Foley’s artists bring a human touch to the creation of films even with the rise of AI

In a small studio nestled in the Sony Pictures Lot, Gary Hecker makes art with sound.

His canvases are some of the biggest Hollywood blockbusters – “Justice League” by Zack Snyder and “Once Upon A Time in Hollywood” by Quentin Tarantino Disney And the Spider-Man films of Marvel and the “master and commander” winner of the Oscar Prize.

Hecker is a Foley artist, the maestro responsible for making the daily sound effects that occur in a scene: creaky doors, grinding coats, the slap of leather reins and even the “thwip” of the Spider-Man strap.

“Foley is a key element of this magical trick that we make to convince the public to believe in the film they watch,” said Rodger Pardee, professor at Loyola Marymount University. “Foley is not for explosions or jet engines. It is for the traces of someone who crosses a forest or climbing, or the swish of the cape of a superhero, this kind of thing. Foley gives you the details. It is the sound texture that anchors the sound mix.”

As Hollywood is struggling with the crawling growth in the capacities of artificial intelligence – and how, or if they should be used – Foley artists remain a faithful and deeply human element of the film creation process.

The performative nature of the profession makes it difficult for studios to use AI to correspond to the skills of artists. However, there are few people who work full time as Foley artists, and there is currently no college program for Foley. Those who wish to enter the field must obtain learning with veterans of the already established industry.

Created by Jack Foley at the end of the 1920s, the sound technique which became its namesake emerged in Hollywood when the industry went from silent films to “Talkies”. The early recording equipment could not capture the dialogue and the ambient noise, so the sounds had to be added after the filming of the film.

Foley discovered that the realization of the sound effects live and in synchronization with the finished product has created a more authentic sound landscape and helped to keep the public immersed in the film.

Today, artists still use several of the same techniques that were employed almost 100 years ago.

“We are making the film from top to bottom,” said Hecker. “Everything that is advancing on this screen, we provide a sound.”

Over 50 pairs of shoes are aligned on the shelves of the Hecker studio. Some are robust and produce thick Swuds, while others create the acute and click valve of high heels. There is even a set of spurs made by a blacksmith in the 1800s that Hecker used in “Django Unchained” in Tarantino.

“The true art of Foley is to master the sound,” said Hecker. “I am a 200 -pound guy, so if I do Arnold Schwarzenegger, I have to dig deeply, but if I make a little girl Geisha from ‘Memoirs of A Geisha’ ‘, a girl of 90 pounds in these little wooden shoes, I have to match this performance.”

His laboratory of her has a fortune kitchen area teeming with cups, bottles, bowls, bells and spray bottles of variable sizes and materials. Bins of rakes, shovels and mops in Gogo stand next to a bunch of rocks, and in the corner is a shell of a suburban spoon.

It even has a reserve of swords, rifles, shields, armor and chains, as well as a metal tower specially built to create unique rich metallic sounds.

The floor has a collection of Foley pits – wooden, concrete, stone, gravel areas – the doors have an assortment of handles, locks and chains, the cupboards are filled with a collection of jackets so that Heker can find the right noise of zipper, and, of course, there are coconut nuts.

The Hecker accessories collection is over 45 years old. He made his apprenticeship debut on “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back” and has more than 400 films of films to his credit, including “The Running Man”, “Three Amigos”, “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure”, “Home Alone” and “300”.

Hecker’s partner in Sound is Jeff Gross, a mixer who transforms accidents, clicking and fotesus captured in the microphone into a resonant symphony.

Hecker and Gross’ The partnership started in the middle of the pandemic covids while they worked on the sound effects of the video game “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III”. Since then, they have worked on the films “Rebel Moon” “, Venom: The Last Dance” and “Mufasa: The Lion King”, among other projects. Last year, the couple was nominated for a golden coil, one of the most precious distinctions in the world of sound editing, for “Mufasa: The Lion King” and won for their work on “Rebel Moon – the second part: The Scargiver”.

Hecker and Gross attack a film at a time and generally spend 18 to 20 days per project, depending on the sound budget of the film. The larger budget films get more time, while smaller or independent features often get much less.

While Heker’s Tag team and Gross work from Sony lot, they work with all the main Hollywood studios. These companies provide six to eight coils which contain about 15 minutes from the film each. Heker and Gross will then roll up by coil, adding all the steps, the propeller sounds and the ambient sounds.

The traces pass first. Heker stompumps, trots and rhythm boxes with the performance of each actor, often accompanied by a handful of coffee grounds to add grain to the sound of shoes, creating the illusion of walking outside. Then he starts to superimpose the sounds of the accessories.

To create the metallic foam of a sewer cover in a paved street, for example, Hecker gray the shell of a belly against a concrete slab. Gross then adds a resonance to the sound captured via the computer to give it a more realistic quality.

Hecker has even developed techniques to recreate the sound of explosions, pushing the limits of what sound artists can provide studio film projects.

Gross, who is sitting in a cabin of her while Hecker works the microphone, often cannot see what his partner uses to imitate what is on the screen.

“You just have to put yourself in your head and say:” Yeah, it looks like that “,” he said. “And then I’m going to get up and look on the stage and I say to myself:” Do you use a basket and a toothbrush? “”

And Hecker’s skills are not only in physical performance. For decades, he lent his voice to Hollywood gorillas, extraterrestrials, dragons, monsters, horses and even lions.

He sniffed, gleaped and groaned to give life to the dragon of “Shrek”, the extraterrestrials of “Independence Day”, the zombies in “Dawn of the Dead”, the giant gorilla in “Mighty Joe Young” and, more recently, a pride of “Mufasa: The Lion King”.

“It was really cool to make all the breathing and purring and efforts,” said Hecker about “Mufasa: The Lion King”. “The actors make the voices of the character and tell the story, but these lions move throughout the film, and there is nothing there. So, everything had to be designed and played tailor. So I would do it, and then Jeff would help me make it look like a giant beef lion.”

Hollywood is at the crossroads. The new AI technology offers studios a chance to cut billing budgets of hot air balloon, but the copyright law and the desire to keep human art in films have led to tensions.

The double writers and actors of 2023 were partially extended due to difficult negotiations with the studios on rights, payment and use cases for AI in cinema and television.

These conversations have been rekindled in the wake of “The Brutalist” winning a victory for the best actor for Adrian Brody, even if his performance was changed using AI voice generation technology – and in the midst of the fears that the White House of President Donald Trump could make the copyright protections back in search of IA companies.

Regarding Foley Sound, Hecker and Gross are not too worried that AI programs take their jobs.

“The performances of the actors, between the movement and the details, the AI ​​cannot do this,” said Hecker. “And an artist is expressed by acting and performing these things, you know, with a light touch, a heavy hand, an emotion, that kind of things that I do not think that AI will be able to reproduce.”

Pardee de Loyola Marymount noted that companies are already working on software to try to create Foley Sound, but “the results do not have these very subtle and specific variations”.

Independent studios and productions can opt for these programs in the future, but Pardee does not expect the major studios to follow suit.

Where Heker and Gross See Disturbance are in the number of movies out of Hollywood.

“We are generally trying to work on 10 to 11, but the industry changes definitively,” said Hecker. “They make fewer films right now.”

Part of the decline comes from the production restrictions of the pandemic era and work strikes, but also from the merger of prominent Hollywood studios. Managers have also become more concerned about the budget, which has decreased the number of features outside the typical success price.

And streaming will not take over. Hecker noted that streaming content does not have the same sound budget as feature films and that creators often turn to smaller Foley houses.

In the meantime, Hecker, who has collected the nickname “Wrecker”, is known for having put his human body at stake for Foley.

“I would do anything to get a sound,” he said. “If a guy is slammed in a door, against a car, you need to physically put the same intensity you see on the screen. If you don’t do it, it won’t sound well.”