MPSE Wavelength

Winter 2023

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70 I M PS E . O R G Aside from that part of it, the story just has all of these little details and very, very different props. I feel like a lot of the stories I've recorded Foley for, I'm using a lot of the same props over and over again, whereas this story just changed constantly. I've never had a messier prop table and it was just ever-changing with props. I used specific China tea cups because there are various times they're having tea and I wanted that to sound precisely as it should, and these little tea cups brought these conversations over tea time to life. BH: Can I throw one in there that we did? There's a particular scene where a character drops down out of a window and lands on metal scaffolding and winds around the building. She's running and she's in boots but the scaffolding was metal and squeaky with a layer of wood under it. It just had all of these elements to it. We worked on it for a while trying to find the right combination of things to stack together to make that sound right. When you do something like that, you hope that it translates in the mix. Translation is everything. I was on the dub stage the other day listening to that scene, and when I watched it after Jamie had mixed it, I was like, yes! It had all of those different elements that we wanted it to sound like. Katie was really creative figuring out how to make all of those layers work, and keeping it so that you can actually walk around it safely. That is one of the things when stacking things up. But what she did with it turned out beautifully. SSS: Don't you love it when stuff like that comes together when you're trying to be so creative, and you don't know if it's going to work or not? From the stage to your headphones to Nuendo to the dub stage; all of that has to be translated. It's a big one. BH: Sometimes you get directors or whoever that maybe don't want to hear so much Foley, I'm not saying they don't care about Foley, but it always ends up falling off and you don't hear it quite as well. But this particular director of this film is pushing it, you hear this Foley. And I think that is one of the things that Katie's touching on too, is what she loves about this project. I told her when we first started it, that this Foley is going to be heard, so it's got to be right. It's got to be creative. It's got to sound really cool. She's done a really, really great job on it. SSS: Bryen, do you have any parting thoughts to our Wavelength readers about what Noisefloor represents in Chicago? BH: I think what we really strive for at Noisefloor is we want to be filmmaker- friendly. We love collaboration, we love making films together. We're not just the sound team. That's what we are, but we want to be collaborators, and we want people to come into our studio to work with us, to sit down with us, to appreciate all the aspects of sound that we're doing. Foley is a big part of that, but the sound design, the backgrounds and ambience, the mixing, we want them to appreciate it all and learn from it. One of the big things we enjoy doing is collaborating with first-time filmmakers. Our goal is to take first- time filmmakers and make them seasoned filmmakers, and then we grow with them and they learn from us, and we learn from them. We work toward making more films and more projects together. We have several clients who are like that, and we're not afraid to take on a student project if it's something we can do, in hopes that they're going to grow and do more films and more projects. So I'd say our goal is to be filmmaker- friendly, not just for Chicago, but for everywhere. Our city is a world-class city that people can film and shoot in and we provide great post production. It's a place people can come to make their films. SSS: That's right, we need a facility to go to in Chicago. That would be Noisefloor. Katie, do you have any parting words for our Wavelength readers regarding your element of Foley? What does Foley mean to you? KW: For me, Foley means being able to feel the characters and a story and to feel like I'm part of their world. It brings me closer to them, like I'm right next to them. SSS: I'd like to thank you both, on behalf of MPSE Wavelength. You guys are terrific. We are so happy to learn about Noisefloor and post- production in Chicago. BH: Thank you for having us. The Noisefloor crew (L-R): Jamie Vanadia partner, Cory Coken partner, Joseph Vnuck (kneeling), Stosh Tuszynski, Victoria Salazar, Bryen Hensley partner, Katie Waters, Devin Delaney, Noelle Daniels, Jeff Ryan, Shannon Riley, Ian Farthing.

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