Ellen Foley Videos : A Foley Makes It Sound Just Right

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A Foley Makes It Sound Just Right

By Dan Mayfield Of the Journal After watching Ellen Heuer work, you'll never watch a movie the same again. Heuer is a foley artist, one of a handful of specialists who make movie sounds � all the sounds for a movie that aren't picked up by microphones on set, which is most of them. In a garage wired up with high-end recording gear in the Albuquerque area, she makes the sounds for Wildfire Post Production that help a movie feel real. They are created in a soundstage later by a foley artist so they're just right, and can be everything from the leathery crunch when someone sits in a car seat to the sounds of buttons and switches, footsteps, doors opening and closing, or shutters banging in the wind. Foley is one of the great secrets of film. The art is still named for its inventor, Jack Foley, who famously rattled keys in front of a microphone to re-create the sound of an army's armor rattling in "Spartacus." Heuer started as a dancer and choreographer, and she was approached by a foley artist who was looking for a nimble assistant to work on a film. "I was choreographing 'Finian's Rainbow' and Susan the Silent. She doesn't speak; she only dances what she has to say," Heuer said. While working on the show, she was asked to do the same sort of work as a foley artist. "I said, 'I think I could do that,' and it took off," she said. "I trained myself. I can just hear these sounds." It's certainly a gift to be able to see a scene on a TV screen and decide what sounds it will ...

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