Foley is the creation of new sound effects which do not exist yet in a sample or sound effects library.

We created our foley sound effects through recording ourselves with a range of microphones, including a Shure SM58 and two Neumann KM184 stereo-paired microphones. These are both cardioid microphones, which are well-suited to foley as they create a focused area of recording to help isolate the sounds we’re trying to record. The way we created the sound effects was by using objects in the Foley Studio as well as our voices/bodies to create sounds of screams, of fire, and of a watermelon being destroyed and then eaten.

There are also many example of live foley, wherein “The Foley Artist has to be highly responsive to the performance being foleyed, and is often interesting to watch in itself, as the sound being created is often at odds to what is being used to create it. This was one of its qualities that we wanted to explore in front of the audience.” (Gareth Fry). A recent example of a live foley artist has been Ruth Sullivan (a prominent Foley artist) who recently performed live foley in Melanie Wilson’s sound-lead performance piece ‘Cow | Deer’ which uses only live Foley and field recordings to evoke the lives of two animals: the cow and the deer. This is an example of foley as a unique art form in its own right, which is something that will hopefully be given more attention and resource within sound arts in coming years.