Skip to content
1981
  1. Home
  2. A-Z Publications
  3. Soundtrack, The
  4. Volume 16, Issue 1
  5. Article
Foley Sound: New Theories and Approaches
  • ISSN: 1751-4193
  • E-ISSN: 1751-4207

Abstract

This article considers the ethical implications of the use of Foley sound in wildlife documentaries. Almost all of the sounds that animals seem to make in these films and television programmes are added by Foley artists; animals in the wild are often filmed using telephoto lenses, beyond the reach of microphones. Crew or vehicle noise will also often muddy sounds recorded on location and so a clean soundtrack must be created in post-production. This article is based on first-hand interviews conducted with practising Foley artists. It details some of the techniques that Foley artists use to simulate the sounds of animals walking, chewing, scratching or otherwise engaging with their environments. It then draws on the work of Emmanuel Levinas to frame ethical activity as the act of encountering the other in terms which recognize and accept their otherness as such. I suggest first that Foley might impede such an ethical encounter with animal life because it seems, at first, to anthropomorphize the animal and to reduce them to a subset of the human. I go on to suggest, however, that Foley is also invested in representing what the biologist Jakob von Uexküll has labelled the of the animal – the animal’s unique ‘lifeworld’. According to this reading, Foley does ethical work in the wildlife documentary; it brings us to an encounter with the animal’s otherness and intimates that humanity’s own is but one amongst many. In this way, Foley reveals that the human perception of the world is neither objective nor universal nor absolute. It decentres the human in the way we conceive the world and ethically frames the animal Other as coequal with the human.

© 2024 Intellect Ltd
Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1386/ts_00030_1
2024-09-17
2024-10-09
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Ackerman, Paul and Austen, Jodie (2023), in-person interview with D. Pollard, Bristol, 6 June.
  2. Ament, Vanessa T. (2009), The Foley Grail: The Art of Performing Sound for Films, Games and Animation, Oxford: Focal Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  3. Berger, John (ed.) ([1980] 2000), ‘Why look at animals?’, About Looking, New York: Pantheon Books, pp. 1–26.
     [Google Scholar]
  4. Bousé, Derek (2000), Wildlife Films, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  5. Burt, Jonathan (2002), Animals in Film, London: Reaktion Books.
     [Google Scholar]
  6. Chion, Michel (1994), Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen (trans. C. Gorbman), New York: Columbia University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  7. Crowe, Jonathan (2008), ‘Levinasian ethics and animal rights’, The Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice, 26:2, pp. 314–28.
     [Google Scholar]
  8. Diehm, Christian (2000), ‘Facing nature: Levinas beyond the human’, Philosophy Today, 44:1, pp. 51–59.
     [Google Scholar]
  9. Diehm, Christian (2006), ‘Ethics and natural history: Levinas and other-than-human animals’, Environmental Philosophy, 3:2, pp. 34–43.
     [Google Scholar]
  10. Downing, Lisa and Saxton, Libby (2010), Film and Ethics: Foreclosed Encounters, Abingdon: Routledge.
     [Google Scholar]
  11. Earth Touch (2012), ‘Holy Foley: Sound design at Earth Touch’, YouTube, 19 December, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Li6TSwybqjU. Accessed 19 July 2023.
  12. Fife Donaldson, Lucy (2014), ‘The work of an invisible body: The contribution of Foley artists to onscreen effort’, Alphaville, 7, pp. 1–15.
     [Google Scholar]
  13. Fox, Jesse D. (2017), ‘The story behind Planet Earth II’s unbelievable “iguana vs. snakes” chase scene’, Vulture, 16 February, https://www.vulture.com/2017/02/planet-earth-ii-iguana-snakes-scene-story.html. Accessed 18 July 2023.
  14. Frankel, David (2008), Marley and Me, USA: Twentieth Century Fox.
     [Google Scholar]
  15. Gilliam, Terry and Jones, Terry (1975), Monty Python and the Holy Grail, UK: EMI Films.
     [Google Scholar]
  16. Hagood, Mack (2014), ‘Unpacking a punch: Transduction and the sound of combat Foley in Fight Club’, Cinema Journal, 53:4, pp. 98–120.
     [Google Scholar]
  17. Ihde, Don (2007), Listening and Voice: Phenomenologies of Sound, New York: SUNY Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  18. ‘Islands’ (2016), E. White (dir.), Planet Earth II, Episode 1 (6 November, UK: BBC).
     [Google Scholar]
  19. Jedrzejczyk, Karolina and Malakhova, Veronika (2023), in-person interview with D. Pollard, London, 12 May.
  20. Levinas, Emmanuel ([1961] 1969), Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority (trans. A. Lingis), Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  21. Levinas, Emmanuel ([1984] 1989), ‘Ethics as first philosophy’ (ed. S. Hand, trans. S. Hand and M. Temple), The Levinas Reader, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 75–87.
     [Google Scholar]
  22. Lippit, Akira M. (2000), Electric Animals: Toward a Rhetoric of Wildlife, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  23. McMahon, Laura (2019), Animals Worlds: Film, Philosophy and Time, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  24. Movies Insider (2020a), ‘How animal sounds are made for movies and TV’, YouTube, 26 March, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2WCrXc7J-I. Accessed 19 July 2023.
  25. Movies Insider (2020b), ‘How sounds are faked for nature documentaries’, YouTube, 24 December, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcmhWs7HM1c. Accessed 19 July 2023.
  26. Pick, Anat (2019), ‘Animal life in the cinematic umwelt’, in M. Lawrence and L. McMahon (eds), Animal Life and the Moving Image, London: BFI Books, pp. 221–37.
     [Google Scholar]
  27. Ramsey, Colby (2017), ‘An audio professional’s view on the sound of “Planet Earth II”’, Audio Media International, 31 January, https://audiomediainternational.com/an-audio-professionals-view-on-the-sound-of-planet-earth-ii/. Accessed 19 July 2023.
  28. Robertson, Sarah and Ravetch, Adam (2007), Arctic Tale, USA: Paramount Vintage.
     [Google Scholar]
  29. Shepherd, Jack (2016), ‘Planet Earth 2: Viewers complain about “fake” sound effects despite BBC explaining the technology isn’t available’, The Independent, 25 November, https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/planet-earth-2-bbc-sound-effects-fake-a7438336.html. Accessed 19 July 2023.
  30. Shukin, Nicole (2009), Animal Capital: Rendering Life in Biopolitical Times, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  31. Smaill, Belinda (2016), Regarding Life: Animals and the Documentary Moving Image, New York: SUNY Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  32. Spielberg, Steven (1975), Jaws, USA: Universal Pictures.
     [Google Scholar]
  33. Talijan, Emilija (2022), Resonant Bodies in Contemporary Art Cinema, Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  34. von Ueküll, Jakob ([1934] 1992), ‘A stroll through the worlds of animals and men: A picture book of invisible worlds’ (trans. C. H. Schiller), Semiotica, 89:4, pp. 319–91.
     [Google Scholar]
  35. Wright, Benjamin (2014), ‘Footsteps with character: The art and craft of Foley’, Screen, 55:2, pp. 204–20.
     [Google Scholar]
  36. Wright, Tamra, Hughes, Peter and Ainley, Alison (1988), ‘The paradox of morality: An interview with Emmanuel Levinas’, The Provocation of Levinas: Rethinking the Other (eds. R. Bernasconi and D. Wood, trans. A. Benjamin and T. Wright), London: Routledge, pp. 168–80.
     [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.1386/ts_00030_1
Loading
  • Article Type: Article
Keyword(s): ecocriticism; environment; labour; philosophy; post-humanism; sound; sound effects

Most Cited Most Cited RSS feed

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a success
Invalid data
An error occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error