[Weekly Update] Doing Foley (Patreon)

It's the last month of summer here in Montreal. Get your exercise in before the days get to short and the temperatures get too low!

CHANNEL UPDATE

Hope you enjoy our last video on Chocolate and Jeeja Yanin. That was a fun movie to make, mainly because it was a fun movie to watch. It's always fun to see how many people instantly became fans of Jeeja after watching the movie. And pretty much everyone agrees, she deserves better.

As for our upload schedule, nothing has changed. We still have Dangal on the immediate docket, followed by Switch.

Two additional video ideas has been added to our list:

1) Suggested by The Sinless Assassin on Discord, we'll talk about the "American Weebo Movies" of the 80s and 90s, from Karate Kid to Samurai Cop, From Ninja Turtles to Bloodsport. I'm currently collecting these films in preparation.

2) Copyright infringement movies: We'll talk about how it was common practice around the world to just borrow (or steal) popular IPs, from Turkish Star Wars, to Indian Superman, from Italian Jaws, to Thailand Ultraman. We'll also contemplate wether or not the copyright system is broken, and how this culture continues to live on in fan film projects.

MEDIA TALK

So, I'm currently sound editing a martial arts short film I shot last year, and it was legit the hardest thing I've ever done for a film. Action scenes are often filmed without sound, and I have to reconstruct everything from the ground up.

I always knew it is complicated, but it's a whole different thing to actually do it. Foley for the body sound, finding the right grunts and breathing, the foot steps, the swooshes. The entire sound scape is coded, abstract, and based on conventions. One wrong sound, and the whole thing immediately sounds fake.

What do I mean? Well, if you ever saw a foley artist at work, you'd notice that most of the on screen sound are made from completely unrelated things. Bone breaking sound is made of twisting celeries. Punching and kicking may come from slapping an orange. Walking over snow is two sandbags rubbing together.

And if you have not seen a foley artist at work, look for them on YouTube. It's a lot of fun.

When you replace these familiar fake sound with actual realistic sound, it'll sound absolutely strange. These sound are coded to be "cinematic", it is what we expect to appeal in film. So if you put an actual punching sound in a fight scene, the punch will lack power, but also sounds, paradoxically, cartoony.

This coded nature is most apparent in older movies. Back then, sound were recorded on magnetic tapes and are much harder to do complex work on. So movies like Drunken Master, or Fearless Hyena, have much simpler sound scape. Due to technological limitation, these sound also lacks high and low frequencies. They sound like they are coming from the phone.

If you use those old sound effects on a modern movie, they sound really out of place. Conversely, if you filmed an older style movie, and put modern high quality audio over it, it'll ruin the style.

Our hearing is so good, it can tell the difference between pouring hot tea and pouring cold tea. Again, look it up on YouTube. It's true.

So, that's how my weekend is going. Been struggling to match expectation with a limited budget and limited library of sound.

Also Finder crashed on me earlier. So this editing is extra difficult.

Anyway, hopefully I can get this film done by the end of winter, and I can show it to you all! See you in our next update!