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ADR AND FOLEY Sound designer Eric Milano had to create missing footsteps for scenes inside Particle Fever's massive collision chamber. 28 tant for a documentary to have Foley as it is for a film to have Foley. Milano believes that sometimes, it's even more important, because on a documentary with a lower production budget, the filming locations are often noisy. "You're lucky if you can pick up the voices of the people you're filming, much less the sound of their footsteps," Milano says. "Sometimes there are sounds that are really critical to telling the story that get missed. Foley becomes important for that because it fills in the missing details that bring the project to life." In Particle Fever, scientists are walking around inside the huge collision chamber, which is like an enormous metal-plated tunnel. The walking didn't get picked up by the mics during production, so Milano covered those footsteps during the Foley session to give the audience a sense of that space. "We wanted to give that a feel, and give the room a character," says Milano. Another challenge for Particle Fever, which according to Milano is the hardest thing to Foley, was having to Foley the sound of a physicist writing on a chalkboard. There was on-camera writing in a few different chalkboard scenes. "It's one thing to get into a rhythm of someone walking down the street, but writing, especially when you can't see what they're writing, can become incredibly difficult," he says. "If you know what they're writing, it's easier to mimic. It's important to get it right so the viewer doesn't get pulled out of the film. The writing needs to feel in sync, and feel real." Over the course of his career, Milano has become more involved in isolated aspects of a film, like doing just the Foley, as opposed to working on the sound of the film as a whole. Starting out as an intern for Tom Paul, Milano was involved with a film from start to finish. They would handle everything from Foley to the final mix. Post • November 2013 For Milano, that is now happening less often. Milano compares the audio post industry to the medical industry, where you have highlyspecialized individuals that are very good in their particular area of expertise. He says, "The advantage is that people get really knowledgeable about what they're doing, but what they're losing is the big picture. In audio post, I'd love to see a return to the big picture, where you have someone involved in all aspects of the film, and not just hiring a specific person to do a specific part of the job." Milano notes that a lack of communication can waste a huge amount of time and money on a film. If the sound effects editor isn't talking to the person who is cueing the Foley, then both departments could be covering the same scene. "There needs to be a high amount of communication for the specialized method to work well," he says. "That communication is not always there. I'd like to see more communication and less specialization." The Wolf of Wall Street Marko Costanzo is a Foley artist at C5 Sound (www.c5sound.com) in New York City. C5 Sound has been around for 22 years and Costanzo started with the company just six months after they opened. Their first Foley stage was a compact room in Manhattan. "It was the first live room on the entire East Coast," Costanzo claims. "We didn't have foam on the walls, instead we were using different acoustics to bounce the sound around." Their current Foley stage is a 60-foot by 30-foot live room built inside a warehouse. With a stage this size, Costanzo can set up different props and leave them set up for as long as it takes to do the Foley. For Life of Pi, Costanzo had dumpsters, cement barrels, and various metal objects set up in the room. "If the tiger was on the front of the boat, we had one sound going, and if he was in the back of the boat, we'd have another sound. If he was on the wood in the hull, that was www.postmagazine.com another sound. All these things we had set up throughout the room. I was able to keep everything out for the entire film, which was well over six weeks for us. That was a long schedule for any Foley job." Not only is the Foley stage able to hold numerous props, but they also have the back of the warehouse to store even more props. "I have a huge prop collection now. Anything you need is right there. It's very convenient," Costanzo says. Costanzo recently created the Foley for The Wolf of Wall Street, the latest Martin Scorsese film starring Leonardo DiCaprio. The film hits theaters November 15th. Costanzo has worked with Scorsese on other films, such as Hugo and Shutter Island. For Hugo, Costanzo recalls how challenging it was to come up with new and interesting sounds for the different mechanics of the robot. "Hugo had us up against the wall a few times," he recalls. But no matter what the challenge, Costanzo says, "We attack it. We figure out how to accomplish it, no matter what it is." During a scene in Shutter Island, DiCaprio's house is burning down, and the ashes are falling from the sky onto DiCaprio. "They wanted the sound of the ash accumulating on his shoulders," Costanzo recalls. "That one took a long time because we started with coconut flakes, and then we tried corn flakes." He also went to the store to look around for other ideas. Costanzo tried popcorn, and that helped. "It turned out to be a combination of things that were light, but would still give us a little bit of sound." The small sounds are tough, Costanzo admits. In The Wolf of Wall Street, Costanzo notes there are many scenes that involve cocaine. He did the "cocaine going up a straw" sound on a wood box, he says, to give the sound a little bit of bounce. He also used sand, in place of powder, to create a more pronounced sound. "There is one scene where there is a lot of cocaine flying around and they wanted to hear it [falling] down," says Costanzo. "We needed to make these really small sounds have a presence. They're showing on a big screen, so you really have to hear them." Although Costanzo is performing the Foley, he credits his Foley mixer George Lara, and the group of sound editors at C5 Sound, with making the Foley work. "I might bang a few things together, but we really have an elite group of editors that edit it all," says Costanzo. "We've been working together for 30 years. Before C5 was around, many of us were already working together. So we're all old veterans now."