I decided to look into the foley video I found last year to see exactly how they made the sounds for the film as I will be doing a lot of foley. I found the same video again and feel my reflection will be different this time.
You can see how some of the foley was done in a quiet place, for example, the footsteps on sand. Again the sound was written into the script. It was a dream come true.
Most sounds were made exactly as you expect. For other sounds they got creative. Crabs legs for the monster walking. Celery and lettuce for the ear opening on the monster. The sound the monsters makes of the echolocation was a taser on a grape.
The thing about this film was that they were making sounds for things you usually don’t hear. And the characters mostly walk around barefoot toe to heel to not make a lot of noise. The sound was dictated by the theory of the film. Wide shots didn’t have footstep sounds as if the monsters could hear it so could you if not then only on close-ups.
This helps a ton! I really didn’t think about designing sounds based on camera angles and the theory and logic of the film in such a huge context. But again a film like this where sound is everything and the dialogue is almost non-existent means the sound design really needs to be thought off just as much as the visuals.
They also resaid a lot of the same things in this video like the others but a new insight was into the mixing process. They started with nothing and then built up the sounds.
They said the process was “let’s start from zero. Work our way up and up” They wanted to make the audience aware of the sounds they were making.
Another small insight with this interview with John the director was the rules of the universe and the sound design that they accumulated throughout production that helped layer the film with authenticity.
“This sets up the rules of the movie in the perspective of sound. When the camera shots are close up you can really hear the sounds and footsteps up close. But when it’s wide you can’t really hear it. Sound design is huge and the main character of the family in this film”
This quote really just keeps rehashing the importance of the sound design perspective and rules they’ve created. I’m going to write down the key important rules of this movie and reflect on them when I begin to write my plan for the clip.
This last video again rehashed a lot of the same information but one key insight was that they predominantly used a lot of new sounds for this production. They said they have a lot of sounds they could use but they felt they wanted to replicate this and create an authentic experience. Although they said they had a few gems in the locked such as a specific stick-breaking sound that they might not be able to record again that they’ve used in this film.
I’m going to try to record everything myself is possible without using any library sounds for a real test of my abilities.