Zombies devouring human flesh, thunder booming over a haunted castle, the headless horseman’s horse galloping full speed. These classic horror film sounds have one thing in common.
They’re made using the largely invisible artform of Foley art.
“There is a performative aspect to the creation of the sound that is done specifically for the original scene [or] shot that is in need of some sort of original creative piece of sound," said Deirdre Maitre, a senior lecturer in Washington University’s film and media studies program.
Foley art, a subset of sound design, happens after film sets wrap production. Artists re-create and enhance sounds such as footsteps, thunder, creaky floors and heartbeats that microphones on set struggle to pick up or isolate from dialogue and ambient sound.
These crafted sounds create suspense, set up scenes and draw viewers into a fictitious world by using items that could be found at home or even in your back pocket. The 1973 horror classic, "The Exorcist," used the sound of a Foley artist twisting an old leather wallet to create the audible illusion of the possessed child’s neck turning all the way around.
“How can we make this sound as believable as possible?” said Maitre. “Ultimately, that's the goal. We're trying to make sure that the audience is in the story world as deeply as possible. That suspension of disbelief is hugely important and the responsibility of the Foley artist."
Conjuring believability is often an exercise in creative experimentation. Traditional Foley studios are eclectic and filled with props including tree branches, cooking utensils, thunder sheets and tons of food.
“Foley artists use animal meat to produce the sound of bodies falling to the ground or bodies against each other,” Maitre said. “They'll actually get 10 pounds of chicken and throw it onto a table or throw it against another piece of chicken to produce that really believable flesh-on-flesh sound.”
Coconut shells cut in half produce a convincing sound of the headless horseman’s horse galloping to scare off Ichabod Crane. Not scary enough? Biting into a juicy watermelon or squishing cooked butternut squash in your hands becomes the sound of zombies chowing down on human remains.
“Obviously you can't re-create these moments where a zombie is actually biting into a human's neck,” Maitre said.
Rules to Foley
Maitre is not a Foley artist by trade, but the independent filmmaker incorporates the technique in her work and teaches it to her students.
“I'm a huge proponent of working with the [Foley] artists and keeping this really important, albeit invisible, art alive despite all the different technological resources that we have."
In a soundproof studio at WashU’s Harvey Media Center, Maitre gave a team of St. Louis Public Radio reporters a live demonstration of how Foley artists bring scary sounds to life. She re-created a scene from the 1959 horror sci-fi film, "The Return of the Fly," starring St. Louis native Vincent Price.
Along a table she set up her props including a stack of books, clunky boots, a stainless steel frying pan, metal tongs and a pink stun gun. Positioned nearby were her recorder and microphone. On a large TV monitor, Maitre pulled up the film’s pivotal scene when Price’s character and the female lead discover that its protagonist had been turned into a vengeful human fly.
“There's quite a bit going on here,” Maitre said. “We have the whirring of the machines. A closeup of the meters. And then of course we have this terrible creature and the blood-curdling scream.”
Beforehand, she combed through the film and concocted a list of moments in a spreadsheet that would benefit from Foley — that’s called spotting for sound. Typically, a postproduction supervisor and post producer would do this and then hand it off to the artist.
“Foley art isn't the type of work that is done just instantaneously,” said Maitre.
From the long list, Maitre chose the whirring machine, the human fly and the blood-curdling scream. To produce the fullness of the whirring machine in the laboratory, Maitre searched her home for objects to help her create and layer the sound.
“I wanted to make sure that there wasn't just the sound of one machine whirring,” she said. “I wanted multiple machines whirring.”
With a pair of metal tongs, she stirred them around an empty stainless steel frying pan, clicked through the settings of her clean air filter and turned on her doggy cam. Her pink stun gun replicated the machine’s meters.
“It produces an amazing sound,” Maitre said. “But I would never bring this object, this weapon to a set.”
She added that film productions can be a lot like construction zones.
“You have to adhere to many local and state safety laws as well as prioritize the health safety of your cast and crew."
The chorus of manufactured sounds paints the aural picture of a whirring machine in a secret laboratory.
“Not only are we [finding and] creating the sounds, but we're also positioning it in the scene exactly where you want it,” Maitre added. “And then [we’re] enhancing it.”
His name was Jack
For nearly a century, Foley art has been a staple in the film and television industry. Following the 1920s silent film era, “talkies,” or pictures with synchronized sound, gained traction. However, instead of music and sound effects, many of the early talkies prioritized dialogue.
“The microphone technology was still developing,” Maitre said. “So you didn't actually hear a tremendous amount of sound effects or even music during the first early talkies, because it was so focused on just getting the dialogue to line up, to synchronize with the picture.”
Even with advancements in technology at the time, including microphones and recording equipment, there were limitations.
“There was no editing,” Maitre said. “You had to create the sound in the order in which it appeared in the film. And it all had to be done live because this idea of layering the tracks wasn't possible. So there were much more involved live performances of a scene that were then recorded.”
As film technology advanced, so did the ambition of stuntman, writer and director Jack Foley. Universal Studios hired Foley as talkies popularized. He would go on to pioneer the artform that was later named after him. A lot of his work focused on mastering the unique patter of footsteps of each actor he worked with.
While Foley went uncredited on the silver screen, it was hard to miss his contributions. He crafted the soundscapes of the classic 1931 horror films "Dracula" and "Frankenstein," as well as the 1960 picture "Spartacus."
Foley helped solidify those bone-chilling sounds we’ve all come to associate with horror films. But as advancements in technology helped give rise to the craft, Maitre worries about what those future advancements could mean for the artform.
“It is deeply concerning to me that we potentially might turn to automation and artificial intelligence to systematically from start to finish design an entire scene's soundscape without the creative collaboration, performance, ingenuity, as well as just originality that Foley artists and sound designers are educated, trained and practiced to perform,” she said.
Maitre is doing her part to keep it alive. The independent filmmaker directed the award-winning documentary “Sound is Half the Picture” highlighting the world of sound design.
"Appreciation for sound artists is first and foremost crucial,” Maitre said. “If we aren't recognizing these invisible art forms then it's like out of sight out of mind, and then they disappear.”
