Foley is the art of creating detailed sounds for film, like the clacking of heels or kisses between two people. Lara Dale, a New Mexico native and former ballet dancer, shared about her career as a foley artist and its importance in film during the Las Cruces International Film Festival on April 11.
During the session, she highlighted her own work, explained the effort that went into creating the sounds, and described how the sounds can even be personal to actors or characters. Dale shared her techniques in creating footsteps for different characters on “The Expendables 3”. She further discussed how getting those steps requires a level of commitment to the film. She also spoke about how sound can make a film come to life and how the detailed sounds that come from foley can push the film into a new realm of storytelling.
Dale showed how some sounds heard on screen may be completely different from what is actually being done behind the scenes. Sometimes a sound that may be considered the manliest boot sound is some everyday shoe found at the thrift store. Dale mentioned her experiences finding shoes that are specific to different characters and how she would explore stores looking for new ways to make sounds that were specific to actors.
Dale shared that if anyone could get anything out of this workshop, it should be that “pre is post” and what that truly means for filmmakers.
“How you understand the post process determines how good you are at organizing in the preprocess and how little we have to clean up for you afterwards; then you will become one of those filmmakers everybody wants to invest in, because of lack of understanding about post production process is the single biggest reason things go over budget,” Dale said.
