Made By Other People.

Pepper Grinder.

I like pepper. It has its own flavor and helps to bring out other flavors in what its ground onto. I say ground onto because, being the pepper snob I am, I feel that freshly ground pepper is not something we can just trade like my dignity or a common soul – simply nothing but freshly ground will do.

That’s why I instantly connect with any character onscreen that responds in the affirmative when a server asks them if they’d like freshly ground pepper. The only real problem is that it doesn’t happen enough. To keep a good pace in most movies means to skip the boring mundane stuff, which in turn means we don’t often get to hear that pepper mill a workin’.  However the odd time it’ll be used as a device to show how stuck up a character or restaurant is or even played for comedy – i.e. an annoying waiter keeps interrupting important conversation with unimportant tasks like grinding pepper. I take issue with this because it belittles all us pepper lovers out there. When will it be our time?

The pepper mill/grinder can be used to create other completely different pieces of foley. Take a listen and imagine the long claws of a horrible monster scraping against a door or bones being raked slowly and methodically together for the sick, twisted pleasure of a psycho killer. With added effects like reverb etc you can transform this sound into many different ones – some may not even be applicable to the horror genre. That’s just the power of pepper.

Another Friday successfully seasoned, the second Foley Fridays Karoke on its way next week!

Cupid’s Arrow.

Last year about this time I presented bed springs as a Foley Friday in celebration of Valentines Day. This year I wanted to find a sound that encapsulates the true meaning of V-Day but since openly sobbing isn’t much of a sound effect this year you get Cupid’s arrow.

Cupid is most obviously an allegory as to where the mysterious emotion of love comes from. His arrow a representation of the sudden stab of feeling one gets when they see that special someone. Which, if you think also sounds like an erection, I don’t think you’re far of the mark as far as double entendres go (meaning: boners are like flesh arrows). The specific sound here is pretty cartoony in nature – just like Valentines Day. It wouldn’t be used in a series flick but the films where characters most fall in love on sight are cartoons anyway (and where Cupid is most likely to rear his cute little baby face). You can picture the cherub shoot a heart tipped arrow into some unsuspecting person’s back, the go stiff in pain at first but then they notice that attractive character walking in slow motion towards them. They’re eyes inflate into grotesque hearts and as that harp gliss is plucked so do even more hearts float out of the arrowed sap’s head. Just like in real life.

To best recreate the arrow “sprong” use a strip of flexible but stiff material like a ruler or some sort of rod (how many penis jokes have you found scattered throughout this post?”), hold one end down on a table letting the other stick out off the edge. Flick the stiff but flexible object and it will flap up and down creating the sound. To get the whoosh – just take the same rod and swing it quickly by the microphone. The Harp? That’s a two step process 1) find a harpist 2) make love to them. The sex part isn’t all that needed but Valentines is only but 4 days away and who wants to be alone on Valentines?

My Valentine is in the mail and more next week.

Ballpoint.

Nothing is more calming to me than moments of still quiet. They’re pretty few and far between, but sometimes, usually early morning, you realize the most everything around you isn’t moving. There’s nothing making a sound. What tends to make me realize this is every small sound you make is intensified, sounds crisper – for an example, this week’s foley, a ballpoint pen writing on paper.

In a movie small sounds like writing with a pen are often mixed louder than they’d ever be in real life because it helps to manufacture the reality of the scene. The audience knows what a pen signing a contract sounds like and might not actually believe a character is signing such a hypothetical contract if they couldn’t hear than pen scrap across paper – even if the scene takes place in a crowded, busy street or office. Have you ever tried to hear a pen writing in a normal public setting? Even if you squint your ears its pretty difficult [editors note: Its physically impossible to squint one’s ears].

The real fun of recording pen on paper is the amount of scribbling you get to do. In no way do you have to write exactly what the character on screen is – especially if you can’t see what they’re writing. Now there are limits obviously, but to get the best pen scratch you’ll need to press hard and scribble far more furiously and messily than you’d ever dream required.

More next week, but for now my pen’s out of ink.

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!

FFkaraoke, frankenstein from Foley Fridays on Vimeo.

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.

More Karaoke next month!