Adding sound effects to cartoons is fairly easy in the age of computers. Sound effects are recorded, used, shared, archived, sold, and used again. But in the early days of animation, production crews had to use whatever they could to reproduce the sounds they wanted. And they could get pretty creative! See Disney foley artists making sound effects and then be surprised at how they were used in the finished product. What a cool job! (via Digg)
Foley artists are underappreciated. In many high-budget movies (and even lower budget movies), almost all the sounds you hear are created by foley artists--even just people running, walking, opening doors.
ReplyDeleteListen to the sounds of punches and kicks in a fight scene--all completely fake and unrealistic, but we are so used to them in movies that if you used the 'real' sounds audiences would be disappointed.
I imagine foley artists went through life listening to sounds most people ignored, finding the source, figuring out what else it sounded like, and cataloging it in memory, while a spouse babbled away about Aunt Ethel.
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