#3: Sound-Expression! February 9th 2009

At the beginning of class, Ms. Wong presented us this video she found on the topic of Foley. Basically, Foley is the process of creating sound effects in post-production in order to enhance the soundtrack or plot of a video, film, video game etc. The video that Ms. Wong showed us talked about how to recreate particular sound effects such as a car driving on gravel, a T-Rex chomping down on another dinosaur, a large animal running across snow and more. This video really gave me deep insight and understanding on Foley and provided me with a basic knowledge on how I could create my own post-production sound effects. For example, I learnt that a leather pouch stuffed with corn starch can recreate the sound of an animal running across snow.

After the presentation, we were given a task to record sounds throughout school that adhere to a specific theme such as Joy, Time, Silence, Water etc. My group consisted of Joshua, Lucas, Joanna, Justin and myself. When we had to record a sound effect for Joy, we went to the Primary School Playground and used a Boom Mic to record a bunch of children running around and having fun. For the theme of Time, we stuck the mic underneath a ticking clock. Because the ticking noise was so faint, we had to ask the entire class to be absolutely silent during our recording. It did not end up to be as successful as we hoped for there was still some discernible background noise in the audio footage.

Today I learnt a lot about the basics of Foley and how it is used to recreate specific sounds in videos and films. I also learnt about different ways to create my own sound effects which could fit under various situations. This lesson really provided me with inspiration on the limitless diversity of materials that I could use to re-enact all the sounds of my choosing. I will definitely put my newly acquired knowledge to use for our next Film project which does involve Foley.