Making your own sound effects/ foley

[macsound]

I've been listening to a couple of fictional story based podcasts, they're like radio shows and rather well produced. (Homecoming and Limetown)
It made me think I should start making my own sound effects again. In the past, it was before computer editing using all analog effects, recording to cassette or MiniDisc and doing some minor mastering when combining.
Now that all editing is done on the computer in an editor and knowing how anal I get when editing audio for video shoots, I'm wondering how crazy people get when making effects for theatre.
I remember doing a tennis ball bounce stereo effect for some 20's dance show and just doing the recording in the hallway. I didn't go through and cut out all the noise or do massive EQ curves to really accentuate the tonal structure of the ball, it just was what it was.

So 1. Does anyone out there record their own effects?
2. How crazy do you get making sure there's no noise?
3. How long do you spend eqing and compressing to make the effect sound "perfect"?

 

[MRW Lights]

1. I TRY to record/use all of my own effects. I find that I have a bank of common ones and go to's, but even then I still go after new one's or new versions from time to time.
2. I record them how I need them and in a way that I feel best helps the story.
3. Hopefully, I got it right in the recording so that all I have to do in "post" is make adjustments for playback in order to help it sound more "real"

I'm also a little biased in that I teach audio for picture/stage and am part of an engineering team with a foley studio. So we're.... particular on a good day and crazy verging on fanatical on any other day ending in y.

 

[josh88]

I try to record a lot of the stuff I use, I dont generally do too much to edit unless I play it on my mains and it reveals a lot of hiss or ambient noise or something that I don't like. A little bit of prep to minimize external factors saves me time later in post.

 

[Dionysus]

Yeah trying to limit background "noise" of any kind during the initial recording really does a LOT. It is easier than trying to remove it later. This really is my philosophy.

"Garbage in, Garbage out"

I edit things in post as little as I can get away with. And will add or EQ depending on needs.

 

[BCAP]

I've been listening to a couple of fictional story based podcasts, they're like radio shows and rather well produced. (Homecoming and Limetown)
It made me think I should start making my own sound effects again. In the past, it was before computer editing using all analog effects, recording to cassette or MiniDisc and doing some minor mastering when combining.
Now that all editing is done on the computer in an editor and knowing how anal I get when editing audio for video shoots, I'm wondering how crazy people get when making effects for theatre.
I remember doing a tennis ball bounce stereo effect for some 20's dance show and just doing the recording in the hallway. I didn't go through and cut out all the noise or do massive EQ curves to really accentuate the tonal structure of the ball, it just was what it was.

So 1. Does anyone out there record their own effects?
2. How crazy do you get making sure there's no noise?
3. How long do you spend eqing and compressing to make the effect sound "perfect"?

1. Yes. As many as possible.

2. Reducing unwanted noise and ambience when recording is critical. Since, often compression and limiting need to be applied which raises the noise floor. Other considerations apply. Such as trying to record an effect that is intended to be conveyed as happening outdoors when one is recording indoors with ambience.

3. As long as it takes. Using the right microphones and mic placement helps minimize the need for radical EQ. Don't forget that some effects, that can be characterized as what the audience "wants to hear" are a combination of different elements. An explosion + a crash + .... you get it.


I create most of my effects using samplers. In the old days it was hardware and previously tape. Now it's virtual instruments like Native Kontakt. This affords a great deal of flexibility over everything. When combined with a completely "in the box" process it can be quite efficient and fast.

Sound effects design is a deep topic. I have been a professional sound effects designer for most of my career, across various media. Theatrical sound effects design is not easy, but so many community groups pay little or no attention to it these days that it's been reduced an afterthought. Something slap shot added onto the show. A halfway decent sound effect design effort will go a long way. Most of the time the producer is cherry picking their favorite effect off of www.sounddogs.com and that's as far as it goes. They don't even do any editing as they are frequently incapable or just don't care.

Remember - don't ADD sound effects onto your production. Instead, integrate sound effects INTO your production.

Good luck.

 

[BCAP]

Originally wrote a longer response here but edited it to shorten.

From perspective of estimating production time, I find that 20-30 minutes for a featured effect design (assuming an optimized DAW / software rig) is a starting point. There are always exceptions and if you have effects that are particularly complicated, with regards to length or the elements and timing then it may go quite a bit longer and if you're recording your own source material and don't have the stuff on hand. In past projects I've worked on I've had to record actors and voice talent for effects and to go out into the field to get source material for various things.

Across all effects required for a production it's been my experience that the overall the time I estimated per effect tended to average out. You might get a telephone ring that requires 3 minutes of your time to find and edit - EQ and compress if needed. A good approach in my opinion is before beginning the project to try to identify the sounds that are very simple and straightforward vs. the ones that will require special attention and more complexity. This is where a clean script copy with a spreadsheet of listed sound cues, descriptions and their page numbers really helps at the beginning of a project before the sounds are even created.

If I'm being asked for 12 fairly unique sound effects, all of which I know are not just simple library pulls and are going to need a little work I'd consider this to be 6 man hours of my time. I might add some padding, say... extend estimate to 8 hours. ... keeping in mind that each "effect" also requires a small amount of time for various operations - not only EQ and compression but to archive and rename files, do housekeeping, etc. on the computer to keep the project files and documentation tidy and organized, along with other stuff. If I'm going to record my own source material for all of these effects then I might add yet another hour or two to the estimate, to allow time to research and gather props, experiment with mic placement and so on.

 

[macsound]

Wonderful plethora of information.
What about "mastering"? When you pull a few sound effects from one library, they all sound similar.
How do you get that when recording your own effects?
I'm thinking of the nature of recording something like: Footsteps on the beach, locking a door and starting a car. Each effect needs to be mic'd and EQ'd so so differently, how do you get them to sound similar? Or does it matter if they sound similar? Like the door lock is going to be super closely mic'd, barely any noise. Boost a little low mids for that nice thunk. Footsteps has to be a shotgun on a super long boom so the audio guy doesn't make any noise, but it'll be windy and splashy and whatever.
You know what I mean.

 

[BCAP]

Your reply touches on several different issues, each of which is not easily answerable in a short forum reply.

Please feel free to disagree with any of my ideas here.

First off, "similar" effects from one library - not sure exactly what you mean here but I think I understand. If you own a library by Sound Ideas for example, for certain types of sounds that fit into a set, like male footsteps on wood, concrete, dirt, etc. have a sonic similarity within the set. My opinion - I find it harder to claim there is sonic similarity between a set of foley footsteps and a set of exterior auto sounds or explosions, or from the same library though. There could be similarity in the way the sounds are organized or catalogued.

You might be able to gain consistency in recording a set of similar sounds by using the same microphones and preamps for the recordings within a set of sounds, using the same studio space to record everything, similar microphone distances and angles, and maybe including in your process the idea of using several different microphones at different angles and distances to capture the signal so you will be able to capture close up, mid distance, far distance and room ambience versions of these sounds all at one time. You could also take notes and document everything so it's re-creatable.

If you're looking to gain consistency another thing to do ahead of time is to carefully plan your session including knowing all the sounds you need to record, from what distances or sonic points of view, an idea of length if that's important for that sound, and what equipment you're going to use.

I've never worked for a sound effect library company, but I can imagine they have a pretty good plan in place before they go about developing a library. Aside from the resources in equipment and personnel they have working on a project, I would think for certain kinds of libraries they have to separate the content capture and editing processes. And maybe they have an additional approval or quality assurance stage before the sounds are even assembled into the collection and eventually mastered. They may have a dedicated producer working on the project whose responsibility might be to make sure different edited recordings that come in conform to their standards.

You asked if it matters if they all sound similar, and I think the answer on that is that it's case dependent. For example. It might be possible to record your footsteps on the beach in an interior studio foley pit, filled with sand (is it wet sand or dry, flip flops or bare feet, etc.?). Can that pass for an effect that was recorded outside? Yes, and that kind of thing is done all the time as I'm sure you know. Mix in your seagulls, surf and wind sounds recorded on location or from a library, then remove some low end if needed from the footsteps if needed to make it sound like it's in a wide open area. As long as the original footstep recording is fairly dry and not too ambient - then viola, you have your footsteps on the beach sound and nobody knows the better.

Something sound designers and dialogue editors have to deal with all the time is managing disparate or inconsistent recordings that come from different sources and trying to make them all work together consistently in the same apparent "environment". There are limits though, and it's been my experience so far that I can always add room ambience or reverb or that kind of processing to dry sounds but the reverse is not always true. It can be very challenging to remove reverberation or room sound from a recording to make it sound drier.

Best of luck.

 

[BCAP]

By the way, if you're looking for more information on capturing sound effects here are some information resources I can think of

"The Foley Grail: The Art of Performing Sound for Film, games and Animation" by Vanessa Theme Ament

"The Sound Effects Bible: How to Create and Record Hollywood Style Sound Effects" by Ric Viers

"Sound for Picture : an Inside Look at Audio Production for Film and Television" by Jeff Forlenza

"Sound Effects: Radio, Television and Film" by Robert L. Mott

I'm sure there are a lot of other sources.

 

[MRW Lights]

By the way, if you're looking for more information on capturing sound effects here are some information resources I can think of

"The Foley Grail: The Art of Performing Sound for Film, games and Animation" by Vanessa Theme Ament

"The Sound Effects Bible: How to Create and Record Hollywood Style Sound Effects" by Ric Viers

"Sound for Picture : an Inside Look at Audio Production for Film and Television" by Jeff Forlenza

"Sound Effects: Radio, Television and Film" by Robert L. Mott

I'm sure there are a lot of other sources.

I teach Sound for Picture and these are all great resources and the same that I use for class.