In Sound for Screen week 4, a small group of classmates and I went into the foley studio and small composition studio at LCC to record and experiment with the art of recording foley alongside a scene from the film ‘We Need to Talk About Kevin’. From the beginning of the session we noticed the immense amount of variables and factors to consider when recording effects to screen.

We used a single AKG large condenser microphone and a Senhiser shotgun microphone during the recording, and ran a Pro Tools session as well with the imported video. We all switched off between running the DAW and experimenting with live tracking for both footsteps and dropping a pill bottle, both taking place towards the end of our assigned scene. Experimenting with weight and different tonal qualities dependent on which material we used to walk on were basic factors in the output for recording the bare footsteps, however, the most difficult task seemed to be getting the tempo of the footsteps aligned to picture. In the end we just decided it would be easier to manipulate in the DAW, rather than continuously reattempt the full scene. I quickly developed a great admiration for foley artists.

Another factor I noticed and thought about when recording was the mic placement in relation to the scene. There was something off about our initial microphone placement and after later evaluation I concluded that despite choices in leveling certain sounds over others to serve the narrative is completely separate from the techniques used to record them. If I redid this exercise I would emphasize recreation of the spaces in the scenes in order to represent the narrative of the film, rather than just attempt to recreate the visual sound objects.

Here is a screenshot of my exported Pro Tools session for this exercise.