Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/370852
37 SEP-OCT 14 / CINEMONTAGE Performing Sound for Film, Games and Animation (see review, page 49). Originally published in 2009 by the Focal Press, a major source of books on media technology, a significantly expanded Second Edition came out in March of this year. With her varied background in a compartmentalized industry, Ament has developed a real understanding of the organic nature of film. She brings this to her writing about Foley and how it fits into the filmmaking process: "On every feature and TV show, even in some documentaries, the footsteps of the actors, the cloth movements of the actors and the props touched by the actors are enhanced or replaced. They are mixed in with the cut effects and blended." To do this, she says, a Foley artist "needs to understand the story before doing anything on film." In 1989, Ament demonstrated her Foley talents to a nationwide audience on CBS's Late Night with David Letterman. A few years later, she says, "I thought about doing a book on Foley. If I didn't write about it, nobody would know what we do because we're all so busy doing work." She found more time to write in 2006, when she left Los Angeles to teach in the Digital Cinema program at DePaul University in Chicago. Ament notes, "In my mind, I never left the business; I just took another trajectory." In 2009, she went on to Georgia State University in Atlanta where, this year, she earned a PhD in Communications and Moving Image Studies. For her doctorate, she wrote a dissertation on the transition from analog to digital in sound editing and design, and how this process was approached differently by the industry bases of New York, Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay area. Ament intends to flesh this work out with hopes of having it published. In August, she joined the Telecommunications Department at Indiana's Ball State University. For more information on The Foley Grail, see www. focalpress.com/books/details/9780415840859/. From foreign cultures to work on groundbreaking films, from analyzing the actual editing process to exploring a necessary yet sometimes overlooked component of that process, the four books generated by this quartet of Guild authors represent just a portion of the storytelling skills and interests required by the jobs all Guild members do. They are serious and notable additions to the ever-growing wealth of literature reflecting the history, knowledge and experience of those who work in this profession. f Vanessa Theme Ament. Photo by Paul Ament-Gjenvick Left, Vanessa Theme Ament during a Foley demonstration at the Denver International Film Festival in 1989. Photo courtesy of Larry Laszlo & Associates, CoMedia.