Wonderful recent piece from The New Yorker about Foley sound effects. The piece profiles two modern Foley artists employed by Skywalker Sound, Shelley Roden and John Roesch. It also gives some background information on Foley itself, including some fun film trivia, like how Roesch used raw liver, jello, and other random items to create the iconic sound for Spielberg’s titular character E.T.. I especially enjoyed the section wherein they discuss the the goofy but glorious lexicon some of the Foley artists used to describe what they are looking for:
Roden estimated that only twenty per cent of sounds onscreen are generated by the actual objects represented. This presents certain challenges: when a sound cannot be described by its referent, language starts to falter. Over time, Roesch, Roden, and Curtis have developed a lexicon to describe what they want. Sounds are poofy, slimy, or naturale; they might need to be slappier, or raspier, or nebby (nebulous). They are hingey, ticky, boxy, zippy, or clacky; they are tonal, tasty, punchy, splattery, smacky, spanky. They might be described phonetically—a “kachunk-kachunk-kachunk,” or a “scritcher”—or straightforwardly (“fake”). Tools, too, have their own names. Shings make shiny metallic sounds—a sword being drawn from its scabbard—and wronkers give the impression of metal sliding across a hard surface. “Like, chhhrtz,” Roesch clarified.
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