WOODY: I don't think people think of the sound portion of motion pictures as being artistic.
MONIQUE: I think it's moving more in that direction where people are beginning to understand, but I think it has a long way to go. Another thing, too, is that people have a tendency to run out of money. They spend all of their money in production and then if they have a little bit left, that goes to picture editors and that process, and by the time they get to the audio portion, that's the last thing. And then they have neither money nor time.
WOODY: A lot of times directors don't understand or see the value of what we do until they sit in on a sound edit or mixing session. What do people most misunderstand about what you do?
MONIQUE: I'd have to say that what they misunderstand about Foley is that they imagine the difficulty would come from the creativity or from the sync. Both of those things are difficult, but I find the thing that is the most challenging about doing Foley is having to pay such close attention the entire time. You are glued to every second on that screen and you have to almost be psychic to be able to tell what a character is going to do next and to be able to do that in sync with the right intensity. It requires a great deal of concentration.
So there will be times where I'll work a really long day, maybe I'll work a double shift, and people would imagine that I would be tired because I'm running and slamming things down and moving about and that's not the part that's tiring. The part that's exhausting about doing Foley is having to pay such close attention from the moment you're in record.
WOODY: Can you give me some insight in terms of your brain -you're looking at something in life, a prop or item in a store, and somehow your brain sees that but hears something else.
MONIQUE: It's weird. Sometimes people have said to me that as a Foley artist you probably hear things differently. And that's not true at all. I hear things the same way everybody else does. The only difference is that I might be, on occasion, more aware of them. Like I recently bought a silicone, waffle-weave pot holder and I bought it because it was cool looking and I needed a new pot holder, but the other day when I was rinsing it I realized that it made this cool kind of sucking sound. And I'm like, oh, this would be cool for something.
And I didn't know at the time, and I still don't, what it will be used for, but there will be a day where I'm sitting on a stage and I'll need that particular sound and my brain will go, oh, that pot holder you have at home would be perfect. Another thing is a lot of times the recordist will come up with a really great way to articulate to me what is or is not working about what I'm trying. Say I'm trying to do a bug crawling and the legs sound too big or too crunchy, a good engineer will be able to tell me specifically what about it that isn't working and then I'll have to just be resourceful and based on the description of what is needed try to just experiment and figure out what will work. Sometimes they can help me with EQ and sometimes they can actually help with suggestions.
As far as what part of the brain, or what makes a foley artist able to access those ideas -- I used to have a lot more fear about it. I've actually lost sleep over thinking "How am I going to make this particular sound?" But what I've come to realize is that we always work it out. Whether it's my idea or the engineer's idea, at the end of the day we always work it out. So I don't have that fear so much anymore. If I don't know how to do it, I just go, oh I don't know how to do that, but I know that by the time I need to I will have figured it out or the recordist will have or we both will have.
WOODY: When you see the final project, how much of what you do, do you think, makes it?
MONIQUE: It really varies. That's where the re-recording mixer is the final say. Some mixers love to use Foley. Others really just like to use production and only use Foley when absolutely necessary. I have learned through some disappointments early on. I was doing "Gods and Monsters' maybe my second year of doing Foley, and I remember there was this one scene where Ian McKellen's character operates on Frankenstein. He opens his head and he removes his brain and then he stitches it back up.
This was one of those occasions where I lost sleep trying to figure it out. I was pretty inexperienced and it was so specific and the sound supervisor said "oh we want something really cool for this,' so it was really something that kind of freaked me out. I couldn't tell you what I did now, it was too long ago, but I spent about an hour on it actually recording different elements for it and all together it sounded really cool.
I remember the sound supervisor called me in to a room where they were watching down the Foley and the director was there, and they were so complimentary. And they were saying, "Monique this is just amazing, this is exactly what we want!" They were thrilled and I was thrilled and everybody was thrilled and then I went to the screening a few months later and I was all excited about my big scene and all I heard was music.
(Laughs)
So I've learned to separate myself from attachment to the outcome of what makes a mix. As long as what the engineer and I have come up with sounds cool when our session ends when we play it back, as long as that sounds good, whether it makes the mix or not I've had to separate myself from caring. Of course it's nice when it does, but I can't take that as a personal failure if it doesn't because it's really not anything to do with that. Or sometimes it might be. Sometimes they may not like it, but it's generally just a creative choice. Clearly with this Frankenstein scene they opted for music.
WOODY: Do you enjoy the work?
MONIQUE: Yeah! Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm picky about where I work. If something doesn't feel right, like if I don't get along with the people, I don't work there. So the show can be bad, the show doesn't have to be good, it's nice when it is, but really the most important thing is who I'm working with. And if the show is bad it just gives us something to laugh at.
Sometimes we take our work for granted and we're really fortunate to be living in a beautiful place, [Southern California] working in this industry that so many people would love to be a part of. So many people have jobs they don't care about. They just do it as a means to an end, but I'd like to believe that if I came into a windfall of money from the sky, that I would still do Foley because it's fun.
WOODY: And I hope I'm behind the glass with you!
This article was originally published at Woody's Sound Advice