Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1521562
C I N E M A A U D I O S O C I E T Y. O R G 35 a little bit of their clothes so you could get this discrete sense of little boys walking this way into the surrounds, and he's walking this way into the surround. JOANNA FANG MPSE: Sam had gotten in contact with me and wanted to interview me for the movie. He knew me through another sound editor, Arjun Sheth. I think that part of Sam's research was realizing that he could have interviewed a dozen other fantastic Foley artists, but I think the big thing that worked out was the fact that he read some of my writing for Pro Sound Effects. I've been interviewed by PBS. I have some visibility, but anytime anyone asks me about what Foley is, I don't just give them the usual answer, the short answer. Sam thought that I've got something to say that will hopefully augment the film. Sam and I had a quick interview. We just talked over the phone, and I think there was a moment where we both realized that his take on it, his understanding of it, his body of work, and some of the stuff I saw that Sam had done prior were in alignment artistically with the type of message and philosophical understanding about sound that I relish. BLAKE COLLINS CAS: I told my bosses at PlayStation that we had this unique opportunity that's a cool documentary. It's maybe a little unusual outside of the video game wheelhouse. Is it possible for us to have the interview and have this thing happen on-site? Originally, we hadn't even talked about doing Foley for the movie yet, or at least about following the film. JF: Blake and I recorded the sound of the tree falling in the forest; the Foley that's used in the film. We did that scene on our own before the film crews came in. Do you remember the layers involved in creating that sound, and how you recorded them? JF: We did several layers. The impact of the tree on the ground. We did the groaning, the cracking, and the breaking. Stressing snow, and the pine, and probably a debris layer. We did leaves. At one point, Blake and I realized that the leaves on some of the branches hit other trees on the way down. That's the fun thing about working with Blake, he's not just a great Foley mixer, but he's also sound designing. We're trying to pitch ideas to one another. Could we do something more like the sound of snow trickling onto the leaves? The thing I always tell people about Blake is that he doesn't just mix with the tools he has in front of him; the biggest tool he has in front of him is the talkback. BC: I think everybody can see in a film what you want to see. And you see the tree falling, and you get the boom, and you get the crack. You might want to hear the little things. That's the type of stuff that I look for to help set us apart. JF: I pride myself on adding a lot of character to the Foley. So even for the tree falling in the woods, I asked Blake if we could use some sort of vocal element to this. Eventually, we settled on dragging a chair across the floor to get this sound and it wasn't good enough on its own. It needed Blake's ear to tune how that pitch was going to work. Do you remember what you used for the groans and the snow falling on the leaves? Don't feel the need to share any professional secrets if you don't want to! BC: I don't think either of us are shy about that because you could tell somebody the recipe to a Michelin Star restaurant's signature meal, but they don't have the background and the experience of going through cooking school and chef school. They're not going to be able to repeat it, even though you have the recipe. I could just look in the Foley stage and probably tell you a lot of the things that we use. We have a cedar block that's in there that we use. We have some old bark that's in there. We have this cool, old shipping palette that gives us a lot of lows. JF: We have this old wood chair that, when you pull it at a certain angle, makes this incredible sound. We have something 32 Sounds performed live at the Bing Theater