Lise Wedlock
Foley Artist

A Foley artist works in post production sound, and is responsible for all that is recorded in the studio for that specific picture apart from voice and narration. We work very closely with the sound designers and editors, and anything they can't do, and anything that is picture specific—sync wise or texture wise—the Foley artist does. Mainly that's things that people touch, like all their manipulations of any object: you madly writing at your desk, the phone cord clicking against the desk, the keyboard keys, if you get up, the chair, the footsteps—we recreate the film in its entirety, sonorally-wise. Pretty well with feature films we do 100%. With most films we do 100%. Everything—we do.

Technically, why is Foley work necessary, why not just record the live action...

Which has been done for the last 80 years or so, eh? Recording what the actors are doing. So usually what you get there is an okay recording of the voice. I say an okay recording, because a lot of times that is replaced because of wind, or a period piece, an airplane goes by; they can't just take out the airplane, they've got to take out everything. You know, you're trying to do a country piece from 1800 and you're next to a highway—(mimics) vroom, vroom, vroom—the whole show needs to be redone.Those are very real problems. And those are very real reasons for replacing the original track. The reason is to accentuate the original sound. The way we do it it sounds better than the original. If you're going to screw a little thing on, it might sound more accentuated in the Foley than it would in the initial thing, you'll hear maybe more of a little squeak or something so it actually sounds better. Also then your tracks are separated, so that in the mix they can put it into 5.1 Surround. And you can take that bicycle that goes by and make it go around and around and around if you want (chuckles) it will NEVER disappear. It makes your screen so much larger when your dealing now with surround sound, you're going out of the two dimensional image and into at least 3, 4, 5 or 6 dimensions. It surrounds you with the film instead of just watching the film.

When I hear my faucet dripping, it sure doesn't sound as good as it does on film.

Right, well that's because your sound department is doing a good job. And you don't need it to sound as good in real life. P-l-e-a-s-e don't drip so loudly as it does in Chicago, 'cause in Chicago it's a movie, everything's bigger, and Catherine Zeta-Jones didn't look that good in real life, either, and what's-his-name didn't dance that well, either. Everything is made bigger and the sound is as well. In the last 20 years there's been a huge surge in sound quality, and importance in the sound. The documentary people are starting to understand. I do a lot of documentaries at the National Film Board—I'm teaching a course there tomorrow, actually—and more and more we're getting producers to understand how much it does add to the track. You don't know why, it's a subtle thing. You just feel the film more. I like to accentuate the subject and the story line, I look for things to accentuate in the story line, or problems they've had in the production, you know, it's just not working, this scene. She's worried about something and she's got an object in her hand, and by accentuating her playing with that it brings attention to the subject and the drama of the situation. And the comedy, as well.

When I watch a feature, I might be somewhat aware that the Foley sounds are not quite real, and are in fact accentuated, yet these enhanced sounds increase the believability of the scene. Does that make sense?

I think so. It's like when you accentuate the lighting on a costume or make-up, you try to do it in a natural way, so that the audience doesn't perceive the illusion, but that they feel the fantasy. They feel the illusion, they get something out of it, but they don't know it's there, and then you're successful, because when you start perceiving the illusion, you have to go along with it, you gotta want to be fooled, like in magic. In cartoons or comedy you can tolerate more exaggeration and fantasy—you want it. In a cartoon you're waiting for the frying-pan-doyng-g-g-g whenever they just get hit by no matter what. You like that exaggeration in comedy. In drama you want to accentuate the reality more. And that is just as important.

It's a child-like zeal for some of these sounds...

It is, it is. My children think like it's the craziest job alive, too—it was a great laugh to work on this comedy film we just did, because it's adding more and exaggerating, like, you know, he's putting up wallpaper, and he steps in the glue, and then we do his feet as if they're all sticky, they weren't, but now they are. We did all kinds of stuff with molasses, and glue, and finally we put gaffer tape around my shoes backwards so that it was just shoes made of gaffer tape.

What are the tools of your trade?

I have a whole stockroom full of props that are very much tools of my trade, from a series of shoes, about a 100 pairs of shoes—10 or 20 of them that are my favorites—and then the Foley studio itself is very specialized, it needs to have certain props, and often the stockrooms are adjacent to the Foley studios. They're a very expensive studio, it's one of the reasons producers won't get Foley, because it is considered expensive. Some films I work 10 days on, which is alot, actually. I'll recreate an entire feature film in 10 days. Or in a documentary I'll just take one day and we'll touch up nice little things and make a few scenes work. We can get the studio for one day—it's charged by the hour, actually—and it has to be equipped with certain things, recording capabilities; sync-to-picture is one main thing, which is not readily available, maybe 10 in one city, if you're lucky. And [it must] have the surfaces and water capabilities; you need to have some kind of basin with water, to either recreate sinks—in our studio we have a steel sink and a porcelain sink—and a big cement basin in order to do lakes, any boats, any water you need, and there is often a necessity for that. So it's a specialized studio with water, and cement surfaces, to be able to do sidewalks, and that actually is one of the more difficult things, to have a cement surface that doesn't sound interior, that doesn't sound like a floor, that sound like a big outdoor size street: that sounds heavy enough and it doesn't have wood around it.

Would you necessarily have a leather chair in the studio if you needed a leather chair sound?

No. I might take a leather suitcase that might have more of a squeak, or a leather coat that would be even more of a squeak, but you want to have a chair that you can cover with leather to make more of a squeak; it's a combination of using the real thing and using something that will make the sound more of what you're wanting. Like, maybe it's more squeak, maybe it's less. If you're doing a hospital operation, and the guys sounds like he's got a saw, you might want to make the instrument sound more fine, more of a fine scissor or a knife, or if you're doing a comedy and you want to make it sound bigger you'll put a hammer in there offscreen if you can, and make it bigger, or use something with a hinge on the scissors that would squeak or give it more of what you're looking for, to push the subject, and to push the film.

In regards to the surgical procedure, would you do research to find out what the real thing sounds like, or does that even matter?

It depends. I've done scientific documentaries where they're very conscientious of being sound specific. I've had to, like, put a little—it was this sizzling kind of thing in a test tube. And the guy—it was for a thing about reproduction —and he put a metal stick in it and the director was very careful that we didn't have the sound of it touching the side of the test tube; because if it was just a fiction I'd probably put it touching the glass, so you'd feel the glass, so you wouldn't just see it, you'd hear it, and then you'd know it's there. But because we were being very careful to be scientific, we didn't want to have him ever touch the glass, because a real good scientist wouldn't ever touch the glass. So it would depend on the film. Every frame of every film is specific to that film. And that's the difference with Foley from a lot of other things, like with sound effects. Music is like that, too, although I don't know if they go to every frame as closely as we do.

We really do go frame specific, we're going to move the sync of a little impact one frame, half a frame. I usually get—I'm pretty good now. I get within—it's rare that I get over two frames off, and it's rare that I have to do something twice. I usually get it first time, and that's another reason why I keep getting hired, because I can do it quickly, and get it right, ready to go to mix, and they don't even have to worry about it. But we really are looking at every frame, foreground, background, people walk by in the background, we're going to do the foots or the flag waving, we're going to do it to give it more ambience, if there's a window banging in the wind, and you want to make it sound cold, the editor will put in the wind, and we'll do the window banging and it will sound even colder.

This work must really test you creativity every day—

Layers of sound, you want to work with frequencies as well, 'cause you have something like, you're on a train, and there's a low rumble going on all the time, you're going to need to work more in the high frequency. We lay on, you know, 10, 15, 20 tracks of sound that's going to go onto another 50 tracks of sound, so you've got to work with your frequencies, even within one sound, within one frame you're working with 50 tracks of sound so you want to be able to adjust sounds so they can all be heard. Look for something, if there's low booms going on, you want to look for something that will give a high jingle, like a buckle or a backpack that could maybe bring another frequency of texture to the sound, and make it as full as possible, so it doesn't get lost. So it's very creative, yes.

And that's very frustrating, sometimes, it's kind of like a musician, dancer, sound effects person. I wish sometimes with documentaries, or animations I'll do at the film board, whatever, you've got the director, they'll all come down and hear this one sound, I mean they're all standing there going, "Make it sort of crunchy, but soft, okay?", then you go, Okay, you look in your props for something crunchy and soft, and then they're waiting, and they don't want to be patient for any tests (laughs). I line up the different props, and "How about this?" "Oh, no, it's not crunchy enough!" "Oh, it's not soft enough!" (laughs). And they've had this sound in their head for two years, they have no idea exactly what it is, 'cause they've been working on this film for two years; you got the film last week, and you've got to figure out exactly what it is, and make it for them so that this film will work. And then they'll screw around for half a day and waste all your time on something, and they won't even put it in the mix, because they forgot they had music there—"Oh, yeah".

Do you have your own favorite mikes that you bring to the studio?

As a Foley artist, I don't own my own studio, I go where the production or where we decide to go, I work in about 4 different studios. Usually the microphones are part of the equipment of the studio, the studio and the sound recordist have their reputation. We work usually with a close-up mike, and a long reflective mike, these are nice trade secrets, to be able to do perspectives and things like that, the idea of working with two mikes. And then we work with a ProTools system (or a Fairlight system) workstation where we can record and adjust the sync at the same time right away. So we edit, if I do something, and the sound is right, and we want to move it a few frames earlier because it's not right on with the picture, if you have the right workstation, then you can adjust that right away, and the Foley doesn't have to go through an editing phase before going to mix.

How does the Foley process unfold, who do you interact with?

I meet with the sound supervisor and the director, usually, depending on the project, the three of us will meet, we'll go over the film and decide what needs to be done, and here and where, and where they want to put accentuations, and what time will allow, and then I create a list of the things that need to be done, and the props that need to be found to accompany the effect. And we collect props; I have an assistant that works with me. A Foley assistant is a good way to start, it's the only way to start. So these young ladies who are looking to start—to be a Foley assistant is the way to start. They look after the props, and make sure all the props are right there for a scene, if you need go to a store or to a rental agency or to wherever—ask your grandmother for dentures—which we did in a film. So the three of us are in the studio, the sound recordist, myself—the Foley artist—and the Foley assistant, and sometimes there's a cue sheet keeper, which keeps written track of what effect is on which track—the Foley assistant sometimes does that—however, now, sometimes that's written right onto the workstation as they identify their tracks when they record. So there's just the three of us in the studio. And the sound supervisor, who is often editing, or not, comes around now and then, listens to things, wants to add things, they might listen to everything at the end and make a little change, something's not "gluey" enough, or they like it alot and they want more of it somewhere else. Little touch-ups. And in 10 days, or two weeks, the feature's finished (at my stage). And then it's ready to go straight to mix, or else it can go back to the editing suite and retouched depending on the team and the budget.

So, did you start as a Foley assistant?

Eventually, yeah, I actually started as a dancer in theatre, and did a lot of mime, and I think that actually helped me alot, because it very physical: I do a lot of footsteps, and you're mimicking everything, everybody's movement. That's where I think it comes in with the mime, even though we're talking sound and no sound, we're still talking non-dialog, and we're talking a performance. In France, the Foley artists are part of the actors union, because it is like acting. I have a bachelor's degree in performing arts, did alot of theatre, and then I got to know somebody who was a Foley artist, and I asked them if they ever need an assistant, give me a call, and eventually they did, and that was about 20 years ago. And then I did the assistant thing, and then you got to get out of the assistant ghetto, which we find alot in film. Camera operators talk about it, too. You're an assistant for someone good, and you're doing these nice films, and everything, and then you want to go on and be your own artist, and then you go back and do your little things, and you don't work for much. And it's hard to break out of that.

How did you break out?

I actually moved to another city. I saw we were getting more and more work from Montreal, I'm from Toronto, so I came to Montreal because there were no Foley artists here. And I got little bits of work, and I went from doing features, big features, to doing TV shows. I made my client base on TV shows—and just do a good job every time, blow them away with your creativity, come up with stuff that they haven't thought of—and they'll bring you back for the next film.

Are you a freelancer?

Yes I am, I was on staff for about 7 of 8 years for a while, then the company fell through, and so I went back to freelancing.

Is Foley work stressful at times, do you work with tight deadlines?

Yes it is. Yes, very tight deadlines, and like I say, the producers don't even really want to spend the—it gets [to] almost $200/hour for the studio, and that's not paying the artist. And so they [go] "I'll give you 4 days to do this" [for a job] that should take 5 or 6 to do, but they only have 4, and you want to give them the nicest job you can, all the same, or you say, "No, I won't do it in 4" and they take it to somebody else, who won't do as nice of job (chuckles)—whatever. It's very stressful. I was working on a feature film last week, and they demolished the building next door to our studio. Boom! boom!, the whole week they demolished it; two weeks after, they were re-installing the big pylons. So 3 weeks we didn't have studio. So we came in and did it at night, and on weekends. I'm a mom, and I need to spend time with my kids, and often the picture will be late, we're the last step right before the mix. Which is the last step right before delivery, and delivery does not change.

I don't know if you know much—I don't know many film, or TV, especially in TV: the delivery date doesn't change, but the production will go on long, the editing will go on long, and then we get our picture for sound a week before the mix: and the mix usually doesn't change either, 'cause it's these 'big shot' mixers, they're expensive, too, and that's full booked, and so when the picture's late, often we have to eat the time: weekends, nights, or 18 hour days, and still try to get it done. So there is very much stress, and also being a freelance artist, and working in the film industry. I was working with CINAR when it crashed, I don't know if you know any of that, they had cartoons, and they were one of the bigger animation companies in Canada, they were doing Arthur and all this stuff for PBS, and the whole thing just crashed, because that's the business. And so you go and find other clients; ten days is a long contract, so you got to get a lot of films; I did 40 films last year. You get to work with people, and you make networking and all that.

I took time off to have kids, that's when I got involved with the Women In Film, actually, I had a little more time and I was wanting to keep up my networking, so that I wouldn't disappear while I was having my kids. I had a client I talked to last week after I hadn't seen him, my son's 14, I hadn't seen him since before that, and he said, "Oh I heard you took off to have kids 14 years ago", I'm like, I've done about 2000 half hours of TV and 50 feature films since then, so I didn't really disappear 14 years ago. That's how the industry is as well, you say "I can't do that job" to one client, and for them you moved to Africa. So you can't say no, a lot of the time to clients, that's part of being a freelance, and then everything comes at once, pictures get pushed back, and another picture doesn't, all of a sudden you're double booked. (mimics) "Come on down!" There is stress.

Have you encountered any gender barriers doing this work?

Oh, yes, I've had people say—I started in the 80's, when there weren't many women around in film so much other than acting, then there were more in producing, and slowly we're seeing more and more in directing; I think there is still only 2% in technicians; you don't see many d.o.p. women, you don't see many lighting and sound people, but you're seeing more and more, you don't see many sound supervisor women; sound editors, they are kind of like the women who do dialog editing, but sound effects editing there's not many. And that's who I work with, the technicians and the editors, and it's mainly guys, the mixers, you don't see many women mixers, either, and the post production sound. So I work with the guys, and that's ok, and I gotta be tough, you can't talk about family problems, or say my kid's sick so I can't do this film, you just don't discuss that, you arrange it otherwise.

I've had people say that women can't do Foley, because it's physically too demanding. There have been some women that have changed that, good 'ol Dennie Thorp over at SkyWalker Sound. She's been going since Terminator and before, and she's so good, and she's about 5 feet tall—she did Terminator and she did Gladiator, she does all these huge movies. She's been very well known for 20 or more years. Maybe I have an affinity with her because she kinda started around the same time as I did.

I feel that I have made sacrifices for the family as well. I've done TV more where I may have done features more because of the more conducive hours, it's more 9 to 5 where the features are all over the place and big stress. I did go work in California, in San Francisco for a while, but my family's here, so there are those concessions, gender wise, to consider as well.

Did you find that the networking you spoke of, has that been important to women in the film industry?

Yes, very much so, very much so, because we are a minority, it's important to know the others are out there. I found it hard to work for an association like that, because that's not really where my talents were. Like when I was on the board, when I tried to do that. That wasn't really my thing to do that. But I have kept the contacts, and there are people who I have met—I can't say that I've gotten tons of work through it, you know, people I know at the Women In Film thing don't necessarily hire me. I find that interesting. (laughs). I don't know what to say.

Talking to women in this industry, they sometimes identify a problem, but seem to draw blanks when it comes to solutions.

I was at a kind of an academy meeting the other night, and there were only a few women from the industry that I know, it's almost sometimes like they're—women are nervous of each other, I don't know, I don't know, because I'm working still mainly with guys, mainly my clients are guys. I don't know if maybe they are pushing, like the women sound supervisors, they've been pushing hard, and maybe they don't want the general public to know that they'll hire another woman just 'cause they're a woman because it kind of blows your cover with the guys, if you understand. I don't take it derogatorily, I've been—you know my mother was a feminist, and I've worked for women's groups for most of my life, and I think they're really, really important. But I find we're pushing so hard to make a way in this man's world, sometimes you like don't want them to know you're a feminist or you'll blow your cover. They won't let you in the locker room any more, if they know that you're going to bring all the girls. (laughs) Or something like that. But no, I work with other women, and I love to work on woman's films for political reasons as well. And I think I would like to see more networking, and women supporting women. And I think that this kind of thing that you're doing is the way to go.

Judith Gruber-Stitzer
Film Composer

I'm hired by the director to add music to the film, and in so doing I help the director achieve the intention that he or she wanted in a scene. Let's say if you were to watch an action film without music, they are almost ridiculous, because it's really the music and the sound effects that convey the drama of it; when you see someone running down the street, it might not be the most dramatic scene, but if you have pounding music behind it, it gives you the whole backstory. It reminds us that he's running or she's running from something, or running to something. So the music is the third element, I like to think of it, in a film you have the dialog and the visuals and it's the third narrative element. You can be saying something entirely different with the music than you are with what the people are saying or how they're looking on screen and that's how you get the whole dramatic effect.

What's your educational background, how did you develop your skills as a composer?

I'm educated as an English teacher, I have a degree from Trenton State University. My skills are intuitive. I always played music at parties and things, and I played in some bands. It's what I love to do. It's just by doing it—it fit me, it was the right thing for me, I just fell into it. Someone asked me to do music for film because they saw me perform with my band, and I realized I need to do this, because I love stories, I love storytelling, and that's what I studied essentially as an English major. It's the idea of serving a story with music that has attracted me to film composing.

Is your work all original composition?

Oh yeah. Very rarely I am asked to take a classical piece and adapt it, but 99% of the time I do original music.

How does the process unfold, what are the tools of your trade?

I get a video copy of the film—I just got a new one this morning—and we use what's called time code, which is a numeric timeline. I'll be looking at this new film, for example, with a woman director, by chance, tomorrow. We look through the film together to decide where to put music and what kind of music in terms of—I don't ask her what kind of music, I ask her what they'd like the music to do for the scene; if they want it to be more romantic, or slower, or faster; Do you want me to give the impression that we're in Hawaii? and I'll play Hawaiian music in the background—all this kind of stuff. It's kind of like a spiritual discussion with the director as to intent the music should give to the image. I have a computer set-up, meaning I have an electronic keyboard that I play sync to the picture, so the video is playing, and if I play (sings) dah dada dah dah you know, whatever, it will be locked to the picture at that point. If someone is sipping a cup of tea, the way my electronic keyboard is hooked up to the video machine, my music is synchronized to the image, and I can build from there. I'll have a melody, then I'll add a bass line, and then I'll decide that this would be pretty with a string quartet. And so, in my studio I have electronic versions of a full orchestra as well as synth and samples, and I decide my instrumentation in my studio and then go to a larger recording studio to record the acoustic instruments. Or I might do it all in my studio with all electronic samples. I play a couple of instruments badly—guitar, bass, mandolin—so I will do some little sketches and then I'll have musicians come into my studio, I can record one person at a time, and I'll do a little demo for the director to hear. If the director likes what they hear, then I'll decide on the final instrumentation. My machines enable the director to get a very good idea of what it's going to sound like with real instruments—or I might stick with my machines.

Is the process of composing different for live action versus animated films?

It's pretty much the same thing, the only difference is that for a few animated films, I've been asked to compose—I guess this is the big difference: for some animated films they'll want the music first and they'll animate to the music. And that's very unusual in live action, I can only liken it to a dance film where the choreography would be done from the music.

Does film work take you places you might not otherwise go as a composer?

That's what I just love about film music, because I have no musical education, I'm self taught, and each film indeed takes me somewhere I've never been to before. The film I just finished was an animated film, the character that had these magical boots and he was traveling around the world and I had to make it feel as though we were in Italy, and then as though we were in China, and then Bali. And that was fun, I get to buy alot of fabulous CDs from these places, and I can't pretend to do music that is truly Chinese or Balinese, but I just try to be evocative, to evoke those feelings.

Who are you employed by, or are you independent...

Yes, I'm a freelancer.

How do you typically get jobs then, do directors seek you out?

Both ways, I'll receive a call, like for this film I'm starting today, she got my name from somebody else. And I have a resume, the films are accessible publicly, so people can go watch them. And some of the scores are for films that have done moderately well here in Canada, so they'll come to me. Or if I hear of an interesting project and I'm looking for work, I'll send my demo to people too.

What do you like about this work?

I love hearing how the film changes when the music is added to it, it's just lot's of fun. The film is the inspiration, it's just so much easier in a way than sitting in a room and composing a melody from your own inner world; here I have a film that is often times quite beautiful sitting in front of me, and I can space out looking at it and start playing something, and, oh yeah, that's nice, it fits nicely, or oh no, that doesn't work with it, and it's just a very lovely process. Plus I get to hire wonderful musicians and the music only gets better; what I have in my studio with my machines, it just becomes quite glorious when the musicians start playing it.

When did you first know that you wanted to work in film?

The first time I did it! It was because of this band I played in, people saw us, and actually, because we were an all woman band, the first person who hired me was a woman, because they wanted a woman composer, because they wanted to encourage women to go into this field. The fact that I was a woman certainly got me my first couple jobs.

Have you encountered any gender barriers working as a woman composer?

I think if anything, I've benefitted from my gender, because it's been obvious to me that I was hired by female directors, because they wanted a female composer. A few times when projects haven't gone so well, it has crossed my mind, that it's very much a man's world, and I don't know if that's the reason why a project might not go as well. How would I ever know? But it has crossed my mind.

When speaking with director Cynthia Scott, she felt that the Film Board has just been a really wonderful institution, and frankly, maybe without the Film Board her films would not have gotten made.

There's no question about it, and why I was I hired at the Film Board the first time and why I got so many jobs in the beginning is indeed exactly what Cynthia's talking about. There was a studio called Studio D. Within the Film Board they had different studios with different mandates—French animation, English animation, the documentary section, the feature film section—and they decided because there were so few female filmmakers that they would start a small studio and they would seek out women directors and train women directors to try and help women filmmakers. And that's where I started working, they hired me because indeed they were trying to encourage women—camerawomen, women sound recorders: what you're documenting right now—Studio D's federal mandate from the government was to encourage women to do these jobs; sometimes they took women and trained them. In my case they didn't train me, they kept on hiring me. So I was able to support myself, they created a career for me, it was great.

That's wonderful. The hope is that these stories will be inspirational...

I give talks a little bit about film music...

I wanted to ask you about your outreach work.

Yeah, I do a little bit, I went to Hiroshima, Japan. That was the most dramatic—on a less dramatic scale I went to Amnesty in France last year—it's all related to animation. I've done a few films—like When the Day Breaks has been really successful, but it's a small world in animation, it's easier to be recognized in such a small milieu, so in the Amnesty International Animation Festival, I was there last year and gave a talk about music. And I did it in Saskatoon last year as well, and I've given a few talks here in Montreal. I suspect the Film Board is going to send me a few more places. I love doing it, and why I started saying this is because I'm hoping that there will be some young women in the audience, or older women, or whomever, just some women in the audience who will—a little lightbulb might go off in their head, and realize that "Hey, I compose music and I perhaps can do this too". Because this is a wonderful career, and I don't understand why more women don't do it.

A figure cited by Salon.com is that 96% of films are directed by men, a situation which to me, a male, seems absurd...

I think it's one of the last bastions of pure sexism, I suppose, film composers are one thing, it's small potatoes compared to directing, but I suppose for a producer, if the money is being handled by the male establishment, to put their confidence in a women, perhaps, I don't know, I just can't begin to explain it.

But also, if you were to ask the average person, name me a famous composer, is a woman's name going to come to mind?

Not for any kind of music.

Which is also absurd.

Yeah, you'll have a guitar playing woman like Joni Mitchell or something, and that's about it. I suppose in terms of outreach, the best thing would be if people would send me to music school, because that would be the place where I think I would be most effective, to be speaking to a class of young composers. Show them the work I've done, and explain to them what a wonderful field it is. It's a great way to have a life. -- Judith Gruber-Stitzer, March 2004.

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