Recording the foley for Castlevania

At this point my Castlevania project is complete, so for now my next few blogs will be a run through of my processes and what we did to achieve the sounds that we did.

Initially, we hadn’t finalised dates that we needed to book the studio out (except with the voice actors) so we kind of compulsively booked the studio for recording foley on a day off of class a couple of days prior, as we knew that that on that week it would get busy with other groups from our class rushing in to use the studio as well.

We booked out the C24 studio (a studio with an emphasis on foley recording) for a 4 hour session originally just to get a start on foley sounds, we figured we could use the time to at least start getting clean recordings of the footsteps and other basic sounds.

It took about 40 minutes to really get into recording as this was our first time using the desk and the signal flow and mic setup of it all was a bit of a new concept. We also took some time figuring out how the different microphones sounded and doing a couple of test recordings.

We were introduced to the C24 studio a couple of days prior to our session in a day long workshop where we did a rough replacement of sound in a scene from the film “Shaun of the dead” This is where we got a run down of the studio with one of our lecturers, Nick, and did some basic foley recordings. A scene which I had a particular involvement in was the creation of the gore sounds when a zombie lady falls back onto a pole and it impales her torso. It was kind of done on the spot while I was in the recording booth and comprised of an impact layer (hitting a leather cloth), the liquid sound (splashing some water inside of a water bottle) and some crunch sound to add a really cringy, bone crushing type effect (clutching a pinecone). Some of these same techniques were used in our recording session for Castlevania, as there were a couple of instances where we needed a similar sound.

Before jumping in the studio, even though we were pretty confident I looked into foley recording techniques and tutorials to see other peoples experiences. Some of the things I found had come from sources that can be not that reliable - such as online forums etc. However, I believe that a lot of what you learn in audio can just be from hearing people's experiences and seeing if it applies to you, and that it doesn’t hurt to try. This helped in decisions such as what microphone to use for foley recording.

I read an article from Linda Hansen on the blog section of Shure’s (The Audio Company) website which had some good tips to try for foley recording. Hansen says:

“Typically, we like mics with a very narrow polar pattern –cardioid or hypercardioid. We don’t want to pick up any of the room we’re recording in, so we tend to use shotgun microphones.

Mic placement really depends on the sound we’re going for. With footsteps, I like to have it real tight. I only want to capture the sound of the steps and not the sound of my pants. If we want a little wider sound, we back the mic up a little bit or change to a different mic with a wider pickup pattern. We’ll flip it around or raise it up and try different positions.

It’s a collaboration between the engineer and the Foley artist. Like any other recording application, we’re looking for that sweet spot.”

Hansen, L. (2018).

I recommend reading this article if you’re looking at doing a foley project yourself as she also lists a great step by step typical workflow of a foley project, you can find it in my bibliography at the bottom of the page.

We came into the C24 studio with 2 microphones; the Rode NTG2 Shotgun microphone as our primary, and AKG 414 as our microphone to use for other sounds that can’t get picked up by the shotgun. For almost all except a couple of sounds we used the NTG2 with the pop muffle over it

We began with the footsteps which were a relatively simple task, especially since in our particular media clip, you never actually see the feet stepping on the ground and the animation style is rather jittery. Once we started getting into the swing of things the flow started to pick up and before we knew it we were smashing through our assets list.

We figured out a workflow where we would: create a loop, record the sounds to the timing of the clip with recordings going into a new pro tools playlist, watch closely and stop once we get more than one recording thats really close in time and sound. We’d then listen back to our takes that were the best ones, pick one to use for the final recording and name it appropriately to prevent it from getting cluttered in the mixing stages, which I’ve learnt from experience can save a lot of time.

Experimenting with different materials to create the horse running sound

After the footsteps were done, things started to get a bit more creative as we moved into the “foley category”.

Some sounds were more complicated than others to make, many of the action sounds required a few layers to get it sounding right. An example of this is where someone gets decapitated, this required a layer of sounds such as: the metal sound of the sword, the blood sound (again used a water bottle), the slicing sound and the impact sound.

We only really used the foley items provided in the C24 studio to make our sounds, and kind of just played around with textures and materials until we had a believable sound.

What was supposed to be a 4 hour studio session turned into 6 hours as Tom and I decided we would stay a bit longer and extend the studio time to smash out some more sounds. Justin had other commitments after the 4 hours so he left but Tom and I decided to keep on working.

One particular sound that required a lot of creativity to make was in a scene where a character pulls his sword out of his sheathe in a dramatic, focussed way. We were really looking for that dramatic ringing type sound that you hear in a lot of anime type shows, rather than a realistic, and bland scrape.

We found a metal pole in the stash of items provided in the studio and decided it had a similar texture to what we were trying to achieve by scraping an item along the side of it, we could have settled on just scraping it with another piece of metal, but it didn’t have that resonant ‘schwing’ sound we we were looking for, if that makes sense. Tom then thought of the triangle instrument and how it the difference is that it’s held in the air by a string which allows it to vibrate. Luckily for us, the pole ended up having a hole through the top of it. Because we didn’t have any string around, we tried the end of a plastic bag through the hole, and held it to get our sound. It was pretty DIY but it goes to show that sometimes the weirdest things can do the trick.

A couple of days later we met again in the studio to record some more complex sounds, as well as the base sounds for sound effects that would need to be created in post with synthesis etc. an example of this is the thunder strike, which we created a base for by flicking a laminated sheet of paper to give a strike / crack type effect

We did end up using the AKG C414 for a couple of sounds that required space, such as the whipping sounds - but these mostly turned out to be pretty noisey and bad recordings, so I wouldn’t recommend this microphone in this recording situation.

We did notice AFTER recording and analysing our samples that the TV located in the recording booth does let off quite a loud humming noise. This wasn’t noticeable in our overall project, however it should be kept in mind if you plan on doing a sound that is detailed and needs to be really clean.

That’s about it for recording our foley samples, and I’d have to say it went really well, we were really happy with the way they turned out and sounded even better when mixed. I really like the desk in the C24 and find it really easy to use, and I’d be happy to do another foley recording in this room (although this time with the TV taken elsewhere).

Thanks for reading!

References

Drawn sword sound effects (free). (2013). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U34MegCHlig

Hansen, L. (2018). Everything You Need to Know About Foley Recording | Shure Blog. Retrieved from http://blog.shure.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-foley-recording/