SMuir
Well-known member
As per mixer28's request, here are a few foley prop and sound effect ideas.
General purpose props:
General purpose props:
- Tightly curl a phone book into a cylinder, wrap it in gaffer tape, and use it to smack things. Great for punches, body falls, dinosaur feet, etc.
- A well broken-in leather mallet can also make a good substitute fist.
- Take a sheet of glass, and wrap it tightly and completely in several layers of duct tape (so that the glass won't go anywhere when broken). Break it, and it'll give you an interesting crackling sparkey sound when bent and flexed. Make sure none of the broken glass breaks though.
- A small bag of cornstarch can be used to add "crunch" to snowy footsteps. Just be careful that it doesnt get wet, becuase cornstarch + water = slurry.
- Snow can be obtained almost year-round from indoor skating rinks. Find out where the Zambonni dumps the snow shaved from the ice surface.
- Large ice blocks can be obtained from ice-carving suppliers.
- Stock up on bamboo rods. Have a variety of lengths and thicknesses, and by all means try to find ones with hexagonal cross-sections.
- Pipes and tubes will give a more mechanical, hollow sounding whoosh.
- Buggy whips and bullwhips should be handled with care: they require a lot of space and can severely injure a person.
- Bullroarers (wood frames strung with rubber bands and swung on a rope) will give you an airier sound if swung slowly.
- Practice golf balls (hollow plastic sphere's full of holes) can be tied to a string and swung around for an airy whoosh.
- For extra huge planetary whooshes, use a large sheet of wood or metal to wave a blast of air into an inexpensive dynamic mic (eg. AKG D112)
- Smack a neoprene flutterboard
- Hit a head of lettuce or cabbage (especially for head impacts)
- Smack a large butternut squash against a cement floor (for a head hitting cement).
- Punch a large piece of raw meat.
- Get a couple of martial artists to spar for the mic.
- Punch/slap yourself on various body parts. Remember that hard doesn't always mean loud, and loud doesn't always mean dramatic.
- Punch or kick a heavy bag (taking care to silence any chain jangle).
- Thump a ripe wattermelon (for a bass add).
- Halve a coconut shell, scoop out the meat, dry it out, and "tune it" by packing in some tar or putty
- Get some horse hooves from a farm vetrinarean, and have a taxidermist prepare them (nothing beats the real thing)
- Bury a geophone in the dirt pit to add weight to the recording (hydrophones, contact mics or lav's can work for this)
- Put a kick-drum mic (eg. AKG D112) inside a sock (preferably clean), and lay it gently in the dirt pit just out of harm's way. Mix with the main foley mic to add weight to the recording.
- Stab a roasting chicken with a knife, or even a spoon.
- Stab a grapefruit with a knife or spoon. Dig around in it for extra "goosh".
- Use a particularly musical knife to add a "shing".
- Crunch a mouthful of lifesavers.
- Wrap uncooked dry rigatonni in a damp chamois and crush it.
- Break celery.
- Plastic or silk plants will sometimes make a convincing "foliage" sound.
- 1/4" audio tape sounds a lot like grass (both for footsteps, and for tall grass blowing in the wind).
- A small bunch of kale can give you a very realistic, dense foliage sound.
- Spray a bit of water onto a clean cement floor and drag a rubber hot water bottle over it.
- Bark/growl/snarl/chuff/sneeze/wheeze/howl/hiss into a mic (use one with plenty of high-frequency detail, eg. Neumann TLM170). Record at 192 kHz. "Add" into a 48 kHz ProTools session without re-sampling (ie. it'll play back at 1/4 speed). Pitch-shift it back upwards (without time-correction) to taste.
- Make an uneven pile of slate tiles, and smash them with a heavy rock.
- Crush a walnut, and pitch it down a bit.
