Yes, it still exists. Yes, in fact he creates illusions, for example when he makes a gigantic forest fire sound, bones break or horses gallop in the studio.
Of course, he doesn’t copy all the sounds – in film, there is also the sound engineer – and there are also sound archives. Usually, the Foley artist only starts when the archive is drained and the sound engineer’s work is over. You think there’s already everything in the archive?
That’s how I used to think, and now when I look back at the beginning of my professional career, I never imagined the world that would open up to me.
Originally, I wanted to be a cameraman, so after training as a photographer, I chose the path to film editing. As a film editor, I learned to understand film and its dramaturgy in a new way and soon started understanding the key role sound plays in film.
Since film scoring was a regular part of my work, I encountered sound designers such as Willy Kluth, Heiner Hars and Hans Walter Kramski for the first time. They impressed me with their unusual methods of creating sounds.
I soon realised that my true vocation was sound, so I decided to expand my knowledge in this area by working as a sound engineer for dubbing and mixing.
Here again, I had the opportunity to get to know and appreciate the work of sound engineers and began to consciously use my knowledge in sound engineering to complementary support them in their work.
Fascinated by these experiences, I began experimenting with a wide variety of sound objects after work in the studio myself. In order to be able to evaluate different microphone types and positions, I used headphones. This enabled me to control the entire sound signal path and to take advantage of the unlimited sound techniques when creating sounds. This was new.
In order to get into a routine, I started practicing on footage of past and completed productions and created sounds in sync with the film, which is our main job. So, over the years I filled numerous suitcases with props that I had collected everywhere from everyday life and flea markets, which had often to be specially prepared and altered first.
Due to the colourful spectrum of tasks, I encounter – whether this is in feature films, radio plays or commercials – always challenges my creativity and imagination in a new way. That’s why my collection of props is constantly growing, because the variety and number of sounds I create in order to bring images to life is extremely diverse.
Resume of Amadeus Bodis
- 1983 graduation from the State Academy of Photographic Design, in parallel assistant film editor with K. H. Fugunt
- since 1981 ADR sound engineer (dialogue and foley)
- since 1989 sound engineer
- since 1998 own ADR studio
- from 2009 to 2016 2nd studio especially for Foley
- since 2012 takeover of the audio production facility “text ton titel”
