foleyartists.eu is an association of European foley teams with the aim of bringing the art of foley for film, TV and games closer to audiences and experts.  You can also find our references. Here we present our art.

When was the last time you watched an old Western movie?

The charm of the sounds is unbroken, the quality, however, is a long since unaccepted shudder. This evolution makes it possible to produce sounds that are almost indistinguishable from the original sound, but surpass it by far in precision, resolution, depth, and richness of detail. Productions expect us to deliver sounds that “run along as if they had always been there”

Over the years, the “standard” has crept in to always use the same calculation for sounds regardless of the genre, length and complexity of the film – which doesn’t do the film justice. As a result, the creativity and dedication that every film requires are significantly affected.

For this reason we developed  the FoleyMat, a tool for calculating the expected realistic effort. The Foleymat can give the production team an idea of the expected amount of time for recording and editing even before shooting begins.

The art of Foley has been part of cinema since the sound was firstly introduced in film (1920s). The craft itself as well the working process have hardly changed in these 100 years.

However, even in the silent film era, sound in film screenings was produced live for the audience. One such show was mentioned in the magazine “Der Artist” in 1896. It was a film screening by Madame Olinka with her husband Mister Hubertus, the “outstanding imitator of animal sounds”, who knew how to “enliven the individual images invisibly with noises and tones”*.

In the theatre, the power of organic sound has been known since the Greeks.

The man who gave our craft its name, Jack D. Foley from the USA, was one of the first, but – as is often the case – not the only pioneer. The need for good sounds was recognized by many artists at about the same time.

Foley artists usually learned their craft – one of the last analogue professions in the film industry – over the years from a master who then released them into the world. This tradition has suffered. Cost-cutting limitations in film productions, price war among film sound suppliers and as a result the lack of capacity to train new artists are endangering the existence of the Foley artists’ profession. Decades of knowledge are in danger of being lost.

We have joined forces to stop this trend and to restore Foley to the status it deserves in the overall sound experience.

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* Source: Der Artist, magazine issue of September 20, 1896