What Is Being Used For Film Today?

[whyterabbyt]

I think it’s important to clarify the difference between Sound Design and Foley.

Foley work is usually responsible for creating natural sound effects - rainfall, footsteps, doors creaking, thunder etc.

Sound design is usually more a creative device that enhances certain elements of a film that one wouldn’t normally be described as music - crashes, booms, whooshes, zaps, electronic soundscapes etc.

Hmmm. Firstly, although you've described a set of sounds which could be Foley, you've not actually properly defined what Foley is.
Foley work is performed, that's the crucial thing about it.

'Foley sounds' is sometimes used as a catchall for those kinds of environmental and human sounds in any form (eg samples), but that's not what Foley itself is. And many of the 'Foley-type' sounds you will hear in a film are not performed may have been 'designed' or 'sweetened', especially things like weather or important environmental sounds.

But Foley is NOT sound design in the generally accepted terminology.

Funnily enough, neither is sound design. Sound design wasnt a term created for 'someone who constructs non-musical audio elements of a film'. It was a term created (for Walter Murch's work on 'Apocalypse Now') analogously to 'set designer', ie someone who planned and created the overall thematic cohesion of the audio of a film. And that didnt necessarily involve crafting the individual sounds any more than a set designer necessarily made the furniture and did the carpentry. Or cinematographer versus cameraman...

'Designing the sound of the film' as opposed to 'constructing individual sounds for a film'.

Obviously as the hierarchy of sound work has shifted from the older proscribed Hollywood roles (which were very rigorously defined, eg a separation between recordist, and editor and mixer etc) which actually precluded what 'sound designer' came to do, the constructing of individual sounds has become associated with that, but the 'accepted terminology' is still, strictly speaking, somewhat inaccurate versus the actual terminology.

[whyterabbyt]

I'm more interested in what they are using for audio manipulation in post production.

So say they record two natural sounds, combine them in post and manipulate them past recognition to create a new sound, for something that doesn't exist yet (such as our Tie Fighter). What is being used in the post production part?

The answer has already been given; everything. Start with pitchshifting and layering.

Im surprised you keep saying you cant find any information, though. You're not necessarily going to get given lists of tools ('just' buy ProTools, Waves Gold or better, SoundToys 5, Eventide Anthology, and the Lexicon plugins, and you'll have most of the plugins of every major post studio on the planet ), but you'll find plenty of information on ideas and techniques, which are far more important.

Start with sites like these:

http://designingsound.org/
http://filmsound.org/
http://soundworkscollection.com/
https://www.asoundeffect.com/blog/

Oh, and be prepared to start accumulating or creating sample libraries. Its not all about the gee-whiz heavily processed 'hero' sounds. Its all the sounds, especially the background and mundane. Maybe get a subscription to Soundsnap or something.

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

I'm not making that assumption, it's simply one example. I also didn't suggest that this is the only case. All I'm asking is what they use to manipulate audio in post. The only information that I have found is Kyma, and that certainly is not within my budget.

"They" don't use anything specific. They use whatever it takes to realise the sounds that are necessary.

All of the answers are in this thread.

If you look at the foley video I embedded, you can see that often the simplest of things, with a little added reverb, can be all that is needed. The key is to think past the item you are using - It's important to note how the engineer looks to the screen, rather than the foley artists, so the context dictates the viability of the sound, and the illusion isn't shattered.

There is no magic gear. Think back to your 'Tie" example. As Whyterabbyt has already pointed out, there were no elaborate Kyma-like systems back in '76-'77 (Think back to the synth's of the age). And while this example is not Foley (As in the original performance meaning of the word), it is just a combination of abstract real-world sounds coming together to form a cohesive whole.

Even if the answer were all in post-production, you already have a fantastic start with Alchemy, which offers fantastic tools for the kind of sounds I am imagining you are after. And Logic has a decent enough sampler (pitching playback etc), and great effects, to help further. Alternatively, save for a Kyma. Just don't get upset that, despite spending all that money, you will still someday need to put knife to melon

Why don't you try to recreate a similar sound to to the tie-fighter using the same ingredients? Eq, pitch, and layer the sounds to fit. Then try to emulate a fly-by with use of automation, panning etc. Logic even gives that great binaural panner.

[whyterabbyt]

That's a great video on Foley, el-bo, not one I'd seen before. Added to the set of links I give students.

[S0lo]

Spectrasonics claims their products have been used in several films:

https://www.spectrasonics.net/company/filmtv.php

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

That's a great video on Foley, el-bo, not one I'd seen before. Added to the set of links I give students.

Indeed! What a fun job

[himalaya]

Here's some trivia:

I did this TV ad some time ago, where I had to compose all the music and create all SFX/Foley ( call it what you will).

The ad was a cartoon (mainly featuring cows).

I had to come up with a number of specific sound effects, from 'cartoon' foot steps to bangs and weird stuff (like ice cream flowing through a pipe). I quickly proceeded to raid my kitchen for all items that could make a noise and anything that could serve as the 'hitter'....and then started to go crazy with banging, scraping and making all sorts of weird noises...after some time I realised it didn't get me the sounds I was after, so I decided to try some of my plugins. The first was AAS Tassman. Here, I was able to get the first sound I was after very quickly. Then I followed on with lots of little metallic sounds, some deep percussive bangs...transposed, added some effects and and soon I had a nice set of sounds that I could use in the video.

Right at the end I was left with a dillema, I had a cow rolling down the hill on a tub of ice cream, and I needed a sound...what to do? Well, I just sampled my own voice shouting "Ahhhhhhhh", transposed it a bit and tried it in the video. It was perfect.

What I'm trying to say is, do whatever it takes. Think outside the box, or in the box, or make your own box and then smash it to smithereens.

It does pay to have a number of plugins at your disposal, and more importantly, it's important to know how to use them, since you simply can not rely on presets that much, or at all, in some cases.

Also, start collecting items, gadgets, weird instruments that can be used for generating sounds. This is the fun part, but also annoying to your family members, as you fill the houeshold with a load of 'crap' At least I can keep my kids occupied with some of mine that I have collected over the years.

[AnX]

I always sample all my power tools. Not everday sounds, but can be very useful even in a musical context ( ie not as a sound effect of said tool)

[himalaya]

by the way, here's that video, in case you want to hear how the SFX sounded like in context :

[chk071]

Ie, the Tie fighter was a combination of an elephant call and a car.

Seriously?

[whyterabbyt]

Ie, the Tie fighter was a combination of an elephant call and a car.

Seriously?

Yup.

http://usoproject.blogspot.co.uk/2011/0 ... ghter.html

(The Sounds of Star Wars is a really interesting and fun book, btw, and Im not selling my copy)

[chk071]

I don't want to know how they did the sound design for the original Star Trek then. They probably recorded a whole pet shop.

[Apratim]

if you are looking at todays industry standards you have

for daw
pro tools and cubase is the standard but recently many major video game companies have switched to reaper

kontakt and spitfire(or project SAM ) for orchestral work and may be east west sometimes but they tend to be more cpu intensive

for synth stuff
omnisphere(kinda but its kinda going out of standards now i could be wrong),halion,zebra(for hans zimmer),and other hardware emulation but they mainly prefer hardware synths

for effect they use their daws inbuilt effects or hardware effects

[whyterabbyt]

kontakt and spitfire(or project SAM ) for orchestral work and may be east west sometimes but they tend to be more cpu intensive

for synth stuff
omnisphere(kinda but its kinda going out of standards now i could be wrong),halion,zebra(for hans zimmer),and other hardware emulation but they mainly prefer hardware synths

Which Spitfire library do you recommend for designing TIE Fighter sounds, then?

[V0RT3X]

Buy yourself a handheld recorder and go sample stuff. Then process it.

As said before, most of the best sounds are done using Foley and clever sound processing. You can’t really find it in just one plugin or sample library..