Foley Artist (Sound Effects in Movies) Listen and follow the transcript

Foley Artist: Mary Jo Lang

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    "Most movies are shot with the sound person there to get the dialogue primarily. He's not there to get footsteps, he's not there to get people picking up the newspaper or any of that stuff."
    There are more than 100 Foley artists around the world concocting sounds. From their imagination, if they need to create the sound of galloping horses toilet plungers will do the trick. Walking on leaves can sound better when you crunch on piles audio tapes.
    "Or bones breaking for example, celery is a big item. We do make sounds for things that don't make any sound. The moist extreme example is an animated movie, because there is no sound in an animated movie other than the dialogue. So if you watch an animated movie and you hear a door, if you hear somebody walking across the room, you hear wings fluttering, it's all Foley."
    Foley was named after its creator, 1920 sound editor, Jack Foley. Today there are nearly 50 Foley mixers around the world and only a few women.
    "Every movie scene has Foley in it: every single one."
    I Am Legend and American Gangster are some of the more than one hundred movies Foley-mixed by Lang, including Oscar-winner Schindler's List.
    Mary Jo Lang was intrigued by sound as a little girl, never dreaming that her talent would flourish into a Hollywood career, even join the Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and Sciences.
    "I'm very proud being a member of the Academy because I believe it's dedicated to the art of movie making. Movies are what books were at the turn of the century. They determine and reflect culture of the time. They are the commonality between people and the ideas that you get in movies go all the way around the world."
    Around the world is where Lang vacations, armed with a tape recorder capturing street noise in India and penguins in Antarctica.
    "Working in Foley and in sound in movies has really honed my thinking of sound as an emotional experience."
    Lang allowed Good Morning America access to her Foley stage at Warner Brothers demonstrating how sound effects enhanced the movie, Transformers. The star slams his bike into a car and is thrown to the ground. A tower collapses in the desert and soldiers are stunned by the hands of a robotic monster. Foley artists then figure out what sound effects can be created by odds and ends you'd find at home.
    "The star is hit is going to ride in on a bicycle, he's going to hit the car door, after that the bell's going to ring on the bike, he's going to hit the ground really hard, and then the soldiers are going to be running in the sand. And then the monster is going to come up and knock over the tower. And then the sword in his hand will zing out. Here we go!"
    "All of us have a real passion for what we do and we really want to make it the best we can."
    Making sure scenes are heard.

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