Foley tips?

F

Foo-bu

New member
Does anyone have any tips for recording foley sounds? I recently got a job where I need to do a bunch but i'm finding that a lot of the sounds I need to record are often so quiet (like paper rustling or clothing movements) that I need to crank my pres all the way and when I normalize them to make them louder, I get tonnes of room noise.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!
 
Well you need to be in a very very quiet room (I suggest trying to find an anechoic room in your area where you could probably do some recording for free (if it's in a school or something)).

We tried doing some foley at school in a fairly big studio but the HVAC system always comes out too loud.

You could build a booth consisting of panels of rockwool or fiberglass. That would give you a very dead area and would cut out some noise from the rest of the room.

Also, you do not have to record HOT in 24 bits, so even if you peak at -20 no one cares (big threads on this on the PSW forum).

These are a few tips.... You could buy the sound ideas collection, which are (to my ears) getting a little old, but they work well for movies or videogames.
 
thanks for the advice. I do have the sound ideas library but there's still a bunch of sounds that are missing or that would be quicker to do as foley so thats why i was asking.

is there a link to the PSW forum?
 
Just make sure you turn off the AC and fridge, any fans or flourescent lights, anything that might be a source of noise. If you are in the same room as your computer that can be a problem also.

You will also need a clean preamp and convertor. If you are trying to do this on Behringer/Edirol type stuff you are in for a challenge.
 
This is a great site with a lot of free sounds in WAV, FLAC and MP3 format:

http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/

Obviously you will need to eliminate all noise from the room. This means everything, especially the AC.

You may also want to get a shotgun mic or something similar. Something very directional. And then a very clean preamp. The mic should also have a very low self noise although that probably won't be much of an issue.
 
Foley.

I just finished a couple of projects with involving foley, probably about 20 hours worth. What I was told you need to do it properly (from a Foley artist that has worked on just about everything):

1) Direct microphone for the sound (shotgun!!)
2) Room Microphone (LDC)
3) Quiet room that you can vary the amount of diffusion
4) Lots of props


With a good shotgun microphone you shouldn't have any problems getting rid of any room tones that occur. If your ambient noise in the room is too much you could try some noise-reducing plug-ins.

I found getting good clothes sounds was to take some cloth in my hand, and rub it together as the character moves.

IMHO, leave the sound libraries for the SFX guys, and try and create as much stuff as possible. It's half the fun. The Sound Effects sounds very muffled to my ears (like an old cassette tape).


LAYER!! Layer everything, it makes for huge sounds, and you can always take them out later.
 
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I got a portable recorder recently (the H4/Handy), and was messing around doing stuff like this. I found that the best place (for me) to get a really quiet room was my car (obviously just sitting in the driveway). But then again, this was w/ a portable recorder, so I didn't have to worry about running wires and whatnot.

The car is definitely the quietest room I've got. Good luck, just throwing that out there.
 
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