Dynamist Blog

Handmade Special Effects

The LAT's Richard Verrier reports on a surprising result of the growth of computer animation: increasing demand for foley artists, who create sound effects the old-fashioned way. From Verrier's article:

You might think that [foley artist John] Roesch's profession, which got its start with the birth of the "talkies," would be one of the first casualties of computer-generated cinema. After all, foley artists — whose craft was invented in the 1920s by an enterprising stuntman and director named Jack Foley — pride themselves on being low-tech.

But thanks to improvements in digital recording equipment and the boom in computer animation films that lack ambient sound, foley artists are becoming increasingly important players in movie production.

In the last few years, several Hollywood studios have upgraded and expanded their foley soundstages, known as "pits," to help artists make noise the old-fashioned way. They gleefully stomp on cereal boxes, crush pine cones with hammers, whack car doors with crowbars. Why synthesize a sound, they argue, when you can have the real thing?

In the last 10 years, increasing demand for foley artists has doubled their ranks to about 100, mostly in Los Angeles.

Beyond the "high tech, high touch" angle, the article is simply fun.

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