Gonna be doing some foley sounds in the woods. I need a running sound affect and I am gonna capture this by having some one run in place. However I am confused as to which how I should go about this. For theses types of sounds what levels should the audio be at? should I peak in between -20 and-6 or is it okay for it to be lower at lets say -40?
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Foley sounds and Audio levels
- Thread starter mrpink89
- Start date
What kind of running Foley? What perspective(s)? What gear are you using? What is your room like?
Most of the time the answer is going to be "You must rely on your ears and your experience," because Foley is the most subjective of all audio art forms. There are no "cookie cutter" solutions.
I have my "ball park" settings for when I do Foley; loud sounds will come in near -2dB, and everything else sort of falls into place. But this is the result of my almost 12 years of experience with my gear and my room. And even then there are lots of exceptions to my own personal guidelines.
Since you seem to be in Foley mode I would suggest reading "The Foley Grail" by Vanessa Ament. BTW, she's a very nice lady. Here's her IMDB:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0024612/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1
http://www.amazon.com/The-Foley-Grail-Performing-Animation/dp/0240811259
Most of the time the answer is going to be "You must rely on your ears and your experience," because Foley is the most subjective of all audio art forms. There are no "cookie cutter" solutions.
I have my "ball park" settings for when I do Foley; loud sounds will come in near -2dB, and everything else sort of falls into place. But this is the result of my almost 12 years of experience with my gear and my room. And even then there are lots of exceptions to my own personal guidelines.
Since you seem to be in Foley mode I would suggest reading "The Foley Grail" by Vanessa Ament. BTW, she's a very nice lady. Here's her IMDB:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0024612/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1
http://www.amazon.com/The-Foley-Grail-Performing-Animation/dp/0240811259
One more time...
It's Foley with a capital F.
Also, you are not doing Foley if you are not performing live to picture; you are collecting sound effects if you are cutting them in after the fact.
I really recommend against going out into the field to record footsteps; unless you close mic (I mean REALLY close) you will pick up too much extraneous noise.
You should be doing all the Foley work on a Foley stage, or a reasonable facsimile thereof. I don't have the room for Foley pits so I had to improvise. For dirt, grass, leaves, etc. I put a blanket on the (carpeted) floor of the studio, put down (clean, unused) cat litter and select the appropriate foliage noise makers. I have shredded cardboard, various "Easter" grasses, old recording tape in various widths, shredded newspaper, and, if the season is right, I'll use real leaves. I have a bucket of aquarium pebbles for gravel. I mix and match all of these items until I get the sound that I like. I have a number of 3' X 4' pieces of various types of wood for hard floors (oak, light and heavy plywoods, etc.); some of them have vinyl and hard tiles glued to them. If I want a more resonant sound I put them on a platform that I built. For concrete I use the basement floor just outside my studio door; I put up a couple of Gobos to deaden the basement resonance. For water Foley I put down a tarp and use a kiddy pool; the wet vac is handy for accidents and to drain the kiddy pool after the fact. I then do mic selection. As my studio is small I have to close mic; otherwise I pick up too much "room."
As for levels try between -30dB and -20dB. Keep in mind that it is not an exact science. The noisier your mic/recorder the hotter a signal you want; otherwise you end up piling noise on top of noise.
It's Foley with a capital F.
Also, you are not doing Foley if you are not performing live to picture; you are collecting sound effects if you are cutting them in after the fact.
I really recommend against going out into the field to record footsteps; unless you close mic (I mean REALLY close) you will pick up too much extraneous noise.
You should be doing all the Foley work on a Foley stage, or a reasonable facsimile thereof. I don't have the room for Foley pits so I had to improvise. For dirt, grass, leaves, etc. I put a blanket on the (carpeted) floor of the studio, put down (clean, unused) cat litter and select the appropriate foliage noise makers. I have shredded cardboard, various "Easter" grasses, old recording tape in various widths, shredded newspaper, and, if the season is right, I'll use real leaves. I have a bucket of aquarium pebbles for gravel. I mix and match all of these items until I get the sound that I like. I have a number of 3' X 4' pieces of various types of wood for hard floors (oak, light and heavy plywoods, etc.); some of them have vinyl and hard tiles glued to them. If I want a more resonant sound I put them on a platform that I built. For concrete I use the basement floor just outside my studio door; I put up a couple of Gobos to deaden the basement resonance. For water Foley I put down a tarp and use a kiddy pool; the wet vac is handy for accidents and to drain the kiddy pool after the fact. I then do mic selection. As my studio is small I have to close mic; otherwise I pick up too much "room."
As for levels try between -30dB and -20dB. Keep in mind that it is not an exact science. The noisier your mic/recorder the hotter a signal you want; otherwise you end up piling noise on top of noise.
I'll chime in here and say doing Foley work outside of a studio is hard to get usable audio but it can be done. I recently needed some audio of walking and running on a metal grating type floor but I had no way to do this in my home studio. To the woods we went, there was a metallic flooring there that was perfectly suited and it was quiet. I did a few takes just to gather one shot samples and then I tried to do some proper Foley work. I had someone with an iPad with the clips they were performing to, I had a loud noise at the start of the clip so I could easily sync up later on. Recorded them with an NTG-2 in a pistol grip and then on a boom as they walked up and down. I made sure to keep the microphone within 10 cm's of their feet so I didn't have to really bump up the gain and get background noise in the recoding. Kept it around -12 db just incase the audio level peaked.
Hopefully that helps you out a bit.
Hopefully that helps you out a bit.
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