Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1504731
26 M PS E . O R G inspiration in my career. He has taught me more than anyone else. He has given me the privilege of being a part of the process, whether it's on the stage or in the booth and made me a better Foley supervisor. I learned from John how to cue. I am very proud of my cueing. The cueing is the programming process. When the footstep starts, who is the character that's walk- ing these footsteps and what are they walking on? Are you inside or outside and are you on or off the screen? The definition of footsteps is any human being upright in motion. We need to pay attention to who the character is, what kind of walk do they have or are they su- perheroes or are they victims? And what kind of shoe are they wearing? What kind of surface are they on? The minute you're on your hands and knees, it's a prop. Climb a ladder, it's a prop. Props are every- thing else—hand pats, handling phones, picking things up, paper movements, and all the different elements. If you were wearing a purse around your shoulders, you're going to hear it. You know, what's in the purse? Are you at dinner or are you at an opera? What is the story? What is the location? What defines the purse? All the different elements add up to one performance, and that's the responsibility of the Foley artists. Now, the cues are defined digi- tally in a Pro Tools session. You get the footage of where it begins and where it ends. This tells the Foley artist when they need to perform what the cue is. And so cueing is broken down in two parts—foot- steps or props. BF: What is that one Foley cue you dread? SSS: When it comes to footsteps and props, there's not one cue I can think of that we dread. I think the only Foley cue that would qualify as dreading is cloth movement, be- cause cloth movement can be very boring. Cloth movement fills in all the blanks, especially with ADR. We need presence in the room of some kind from human beings. If we are at a party or there's two people on the screen, we need to hear their pres- ence. So, we do what's called cloth movement. We will sit in front of the screen with a very generic piece of cloth, and we will move every time they move. And then at the end, I'll just take the entire cloth track, move it up two to four frames and it's in dead sync. Human reaction time is two to four frames. BF: Please tell us a little bit about your first gig. SSS: It was Goonies that was the beginning of my sound editing ca- reer. It cracks me up because every- body loves Goonies and it's now a cult film. When people find out that I worked on Goonies, they go nuts. So, I am very flattered, extremely flattered. I was overwhelmed with Left, Solange in the Pit of Ground Zero; Right, Solange next to a void in the Pit of Ground Zero; Below, Solange in an entrance to a subway at Ground Zero. February, 2002.