Welcome to Foley Fridays “Karaoke”. Much like you going out with friends to sing sloppily otop hit pop songs once a month my friends and I will take a scene from a movie, remove all of the dialogue/sound effects (foley) and sloppily record our own live. No editing or mixing involved! No bouncing ball required!
For our first foray into this Karaoke-type ordeal my good friend Michael Pierro and I tackled the classic “It’s Alive” scene from 1931’s Frankenstein. Michael is another Made By Other People person, a very talented director and all around excellent human being. We went to Ryerson University together and right out of school co-wrote and directed a short Fanfare. Since then he’s made more shorts than I can count on all my digits (maybe a bit of an exaggeration) including Bacon and Eggs and Hey George. We used a handful of items found in my apartment earlier this week to recreate the sound of the world’s most infamous (fictional) lab experiment.
The “Its Alive” scene is what everyone pays homage to when doing a Frankenstein spoof or just when creating a mad scientist’s lab. Though I think that besides the giant cadaver being raised and struck by lightening it’s a pretty run of the mill lab found in a dank and dreary castle. No bubbling concoctions, no giant robots and no overly large rubber gloves. Just you’re run of the mill knobs, levers and electric arching. I suppose every cliché has to start somewhere though – and this is a good place to start anything if I do say so myself.
Here’s a little short I did a while back with the talented actress, and close friend of ours, Meredith Cheesbrough. It was shot and edited in about day, with a crew of exactly two, for a comedy showcase put on at the Comedy Bar here in Toronto. Pretty pleased with the way it turned out all things considered. Hope you like it!
Everywhere you look on this information highway are signs that read SOPA this and SOPA that. It’s even spilled into real life media like our TV and paper news. While I agree SOPA would be bad (if you’re fuzzy on the whole good/bad thing – Google it for god’s sake) I’m not going to posit my arguments here (being Canadian has to do with that for several reasons). Instead I’m simply going to give you guys a generous jolt of nostalgia. If you’re having trouble discerning what this monstrous sound that could only come from the depths of space or beyond is don’t worry your pretty little head. It’s simply what us old people used to hear when connecting to the Internet when it was in its infancy. We did it through our telephone landlines – how quaint!
This sound isn’t really used too often in cinema. At this point I’m guessing it would have to be a period piece set in the distant past of a decade/decade-and-a-half ago. If there ever is to be a scene where the characters of 90’s Joe and 90’s Jane, wearing their silly frocks, fanny packs and bonnets – connect to the World Wide Web through telephone modems and marvel audibly about living in the future, then that is exactly when you’d hear this noise. I suppose you could also mix it into some Sci Fi flick where the robots speak using only Dial Up tones – I don’t know think creatively! That’s what dial up Internet was all about.
How would you make this sound for yourself? My first suggestion is to build a time machine. Barring that you could try to connect using a dial up modem, but mark my words, the consequences could be dire. The best answer is don’t. Let this fade into history like the dead language it is. In the mean time enjoy it here – my treat.
I need to disconnect my mom needs to use her phone, more next week
Now that the season to be merry has passed – ‘tis the season to be sick. Most everywhere I went this week I heard sniffling, coughing and vomiting in true stereo surround sound (5.1). At this point the plentiful sound of people blowing their nose is akin to birds chirping their beautiful melodies – without any of the beauty or much of the melody.
More often than not someone in a movie with an illness that causes them to blow their nose is played more for comedic value than anything else. There’s the typical stuffed up vice, accompanied by a red nose and larger than life sneeze. This sneeze takes a long time to come to fruition – something like “ahhh” … “Ahhhhhhh” … “AHH” .. “AHCHOO!” The sequence just isn’t complete without the character then needing to blow their nose in a very loud, very moist volume. The blowing of a nose is like the period at the end of a hilarious and clichéd sentence. Though I will quickly mention that a character doesn’t have to necessarily be sick – they could be comically allergic to something or have been crying over a breakup, loss of a loved one or something less trivial. The blowing of a nose can be/is used as the button to all of those dramedic situations.
If the subject isn’t sick while recording the blowing of a nose go peel an onion or get them to eat something incredibly spicy to get that nose a flowin’. I suppose if you’re really stuck you could get water up their nose – although the discomfort might not be worth the result. More importantly, whist recording you don’t want to blow directly into the mic. This is for 2 main reasons: 1) you don’t want to get your germs all over it 2) the “wind” from your blowing will create a popping on the mic and ruin the recording. If you have what is called a pop screen, which protects the microphone from being blown on then you can give that a try – although its not going stop those pesky germs. Finally you’re going to want to get as juicy as you can.
As Foley Fridays enters its second earth-shattering year I thought we’d start things with a look at things to come. 2012. Was the smash hit blockbuster named after the year or the year named after the smash hit blockbuster? Almost definitely the blockbuster was named after the date as either way this is the year that has been long figured to bring the end of the world – and we all know that means earthquakes that split the very ground beneath our feet (amongst other things).
Any movie that features an earthquake but not a shot of the ground opening up to swallow some hapless soul is doing its creative team and its audience a great disservice. Sure, it’s usually accompanied by falling debris and screaming masses but there’s nothing better to encapsulate the image of impending doom than when the ground/street slowly begins to crack then continues to grow in both length and width, picking up speed as it opens into a wide chasm head directly for our main character! Will this happen later this year in real life – we can only hope it’ll be half a dramatic.
As mentioned earlier the sound of an earthquake is oft layered underneath the sound of falling debris and screaming, fleeing masses of people. At its base though is a low rumble that obviously fluctuates in intensity depending on what’s in the frame and just how bad the earthquake is getting. The cracking of the ground, which I’ve layered on here, starts slow and usually picks up speed and volume – just to end abruptly as the earthquake ends. Then your left with said falling debris and still screaming or at least heavy breathing out of fear people to complete the scene. If they haven’t all been swallowed by the anthropomorphic earth beneath their feet.
