Believe it or not, I’ve known about Foley since I was a kid. The first time I learned about it was in exploring the extra features on the Brother Bear DVD, one of which was titled Making Noise: The Art of Foley.
As a naturally creative child, this prospect absolutely fascinated me, and I became more aware of the sound that was present in the movies I watched, and even briefly looked into the process behind becoming a Foley artist myself. I have also been hyper-aware about sound used in movies since childhood, after a fascinating and memorable conversation with my parents in which they explained the power of sound in film and its ability to direct thought, emotion, and even physical action/reaction. I remember my mom specifically telling me how the backbone of horror films was the sound. Turn the volume all the way down, watch the horror movie all the way through, and the fear factor is demolished. An interesting concept which has stuck with me ever since.
Here in more recent years, I was scrolling through Facebook randomly one day and came across a similar video, which explored the sound scripting and the foley that was used in the hit film, A Quiet Place.
After watching the video about foley artist Gary Hecker, all of the fascination and respect I have had for sound in film came flooding back. One thing in particular that caught my attention was when Gary said “Foley is a craft, and, a lot of people try it, and they fail at it because you just have to have certain qualities… it’s an art form”. This kind of hit home for me a little bit, just because I have looked into becoming a foley artist before, and am a current traditional artist now. It makes me wonder; is foley something I might have been able to do well? A more general question though is, can foley be taught?
Take a traditional art form like painting for example. You can teach someone the fundamentals of painting, and coach them through what and what not to do. You can critique their attempts, and help them improve themselves in those areas. But you can’t inherently inspire people, and to be blunt, you can’t make someone BE a real artist. You can help people to imitate real art, but you can’t supply the passion, the creativity, and the emotion behind what true art is. But, as a side question, can you tell the difference between heavy coaching/training without inherent passion and natural ability if the outcome looks the same? And if you can’t, does it even matter?
I’d like to apply these same questions now to foley, given that it has been deemed by so many to be the art of sound. It makes sense that some people just succeed at it while others don’t, like Gary mentioned, but if this is the case, is it something that those who are passionate about the pursuit of foley as a career can be taught? And if so, can you tell post production?
Leave your thoughts in the comments below, and tell me what you think about this fascinating way of producing sound for film.
Kortney Crosby 
You’re going to make a good teacher, because these are exactly the kinds of questions good teachers wonder about: can a particular thing be taught? If so, how? If somewhat, which parts? If not, how to encourage students to continue doing it even though it can’t be? Do you suppose you will be able to find a space in your art program as a teacher for sound work? Sound poems, performance art – there might be room for them, now especially, since the tools to produce them are so relatively cheap compared to 20 years ago.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m really glad you asked this question, because I honestly haven’t thought about this before (which is kind of crazy given what I just wrote about!). I would absolutely LOVE to incorporate sound into my future program, especially given my particular stance on learning as a whole; in short, I believe everything is connected, and all forms of learning encourage the other forms of learning. Knowledge is a vast web, and to compartmentalize it into fields and subjects which are then stripped of their relations with other fields and subjects is to do the entire system of learning and those doing the learning a great disservice. I will certainly keep the art of sound in my mind moving forward towards my career as an art teacher. Thank you so much for bringing it up!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I really like the idea of teaching more kids about this because I feel like it’s a dying art form. When you look at popular media nowadays, they’re all quick videos and movies and instead of foley noises they try and cover everything with a song in the top 50 playlist. I would really like to see the art of foley make a return, similar to how vinyl (for some weird reason) did but outside of film. I would also like to clarify I don’t think it’s dead, plenty of films still use it, I just think the tendency moving forward is to use music instead of any sounds, even the natural ones. I think it would be cool to see, say an instagram channel or Tik Tok (am I spelling that right? it’s like a short video player, like vine but you can’t pause it, kids these days I dunno) dedicated to showing how some of these sounds could be created.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I absolutely agree with you in that kids are often quick to jump aboard the “top hits” music train, blaring it at full blast in any media they produce and giving no real thought whatsoever to good and quality sound production – just think about the high school and middle school videos created back in your own grade-school days. Creating an open platform aimed at the public (which I think is what you are getting at? correct me if I’m reading you wrong), especially a younger audience, could create a better awareness and appreciation for sound in media, and bridge that gap that seems to have formed.
LikeLike
And maybe those kids will need a place to keep all this stuff they’re creating so others can interact with and comment on it – maybe a blog perhaps? 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person