An Overview of Music and Foley in Film

As detailed in my project proposal, during the past academic year I have participated in different studies and activities that taught me about how sound is effectively used in media to enhance the audience's experience and immersion when watching or listening to said media. The following is an essay I wrote about this subject and details the roles of composers and foley artists in film production. I thought this material was very relevant to my final major project and it's my own work so I saw no reason not to include it. The information about Foley could help me a lot with different aspects of my project too. The prompt for the essay was "Produce a report describing the roles of a Foley Artist and Film Composer." Please enjoy reading.

Defining the Role of a Composer for Film

A film composer writes and scores the music for a movie. Their main job is to communicate certain emotions that a scene wants to portray. The music acts as a powerful tool in cinematography which can shift the tone of a scene and subliminally communicate other thoughts and feelings to the audience. Additionally, the composer can use melodic motifs that reference characters or ideas in the film which can be repeated throughout the film which can help drive certain elements of the film and direct the audience towards a certain emotion.

Historically, the first use of music in cinematography was during cinema’s early years during the “silent film” era during 1894-1929. Films didn’t have the capability to play their own audio so cinemas would usually have a live pianist or organ player playing alongside the film. The music played originally would be classical music or was completely improvised with the player being given a cue sheet to match the mood of the film.

In 1908, Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns would write the score for “The Assassination of the Duke of Guise” (“L’Assassinat du duc de Guise”) which was an approximately 17 minute long film written by Henri Levedan about Henry III of France’s plot to eliminate his rival, The Duke of Guise. This was the first film to have a designated soundtrack made specifically for the film. From here, films with their own designated soundtrack became more commonplace with some films like Thomas Dixon Jr. 's 1916 The Fall of Nation (score written by Victor Herbert) making use of an entire symphony orchestra to play its music.

During the late 1920s the development of the “talkie”, in which sound would be synchronised with the film, would take place. The industry wouldn’t fully mature until the early 30s but the first film released with synchronised sound was The Jazz Singer in 1927, a full feature length film with synchronised music by Louis Silvers and full lip-synchronous singing and speech.

Since then, more and more films would have synchronised audio until it became industry standard. It would evolve with modern recording technology all the way up to the current digital era.

The actual process behind scoring for a modern film can vary. A movie might start with a temp track which consists of songs which portray the correct sort of energy or emotion for scenes but are not accurate to the final scores that get written later on.

The primary step for scoring a movie is a process known as ‘spotting’ wherein the composer and director will sit down together, watch the movie (at this stage it's usually still being edited), and discuss the emotion that needs to be portrayed in different scenes and how the music should sound. Here, they also discuss timing of the music and note down different cue points where the music should be introduced, taken away, or shift in tone. The timing of these cue points are essential because they must be matched with on screen events so the emotion from the music is delivered at the correct time. To sync the music up correctly, the composer will use SMPTE timecodes, an industry standard for labelling frames of video or film. When scoring, a composer may write a click track which can be used later down the line if they need to record live performances to help them keep in sync with the timing of the film.

Different artists will use different processes for writing their music. Some may initially go out and research certain themes for their music and gather raw material, be that in the form of new ideas, or new instrumentation to use in the composition. They will continue working with the director throughout the process as they develop themes and motifs for different characters and situations.

To portray different emotions, the composer uses different styles and techniques in their score. For example, a composer can use Major or Minor chords to portray a happy or sad emotion or mix in a 7th or suspended chord to portray a feeling of being unsure, mystery or tension. Due to the harmonic nature of these chords they portray these emotions. The way the different notes in a chord react when played together make our brains react a certain way when it's listened to. For example, take John Williams’ iconic score for the Star Wars series. In the iconic ‘Imperial March’ theme, the majority of the song is in G minor and stays in the minor key for most of the song portraying a negative emotion. The theme is played when the Imperial Army or Darth Vader is on screen and therefore it communicates with the audience this negative emotion to the audience, telling them that “these are the antagonists, and you shouldn’t be rooting for them,”.

Additionally, leitmotifs can be used, which is also seen in the imperial march theme. A leitmotif refers to a specific musical phrase or idea in a composition and in this case, the main melody of the imperial march is used in the Star Wars to refer to the Imperial Army in the dark side of the force. Even if the antagonists are not on screen the audience can be reminded of them (for example if a character is thinking about the antagonists) through the use of a leitmotif. Some leitmotifs are commonplace across multiple films and other mediums such as the “Dies Irae” which is a short motif based on an old Gregorian chant about death which was traditionally sung at funerals. Many films have incorporated it into their score (including the Lion King, Star Wars, The Shining, Lord of The Rings, and so many many more - seriously, once you know it you’ll start to hear it all over the place) and it has subliminally become culturally synonymous with themes of death. The motif was used extensively throughout Steven Sondheim's 1979 broadway musical Sweeny Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, which was later adapted into a film in 2007.

The composer can also use instrumentation to their advantage when trying to portray emotions or ideas in their score. Our brain tends to associate certain instrumentation with different ideas or themes depending on what is used. For example, the use of a kalimba or small xylophone may invoke feelings of nostalgia relating to early childhood as it relates to toy xylophones or other music toys and the small sounding harmonic nature of the sound. Oppositely, a large thing in a movie might need a larger, bassier sounding set of instrumentation to reflect it. A good example of this would be in Hans Zimmer’s score for The Hunger Games in which in several scenes to invoke fear into the audience he uses an Octobass, a massive 12 foot tall sub bass stringed instrument of which only 7 exist in the world.

After the score has been written and recorded it needs to be edited into the movie. Production and editing will use the previously noted cue points to develop a cue sheet to list when each piece of music in the film needs to be played or evolve to match the mood on screen. The cue sheet also lists composers, publishers, and who owns the rights and shares to each song which makes sure composers and artists are getting paid for the work they do.

Defining the Role of a Foley Artist

A foley artist creates convincing sound effects for a film or media. This is done because during the recording process of dialogue (or just generally on a film set), ambient sound effects are not recorded and it enhances the audio quality of what's happening in a scene. This helps communicate better what’s happening on screen and produce a heightened impact from certain visual on-screen effects.

A foley artist has their own workspace known as a Foley Studio or Foley Stage. Here a foley artist can record various different sounds from the movement and impact off objects to create convincing sound effects based on what is happening in a scene. For example a Foley artist will record their footsteps on a wooden surface in time with a character’s footsteps in a scene. In other situations, such as a character waving a sword, an artist could record themselves waving a thin stick and record the whooshing sound it makes to represent the sword through the air.

The idea of “Foley” began in the early 1920s with radio shows and dramas creating live sound effects alongside the actors. During a show, someone in the studio would use bells or wooden boards (for example) to recreate sounds such as ringing telephones or closing doors on cue.

But, the actual name “Foley” is named after Jack Donnovan Foley who truly pioneered the artform as filmmaking left the silent era. Warner Bros. released the first synchronised sound movie, the Jazz Singer, in 1927 in which Foley had recorded the sound effects for. In the production, Jack Foley would be the first to take part in what we would modernly recognise as a “Foley Session” with a full Foley Studio and Stage using different objects to match sound effects seen on screen.

After working on the Jazz Singer, Foley would go onto work in the film industry creating sound effects for another 40 years involving himself in many movies including Dracula, Spartacus, and Operation Petticoat. Throughout these years, Foley would develop several methods and techniques for recording different sound effects which are still used today by modern foley artists.

There are many different things a foley artist might record to represent different sound effects on screen. For example:

Flapping gloves to be used as flapping bird wings
Snapping celery sticks or frozen lettuce can be used to represent bones breaking
Two halves of a coconut lined with soft material can be used to make convincing horse hoof sounds
Compressing a leather pouch filled with corn starch can sound like snow crunching
Gelatin and hand soap for squishing noises
Bending large thin metal plates will sound like thunder
Rolled up audio tape sounds like walking through grass or thick brush when walked upon.

A foley artist has also the job of adding more ambient sound effects for a movie such as the wind blowing or the sounds of the waves by the sea. A foley artist may stand in an empty area (such as in a field or by the sea) with their microphone recording the ambience which could include the wind blowing, the leaves rustling and the birds chirping.

A good foley studio will have a good soundstage; a medium to small sized room with a good balance of acoustic foam to eliminate excess reverberation from the room. A sense of 3D space of the room must still be present though so too much acoustic dampening in a room could be detrimental to the recorded sound and make it sound artificial in the movie.

In terms of microphones, they will usually be placed close to the object being recorded. A foley artist will usually use a hyper-cardioid condenser microphone to record their sound effects but this can vary depending on the desired timbre of the final recorded sound. For outdoor scenes an artist may use a shotgun microphone (like ones used on filming locations) to maintain focus on the subject being captured. Multiple microphones may be used too so a Foley artist can compare the results from different microphones and adjust to suit the scene in the movie.

When it comes to recording specific sound effects for a scene that need to be timed with action on the screen, the foley artist will usually have a large monitor inside the foley studio playing footage of the film. The artist can play the footage and record (for example, footsteps) in time with what is being seen.

Summary of Sound in Film

In conclusion, since its introduction into cinema, sound has proven as a vital tool for situational and emotional communication in filmography. The music creates an emotional connection between the audience and the screen helping convey and enhance emotion in a scene which helps drive the impact of the narrative. Depriving the audience of sound in a piece of media can make it feel almost stale as you are cutting off one of the most important senses humans have, their ability to hear. The foley work done by the foley artists create sounds that help immerse the audience in the scene which is important as the more immersed the audience is, the more attached they are to the scene, pulling them into the film emotionally. Without these elements, cinema wouldn’t be the same.