Questions about foley.

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Anna.

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Hi, I have a few questions about recording foley for a sound assessment.
I'm replicating the sounds from a scene in Disney's 'Tangled'. There is crowd chattering in most of the scene. I'm wondering what is the best way to record this in a studio?

Also, the film is about Rapunzel, so of course I will have to record hair foley. I have tested recording my own hair movements, but it doesn't have the effect I am looking for.

Any suggestions are appreciated, thanks.
 
If it's for an assessment then you must remember it's Foley, with a capital letter, as it's a proper name.

Also remember Foley techniques are not real! The idea is to record sounds that appear to be what the view-listener accepts as real. So real hair brushing doesn't sound like Rapunzel brushing her hair, so you recreate something that does. You need to analyse the characteristic of what sounds should sound like. Twenty years ago had me in a wildlife series studio making flapping wing noises for images that had no sound at all as the lens was so long! Old fashioned motorcycle leather gauntlets, flapped together made brilliant eagle flaps. So experiment with combing stiffer materials. For crowd scenes without a crowd, it's a multitrack recording of a few voices, layered and layered and layered. Be careful with whoops or shouts because they stand out. You layer them and extend them to whatever length you need.
 
Thank you! I have been experimenting with different fabrics in op shops, and I think I have almost found what I need.
I have another question for you. I am writing all of the sounds in a sound design plan and have to label them under Foley, SFX, ADR, and atmosphere. In the crowd scene it is mainly background noise. Would I put that under Foley or atmosphere?
 
I'm not sure the categories really make sense as they seem to be descriptive rather than technical. Foley would normally be a spot effect source, the gravel crunches and cartoon style punches that the Foley performer does watching the action. So a manually performed glass smash would be Foley, but a CD sourced glass smash would be a spot sound effect. Your list makes sense as a source list, but in the sound design plan, they are just sources, and the actual device that makes them happen isn't that important. For education, then the real decider would seem to be duration, and the need for accuracy, so atmos would have your crowd scene track. That couldn't be Foley really because it's a multi-layered construct, not something able to be done on cue by a limited number of people. ADR is an odd one too, it's rather like you've been asked to consider everything audio, when really that column would be dialogue, and the split between live recorded and ADR is kind of a sub division, not really a separate strand.

Your crowd noise would be atmos, unless it had sync moments in it, then it could perhaps go into SFX there are no really correct answers here, because you could justify swapping columns with many of these. Sometimes these lists can be useful in considering the number of mixer channels, so the you need to consider if the sources are mono or stereo too!
 
Sorry, I should have been more specific. My assignment involves listing all of these sounds in those 4 categories, and then next semester I have to recreate all of the sounds for the clip. So anything I list as Foley must be recorded in the studio, and anything I list as SFX must be from the effects library that I have access to.
I think I will list most of it as atmos, and then I will list characters in the foreground as Foley.
 
Well, just to start, the definitions are pretty arbitrary and as soon as you get out into the real world you don't worry what things are called. However, may I offer the following definitions that may help:

Foley: Effects recorded in a studio for your specific project.

SFX: (From your definition) Sound effects from an existing library

ADR: Re-recorded dialogue done in a post production studio but synchronised with the lips of actors on the screen

Atmosphere: General sounds recorded on location but not involving dialogue. For example, if a scene was shot beside a river or busy road, sometime during the set up I'd record a minute or two of this background sound with no other activity. It's mainly used to cover the sound changes during edits.

As you can see, it's pretty arbitrary but something like the above isn't far wrong. However, you can see that, sometimes, your Foley may be a sound effect or you may use a library effect as atmosphere if you aren't happy with the location recording. (But I understand how school projects work and know you have to define the undefinable!)
 
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