Our group (George, Louie, Lucas) got together to continue recording some foley sound for the opening scene of We need to talk about Kevin by Lynne Ramsay (2011).
We had previously marked with empty clips the exact points of where each sound event occurred. These included: footsteps (different for inside and outside the house, and barefoot or with slippers); door opening and the handle breaking; pill bottle falling. There obviously were a lot more sounds like the curtain and her clothes moving, room and outdoor sounds to do but in the three hours that is all we accomplished.
We placed the Sennheiser shotgun mic. pointed towards the floor of where the foley artist performed. Recording in mono as we didn’t have enough space to pace around the room and instead intend to add panning in post. We each took turns with performing different sounds rotating who managed the pro tools session and who communicated between rooms.
Discussing between us what would sound the best for each scenario we began with the wooden floor section in the studio for Tilda Swinton’s character waking up and walking towards the door in her small house. Carefully listening to make sure we captured the softness of her initial bare feet coming to the floorbaords and small strides. Then for the moment she slips into her slippers, as we had no actual slippers available we improvised by asking the performer to put their socks on and drag their feet. As she moved outside we switched to the stone/concrete section.
For when she knocks over a bottle of pills we dropped a small bottle of gum we had to hand along with some tiny and very light stones for more clarity in the dispersion. My favourite revalation was in trying to create the sound for the door handle being pulled off. In the foley storage there was a random metal lever that when pulled against a metal camping plate motion you can hear from the action in the leaver and slight resonance coming from the plate.
I enjoyed the process of discovery and improvisation which ultimately proved to be quite rewarding – creating sounds that fit and sync. I intend to take this process of discovery further into my project but thinking of it in a more experimental way.
