Using Foley sounds from existing films
- Thread starter iamWZA
- Start date
One, it's Foley and not foley. It's a proper name. Two, it's not Foley if it's pre-recorded; it's FX. With that out of the way...
There are some great FX libraries out there, and if you can buy them - legally licensed - and they fit your needs, go for it. There are also some really crappy FX libraries out there, so make sure you know what you're getting (and stick to known names such as the BBC library and Hollywood Edge). There are also tons of great, royalty-free, pay-per-track FX on sites like Pond5, along with the aforementioned sounddogs.com and the Creative Commons licensing site freesound.org.
If you have the proper equipment and the know-how, recording your own FX is both challenging and fun, and in the end you have a library of sounds that no one else has. I find this the most rewarding method, and I keep a handheld recorder with me when I travel specifically to grab sounds when interesting things pop up. But if you aren't equipped, there's no shame in buying and licensing a decent library.
Taking it without permission/lifting it from another film = illegal
Recording your own, purchasing and licensing material, or using sounds that are free licensed (such as Creative Commons) = legal
There should be no other question about that.
Noiz2
Sound Ninja
First it's extremely unlikely you heard the same sound since the "sound" was probably made up of many layers. Second it's not at all unusual for some type of sound to become popular and show up again, but this is people doing a sound that sounds like... It's not that hard if you are an experienced sound editor/ designer to take apart a sound and come up with something very similar.
But maybe more to the point Star Wars was done at Skywalker ranch, the library is not open for use by and large even to other films at the Ranch. But those original sounds were created by Ben Burt. Ben's assistant for many years was Gary Rydstrom. Gary has done all but a one (maybe two) of Pixars sound designs and they have all been done at the Ranch.
So if anybody was going to get permission it would be Gary. But even if he didn't use the originals, and really the odds are low that he did (he gets paid $$$ do design new sounds) he has as part of his tool palette all the same techniques that he learned from Ben and probably some shared aesthetics.
Nobody with a big budget is stealing sounds and nobody in their right mind would touch anything Lucas owned -very litigious guy with lots of good lawyers.
Noiz2
Sound Ninja
NOT
J Davis
Veteran
@noiz2 - I think I have a pretty good ear for samples and such. Way above the average person because before I was messing with cameras and short films I was doing audio and music. The Millenium falcon sound is just one amongst many i hear recycled.
edit:
just check the b grade new release sci-fi's on netflix, so many recycled sounds
edit:
just check the b grade new release sci-fi's on netflix, so many recycled sounds
Noiz2
Sound Ninja
You already got the F not f lecture so...
Yes. The commercial libraries get used all the time. Even big budget studios have large libraries of commercial FX libraries. They also have huge private libraries and any film with a budget is going to be recording new sounds specific to the film and Foley. All of those sounds end up in the studios library.
FYI "Foley" types of sounds should almost never be used in stereo ,they should be mono and centered with the dialog. The exception is sounds that you Foley'd that are not connected to an actor.
J Davis
Veteran
here's what I'm saying … in any industry short cuts get taken and sound fx for film is no different. Does anyone here believe that every tire screech, body punch, or shattered glass heard is uniquely recorded for every film out there? hell no.
Some will be custom, some will be stock and some will be swiped. Of the swiped ones most will get away with it without being recognized. A tiny percentage of them will get recognized but are they prosecuted? Maybe … but I've never heard of it.
Some will be custom, some will be stock and some will be swiped. Of the swiped ones most will get away with it without being recognized. A tiny percentage of them will get recognized but are they prosecuted? Maybe … but I've never heard of it.
j1clark@ucsd.edu
Veteran
What about timing SFX 'by hand' with some sort of MIDI keyboard device, where each key has been programed by some means to emit an SFX. While it's not putting on the hipboots and sloshing through muck
while watching the playback, it is a 'performance' to some degree, in that a human is punching the keys.
Or is that the hybrid you don't like to call Foley?
Noiz2
Sound Ninja
Commercial FX sounds are of course reused all the time. All of the "signature sounds" in Star Wars are not available to any other film.
People who haven't worked on a big budget FX heavy film generally don't realize how many tracks go into that "sound". I didn't see that session so I don't know for sure but I would not be at all surprised if that engine startup was over thirty tracks wide. So even if someone used part of the sound they would not have all of the pieces. And sounds are very specific to the shot, so I would also bet large $ that no two "start ups" were actually the same.
b grade films are another matter. There probably is a millennium "start up" on some commercial FX CD. It's a sound alike and every cheesy show that wanted a "Star Wars" engine sound probably used it.
And as I mentioned George is VERY unforgiving on copyright infringement. If any of those were actually copies of the real deal he would have gone after them with a flame thrower. He has in fact gone after folks who used sounds from the Skywalker Library.
j1clark@ucsd.edu
Veteran
To me the issue is clear in the case of 'can I cut sounds out of a finished film I have on DVD/BD'... illegal infringement in most cases.
The issue is less clear on the business of being licensed for 'fests', then put your work up on Youtube and start snatching nickels, and the fine print of the license you did get limits use...
I can understand that many people because of the arcane licensing for 'synchronization', just don't go deep enough into the fine print.
I think there should be some sort of arbitration on such issues that allows a person to license, or expand the license, in a much 'simpler' way... than is currently available.
Anyone with an SM57 and a Fender guitar amp can recreate light saber sounds. Anyone with a mic, a wrench, and a guy wire on the nearest telephone pole can recreate laser cannon sounds.
There are sounds out there that are recycled. The Wilhelm Scream was alluded to earlier in the thread. And the copyrights/licensing on that one sound... ? It appears in so many things now (every single episode of the Family Guy Star Wars parodies had it). But my guess would be that other, more generic sounds that are recycled are actually derived from purchased libraries or, as Scott pointed out, by sound designers' personal libraries and techniques (and inside connections to major collections from the studio) as they work across multiple projects over the years. They may not be recording every sound for every film, but they are creating quite a bit of it for each project.
Citing sci-fi b-movies as an example is kind of a no-brainer. On low/no-budget films that are pushed out the door as fast as they can be produced, they aren't worried about recording original Foley or SFX... nor do they have the budgets to take that time. Recycled sounds? I guarantee they've all purchased the same libraries... and since lots of those films come from the same shops, they're all utilizing the same collections. I doubt that theft is a routine practice there.
We really need to get away from the discussion that, due to the low risk of getting caught, stealing these sounds is something to do. Again: it's theft, it's wrong, and any further discussion of "should I break the law because I probably won't get caught" will get the thread locked, earn infractions, or both.
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j1clark@ucsd.edu
Veteran
I can't recall which "Transformers" BTS but there was a small blurb that during the sound post processing the 'team' exceeded the 32K 'sound chunks' hitherto unknown limit (I don't know if it was tracks or some other type of resource... and the production had to wait for a 'new and improved' Pro Tools that had bumped the limit... I'm thinking in my programming mode some bozo software engineer said some time in the 90's 'who the hell will want more than a 'short integer' number of sounds', which is 32K for a 16 bit signed number...
(Probably cousin to the DOS disk code writer who thought 2G was a 'reasonable' max size for a file...).
Noiz2
Sound Ninja
Actually you are wrong. Northern California studios tend to record more new sounds for films but nobody in their right mind would record everything from scratch. Most of the non "new" sounds are from either a studios library or the sound designers library, the rest are from commercial FX libraries. None are "swiped".
Now that does not mean none have been used before. Everything but the new recordings have been used before. and often a particularly good XYZ will have a mixed version added to the library also (not just the parts) so it's entirely possible that you will hear the exact same sound, though again it will almost always be layered up so it won't sound the same, in more than one film. But those sounds are not "swiped", they are part of the studio library. It's one of the perks of going to a specific place for sound post, you get access to their library.
I have sounds from a ton of films and hundreds of ads in my library. I either own or have permission to use all of them.
But again you are making a mistake about how sound is used professionally.
I did 90% of the punches and hits and sword blows etc for Drunken Master 2 (the rerelease - renamed Legend of Drunken Master). There are thousands of hits in that film. 80% or so of them were used before in other films and the rest we recorded. But EVERY hit in the film has at least three sounds that make up the specific hit, some have six or more sounds. Every single hit in the film is different and none are the same as any used in any film before.
I seriously doubt that anybody would be able to tell the difference between most of them if you played them with out picture one at a time. But the reason you do that is because the human ear/brain is very sensitive to repetition and patterns. IF you used the same hit over and over it sounds boring and uninteresting. Because every hit is different in some way your brain stays engaged and you stay "in" the movie.
Not every sound in (a well done film) is recorded new but every sound is edited/ layered/ altered for that specific moment and so indeed every sound is a "new" sound.
Actually probably 10% or so is not layered up. An insignificant door close may well be a bare sound, though it will have all the BG's etc.
This is a BIG difference between TV shows in general where speed is of the essence and films where it isn't. TV shows usually develop a show specific library and sounds will get reused quite often.
Noiz2
Sound Ninja
It would not be called Foley because it's not performed by Foley artists on a Foley stage, you are playing back FX not performing them.
But as much as it's not technically Foley it is done all the time on low budget productions. I have sample banks set up so I can "walk" the keyboard. It's not anywhere as good or nuance as a real Foley performance but you can get away with it, especially with unimportant footsteps. And it's a major improvement over nothing.
Liam Hall
Veteran
Steve House
Veteran
Just read the licenses carefully. A lot of the readily available consumer SFX CDs explicitly state for personal or non-commercial use only.
hscully
Veteran
Not at hollywoodedge.com. The license clearly states, " This includes a media product/production for film, web, multimedia, podcasting, embedding in video games and most other applications. You can use it
over and over, in as many projects as you see fit, for life."
They also define Broadcast rights, mechanical rights and Public performance Broadcast rights. Basically you can't sell the recordings
Steve House
Veteran
Yep, that's true for Hollywood Edge and other vendors of libraries for broadcast or other professional use. But there are vendors of SFX collections that market them only for personal use .... like you might run across a CD of "Spooky Sounds" in Walmart's bargain bin that would be perfectly legal for you to play on your porch as background sounds to scare the trick-or-treaters next Halloween night but would not be licensed to use in a video you were going to post of YouTube.
hscully
Veteran
Oh ok... I see what you mean. I have to admit that before your post I just assumed the license for the sounds I purchased was good for my work from the conversations with them. I really should have read the agreements first. I'll have to be more vigilant! Thanks for the heads up.