Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1061972
33 Q4 2018 / CINEMONTAGE MY MOST MEMORABLE FILM "We'd be working on a cue with someone handing money through a jail cell," the Foley artist says. "Karola would say, 'Nancy — bribery!' And I just went, 'I got it!' She made it contagious; I just wanted to be really good." She and Fisher divided their duties on Kickboxer, but Parker knew she wanted to be responsible for recording many of the body hits. "You kind of split up the characters right down the middle, like, 'I'll do that guy and you do him,'" she explains. "But I just wanted to get into the crux of the show and create these sounds. I said, 'Let me jump in and do those hits; this looks like fun.'" To help the Foley artist generate the sound of a fist — or, in the case of many scenes in Kickboxer, a foot — hitting skin, a side of beef was needed on the Foley stage. "They would bring it in," Parker recounts. "Then, of course, you'd have to get fresh meat the next day." More complex, of course, was deciding the sound of one hit versus another. "The main thing in the movie was kickboxing," she explains. "So, what does the foot sound like? The foot sounds different than the hand. And are they barefoot? You want to make each sound different so that they are distinguishable: 'Okay, they just hit his shoulder, so there's some bone there...'" Under the guidance of Storr, with whom she would work on several later projects, Parker walked away from Kickboxer with her eyes — and ears — opened. "Karola focused so much on the nuance and the value of sound, and how it can bring out the character and the story," she says. "I really thought, 'I'm not here on the stage. I'm on the screen.' You have to be that person." Even if that meant imitating an action star like Van Damme: "With Jean-Claude Van Damme, you just want to be big," she comments. "Even though I'm five-foot-nothing, I have to come up with that energy, and I did. There's a way to do it." Although Kickboxer was Parker's first foray into the action genre, it was not her last. She later served as a Foley artist on such action-driven films as Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003), The Bourne Supremacy and Spider-Man 2 (both 2004). "I always enjoy doing some kind of a tussle, even if it's not quite the punch but the jerking back and forth," she explains. "It's energy, and you get your aggressions out." And Parker, whose love of Foley continues on projects at Universal Studios, Warner Bros. and Sony, also made another movie starring Van Damme, 1990's Death Warrant (collaborating with Foley artist John Post; Storr again was the Foley editor). "That was more of a prison movie, but he's always fighting," she says. "I was lucky because Karola worked quite a bit, and having that relationship, she knew what I could handle and was willing to give me those chances." Years after both films, Parker met Van Damme face-to-face when she was doing the Foley on an animated project at a studio in Burbank. "He was looping there," she remembers. "I told him, 'Oh, we worked on Kickboxer,' and he said, 'Oh my God, that's great!' I had one of the kneepads that I used to keep my knees protected if I was doing something on the ground, and he signed it for me with a drawing of himself. He's a pretty good artist." f CONTINUED FROM PAGE 30 Kickboxer. Cannon Film Distributors/ Photofest