Insider Info

The big screen looms before him with a scene of a vampire closing in on his next victim. Gregg Barbanell eats a sandwich and has one thing on his mind: "What are we going to make the attack sound like?"

The key isn't to think of what it "really" sounds like, but to make it believable.

"Basically, we want the sound to have some effect on the audience," says Barbanell, who works for a post-production studio. "Reality is thrown out the window on something like that."

Barbanell dictates what movies sound like -- right from the horrific to the realistic. Over the years he's worked on hundreds of Hollywood movies, including hits like Dumb and Dumber, Disclosure and Wall Street.

"In a movie like Disclosure, reality is the bible. You have to be very accurate on stuff like setting a pencil down and turning a page. If it sounds like it's overdone, it's going to stick out. The real artistry of it is being able to take the character and help him out a little bit. There are subtle things you can do as a foley to help the scene -- if he's scared, you can convey that with the way he's walking."

Barbanell started out as a sound editor. While supervising a few shows, he did some foley work and found he had a knack for it. It was almost like he instinctively knew how to use props to recreate the sound of a horse and carriage passing on a cobblestone street, or conveying emotion through the sound of a footstep.

"There's a human element to making the sounds. You have to watch the movie and think: is he angry, is he being careful, is he shy? All of these things point to a certain set of footsteps.

"It's very low tech, and that's one of the neat things about it. Meanwhile, on the other side of the [studio] glass, you've got all the latest technology to record it."

One of the hurdles foley artists have to get over is how much physical effort is needed to get the sound they want. Throwing car doors isn't unheard of if you're looking for big-picture sound.

Lise Wedlock, a freelance foley artist, recalls that when she entered the field she raised eyebrows. "They said there was no way a woman could ever do this job. Forget it -- there's no way you can match a 200-pound man."

Wedlock let that criticism slip right by. But she admits it's certainly physical work. Lifting doors or engines takes a bit of heft.

"You've got to be able to throw a big thing to make a big noise. But I've also got a few tricks, like weighting my shoes. I always wonder how a 200-pound man is going to make himself sound like a 90-pound girl."

Women are certainly more accepted in the business today. The foley artist for Terminator 2 was Ellen Houser, who recreated the sound of Arnold Schwarzenegger's foot by walking on a file cabinet.

When Wedlock got into the business, gumption and a stroke of luck won her an apprenticeship with veteran Andy Malcolm. Under his guidance, Wedlock learned that the job of a foley artist is often to bring out a background character the director had forgotten about.

You're mimicking the character and making the sound so precise that the audience doesn't even know what's happening. You should never hear good foley.

After three years working with Malcolm, Wedlock struck out on her own. With no professional association or union to back her, she has to regularly knock on producers' doors to sell her work.

"You have to sell yourself. It takes a lot of perseverance, and that's probably the hardest thing. Show after show, you have to tell the producers things like, 'Nobody understood that scene until now,' or, 'Doesn't that look great?'"

One of Wedlock's more unusual assignments was for a still-to-be-released cartoon series about outer space. She had to come up with the sound of an alien egg cracking.

"The egg had to sound as heavy as a rock. You can use multi-tracking in foley, up to 24 tracks. So I used rocks scraping against each other. Then I cracked the rind of a watermelon and stuck my hand in the melon to get that suction sound. It's fun, but there's a lot of pressure because time is so short."

Wedlock has also worked on government productions and on the United Nations' native series called Rights of the Heart, which received international attention.

Wedlock now does a lot of work on cartoons, such as the Wizard of Oz and the Arthur series. The trick is to create both humor and reality through sound.

"Cartoons are jumpy sometimes, so if a foot hits the surface, you want to hear the crunch of gravel or the squeak of a running shoe."

Many people consider TV work to be inferior to movies, but she shrugs that off. "I'm a mom now, and I find that TV is more conducive to being a mom than feature films. Features are very intense work and long hours. A TV series might take two to three days a week."

And Wedlock also feels that she's doing a public service. "I remember my mom moving the TV downstairs when I was young because she couldn't stand the sound of the cartoons -- it drove her crazy. I think this is my donation. I know what went into the sounds of these cartoons, and I'd like to do this for mothers all over the world."