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November 2017

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www.postmagazine.com 37 POST NOVEMBER 2017 FOLEY ground each moment into the space on-screen. "Without a huge score or action sounds, those delicate Foley details really shine through. We have a long history with the re-recording mixer Michael Perricone and he definitely elevates our Foley to another level. He saw what we were trying to do with Foley and so all of those little sounds are re- ally in there. It's incredible how much that adds to the story on a subconscious level," says Iorio. Director Avnet concludes, "Foley adds to the tapestry of the film. It can have a very visceral impact. It is often very subtle but effective. When I'm on stage and hear a great piece of Foley, it makes me smile." WONDERSTRUCK Emmy-winning Foley artists Leslie Bloome and Joanna Fang, and Emmy-winning Foley mix- er Ryan Collison at Alchemy Post Sound in Peekskill, NY (www.alchemypostsound.com) have worked on director Todd Haynes's latest film Wonderstruck, which tells the interwoven tales of two deaf children, Rose and Ben, who live decades apart. Using Foley as a storytelling tool is Alchemy Post's modus operandi. Through Foley, they've brought grit and immediacy to director Matthew Heineman's gripping documentary Cartel Land, delicate emotion to director Derek Cianfrance's romantic drama The Light Between Oceans, and suspense and tension to the crime-adven- ture Nerve directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman. Bloome says, "Foley is really about performance. Understanding what a character is going through and understanding the emotional investment a character has in what's happening truly affects the way we perform the Foley. We really try to convey those emotions through the sounds that we create." On Wonderstruck, supervising sound editor Leslie Shatz had a unique challenge for Alchemy Post — to create Foley that would represent a deaf person's experience of sound. Instead of using low-pass filters to muffle the sound — an approach that Bloome feels is so overused that it's almost cliché, they tried a new approach. "We created the sounds figuratively, as opposed to being literal," Bloome says. He explains that before starting on the film he consulted his sister who works with mentally and physically handicapped children. "She brought up an interesting point. Someone who is deaf perceives sound by feeling it. Based on that information, we came up with this concept of creating sound effects that were more felt than heard," he says. For example, one of the deaf children, Ben [Oakes Fegley], visits New York City in the 1970s. Instead of having an obligatory car-bys, they took a figurative approach. "I ended up rolling a bowl- ing ball on a wood surface. Then Ryan [Collison] processed that by pitching it down to create this palpable rumble," says Bloome. In another scene, Ben is hiding in a bookstore and accidentally drops a book over the balcony. They wanted the impact to feel jarring. Ben can't hear the book hit but he should feel it. To achieve a bold impact sound, Collison used a dual-mic ap- proach — placing one Neumann KMR 81 mic close to where the book impacted the studio's floor and another one farther away to capture the impact's reverberation in the room. A blend of both mics gave him the perfect sound. "We used a heavy book and made sure it landed flat so that it had a good snap to it," adds Collison. According to Bloome, in the portion of Wonderstruck that's set in the turn-of-the-cen- tury (when moving pictures go from silent films to talking), there were numerous POV shots for the other deaf child named Rose [Millicent Simmonds]. "That's where it got really interesting for us," notes Bloome. For scenes during that era, Foley artist Fang notes they focused a lot of time on trying to con- ceptualize the feeling of wind. "Leslie [Bloome] put a microphone directly into a large vacuum cleaner tube and breathed heavily through it. Ryan [Collison] pitched those recordings down using Eventide's H3000 plug-in and processed the sound with reverb. The effect created a cold and flowing sense of movement yet had a human pulse to it," Fang says. They also searched for unique overtones and frequencies, says Fang. She has two Foley swords that are custom tuned for recording, which Bloome played with a contrabass bow to produce rasping and modulating overtones. "Pitching these down produced natural yet unheard frequencies that are often above human hearing yet had a very human element," she says. How would a deaf person perceive footsteps in the snow? The Foley team explored that scenario for a nightmare sequence in which Ben is being chased by a wolf. They tried every possible combination of real snow and corn powder before discovering a more figurative sound. "We laid a sound blanket over our gravel pit and the result was a very deep crunch and roll that gave depth to the steps yet didn't sound overhyped or processed," concludes Fang. The Foley team at Alchemy Post. Sound effects for Wonderstruck were pitched down with Eventide's H3000 plug-in.

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