How do they make “punch” sounds in movies?
Dear Adam: Welcome to the world of “Foley artists,” the unsung geniuses who create the larger-than-life sound effects that make a flick come alive. For a good face punch, a Foley artist might hit a piece of raw meat with his fist, maybe wearing a tight leather glove for enhanced smackiness. I’m told rib cuts are particularly good because they have bones to give a crunchy effect. Then again, maybe the Foley artist will just punch himself, hard. The beauty of Foley–named after Jack Foley, chief sound effects guru at Universal for many years–is that nobody’s telling you exactly what you have to do. All that counts is that it work on-screen. Foley art is made necessary by the fact that (1) you need “action noise” (i.e., more than just the actors talking) to make a movie scene seem real, and (2) miking the entire stage or location during shooting just isn’t practical. Even if it were, real-life sounds often don’t have the oomph the big screen demands. In addition, dubs for foreign markets
