For this Listening Party Blog post, I’d like to focus on the sounds we hear during animated shows. The people behind these sounds are called foley artists, and they are the mastermind sound designers who make the sound effects for music, film, and tv shows. These artists are relevant to our audio production class because they produce and record exaggerated sound effects using items we probably wouldn’t think of using to create said sounds. They have to deal with raw sound in post-production to create the memorable sounds we hear in our favorite shows. It was very entertaining to see the different ways foley artists are able to achieve these sound effects.
The video I chose to watch of foley artists in action was entitled “Old Disney Sound Effects | Side by Side Comparison (Jimmy Macdonald)” posted by Thomas H. Smith on YouTube. In this video we can see Jimmy Macdonald and others using a wide variety of objects to create these sound effects. I couldn’t begin to tell you what kind of recording devices they used to capture these sounds, but I imagine they had to use some limiters and equalizers in post-production to achieve the desired level of output, especially the sounds that required bursts of air to create an acceptable amount of spike in the audio waves. I imagine that finding the correct objects to make this type of exaggerated noise took a lot of trial and error, but that is the genius behind the foley artist craft. Some of my favorite objects used were the trombone without a mouth piece to create a sputtering car engine, different shaped pipes to create the horns for a train and steamboat, and coconut shells on a piece of wood to create the galloping of a horse.