicked in his mind, "Oh, that's why these guys are here."

[music in]

These days, lots of people have a rough idea of what foley is. But this field has changed a lot over the years.

Alyson: The thing about Foley is it wasn't really a career until probably mid-seventies. Before that it was more the editors going in and just filling in what they needed. I need a couple of footsteps here [sfx]. I need some glass crashing [sfx] here, things that were not in their library.

Eventually, studios started wanting more and more custom sounds, so they needed performers to create them. Alyson and Chris found themselves in the right place at the right time.

Chris: We call ourselves industry brats.

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Chris: I got into this business through my father's company. His name was Rocky Moriana and he did all the post production sound and music for Charlie's Angels, [sfx] Love Boat, [sfx] Hart to Hart [sfx].

Alyson: My father was a character actor named Alvey Moore. He was best known as a character named Hank Kimball on Green Acres [sfx]. And so I grew up in the business and I went on the stage with the editors to do their own Foley.

Alyson: I think there were just about 20 people doing Foley at the time. So it was a very small group. Easier to get into.

[music in]

Over the last fifty years, Foley has grown from a small Hollywood group to a global community. Today, there are Foley teams all over the world, making strange noises in perfect sync. For Alyson and Chris, it’s all in a day’s work. But sometimes, coming up with the sounds that a movie needs requires some really bizarre techniques. That’s coming up after the break.

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MIDROLL

[music in]

Alyson Moore and Chris Moriana are part of the Foley team at Warner Brothers Studios. They perform custom sound effects in sync with a film, to help immerse the audience in a scene. Darrin Mann is over in another room recording them.

Chris: I'm always checking with Darrin to ask him, "Does that sound good?" and he'll tell me, "Yes," or, "No," or he can pitch it lower, or pitch it up.

Darrin: I can add some low-end effects, so that what I get from them is enhanced by what I do.

[music out]

Darrin: So if someone's walking in from far away, they should be more roomy [sfx: fade music into SFX Distant footsteps coming closer] And as they come closer I will change perspective, so they sound like they're closer and not so far away.

For Alyson, some of her favorite projects have been animated.

Alyson: Animation is a really great fun thing to work on because you have no sound to begin with. So you're really creating a character which is fun.

Alyson: I was the sound of Olaf in Frozen [sfx]. So all of his little squeaky sounds, [sfx] and his little footsteps [SFX].

Alyson: Baymax in Big Hero 6 [sfx].

Alyson: It's such a sweet film [sfx: Baymax deflating].

Making these sounds convincing requires a lot of attention to detail. For instance, she did the Foley for a short Pixar film called Paper Man. In the short, a man tries to get a woman’s attention by folding dozens of paper airplanes, and sending them flying out his office window.

[SFX Clip: Paper Man]

Alyson: So I got to do all the paper for that. And I just brought in like about 10 different weights of paper to make everything for the paper airplanes. And I'm so proud of that project because it sounded great.

[SFX Clip: Paper Man continued]

Alyson: And then I heard the director talk about the film and he said, "Yeah, it's a silent movie." And I thought, “It's not a silent movie. It's a movie without dialogue."

Alyson also helped bring a certain superhero to life.

Alyson: I did all the Cape for that Dark Knight series and the Arkham video games.

Alyson: So let me try that, because I just happened to see what I used, sitting right over there. We've also used this cape to do dragon wings as well, because it's got a good heft to it [Sync sfx].

Alyson: And that, my friends, is the Batman cape. Here it is in the Dark Knight. [sfx]

Alyson: It's actually a very large piece of pleather. It's probably like a 10 by 10 foot piece.

Alyson: It's a big workout to do the Batman cape.

Another time, Chris got into a sticky situation creating a sound for ‘Slimer’ in the original Ghostbusters [sfx].

Chris: They wanted a gooey sound, but it couldn't be too wet. It had to be kind of more gooey. So we mixed jello, honey, oatmeal, I think we had a few shammies in there. We had this big goop of stuff on the floor and we got so dirty. And so it was all over us by the end of it, but I'll never forget. We just kept adding elements to change the texture [SFX clip: Ghost Busters “You got slimmed”].

Some things that are easy to do normally can sometimes be really hard to record.

Alyson: Cooking scenes are just, they're hard when you have to do chopping [sfx] because you can't look at what you're doing so you're looking at the screen and you're chopping a vegetable and you're hoping that you're not going to chop your finger off [sfx end], and pouring things into a cup [sfx]. Pours can be really difficult sometimes.

Chris: Eating scenes in general sometimes can be really difficult. I remember in August for Osage County, They're at the dinner table and we had to cover everybody's fork down [sfx], and glass pickup [sfx], and sip [sfx], and serving out of a bowl [sfx].

Chris: it went on forever, it seemed like.

Chris: and after a while, your mind gets tired because you're just concentrating on the littlest thing over and over and over.

[SFX clip: August for Osage County dinner scene]

The sounds that Chris and Alyson create often go well beyond what you’d actually hear in real life.

Darrin: If you were actually to hear a real NASCAR car crash, it wouldn't sound very dramatic. It just sounds very dead, plastic-y [SFX]. So what we do in Foley, is the artist will hit a car door and make it sound bigger than life [SFX].

They’ll even spice up the sound of someone drinking water.

Chris: A lot of times if you pay attention in real life, you see somebody drinking, it doesn't really make a sound, and I'll prove it to you right now. I'll just drink normally. This is what it sounds like [sync sfx]. Not that exciting.

Chris: But usually what I do when somebody's drinking out of a bottle, I change it up and I do this [Sync sfx].

Chris: Which, as you can hear, I'm sucking in air, and I've got my lips on the mouth of the bottle so that it gives that effect, because we have to make it sound like something or else it just won't sound at all.

Darrin: I consider that one of the most dangerous cues to do in Foley because they actually have to kind of breathe in the air at the same time they're doing sipping and you can choke very easily.

On their own, some of these sounds might seem exaggerated. But once it’s melded into a final mix, they tend to fit perfectly.

Alyson: With the Foley and sound effects, there's dialogue and there's music and there's all these other elements that you need to kick those sound effects through. So I think that's why it's just over the top a little bit.

Alyson: Chris will do something and the editor might say, "Oh, that sounds too big," and Chris will say, "play it with dialogue," and then sure enough, it just lays in there beautifully.

Here’s a clip from another film the team worked on, called The Lake House. This scene includes all of the key sound elements: dialogue, music, sound effects, and plenty of Foley.

[SFX clip: Lake House Clip]

[music in]

Foley artists don’t work in isolation. They often get direction and feedback from other people in the production.

Alyson: If it's a feature film, we work with a Foley editor, and the Foley editor works closely with the sound supervisor, and the sound supervisor works closely with the director.

But while there’s lots of roles in and around Foley, most directors usually don’t get involved.

Alyson: The only director I've ever worked with who was very specific, and who would come on the stage is David Fincher.

David Fincher is the director behind movies like Seven, Fight Club, The Social Network, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Alyson: He loves Foley. So he would always have notes, and always have something interesting in his mind. In Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, he wanted her to have things in her pocket, that she travels with everything she needs in her pockets. [music fade into sfx clip] and then I remember just having a bag full of jingle jangly stuff. And that was an extra track that we would have to do every time she walked [Isolated jangling SFX].

[music in]

There is so much more to Foley than we had time for in one episode. In Part 2, we’re going to explore another room in the studio that we haven’t talked about yet. The prop room. Inside, there are objects that make the sounds of fluttering moths [SFX] breaking bones, [SFX], and walking through leaves [SFX] They’ve even got a few surprising uses for lasagna, and they’ve had an uncomfortable run in with the secret service. That’s all coming up, next time.

Twenty Thousand Hertz is hosted by me, Dallas Taylor, and produced out of the studios of Defacto Sound, a sound design team dedicated to making TV, film, and games sound amazing. For some sonic inspiration, follow Defacto Sound on Instagram.

This episode was written and produced by Leila Battison, and Casey Emmerling, with help from Sam Rinebold. It was sound edited and mixed by Soren Begin and Jai Berger.

Thanks to our guests Alyson Moore, Chris Moriana, and Darrin Mann for taking a day out of their busy schedule to talk to me. Also, we couldn’t have done this episode without the generosity of The Barn, which houses one of the Foley stages that the team works out of. A huge thanks to everyone there as well.

If you want more Twenty Thousand Hertz in your life, or you’d like to see some behind the scenes, or help us name episodes, or just chat with us, you can find us all over the place; Facebook, Twitter, on our subreddit, and you can always get in touch by writing hi@20k.org.

Thanks for listening.

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