HAFH How it's Made: Foley, fruit and FX

Alas poor Yorick...

There are a number of gruesome torture acts committed in the film, and to recreate these uncomfortable sounds I turned to various food stuffs in place of finding a human volunteer. I first dabbled in fruit mauling when working on A Short Story in Brutality (Deakin, J. 2013) last year, which featured a brutal beating. As a non-synced piece that had linear sound whilst the video reversed from the end of the narrative's events, it was important that these effects had maximum impact and left a vivid image in the audiences minds. Here is a video of my first experimentations to create that drubbing effect.

The resulting sounds effects, after some processing, have been a very useful addition to my library and have been used multiple times in various projects, especially the banana squish which is a gift that keeps on giving.  It is perhaps a telling sign that their recycled use is an indicator of the types of film i gravitate towards, however this particular project required me to up my game and gather a new array of sonic hurts (get it!?).

Ric Viers (2009, p.263) notes 'Fruits and vegetables can offer a plethora of sounds to work with: breaks, crunches, dull body sounds, juicy impacts, slimey movements, textures, and more. You can use them to sweeten other sounds, layer them to get juicy hits and impacts', and whilst this is somewhat stating the obvious, he did offer some good techniques to capture the most tantalising sounds.
The following video is a testament to my skills as a cinematographer/editor, but it is also hopefully an insight into my working mechanisms when creating sound.

Equipment:

Mic: Senheisser 416

Recorder: Zoom h4n

Mixer: Wendt/SQN

Med. Mic Stand
Shot on: Flip Cam, Phone.

After wrapping our final scene in the basement I wanted to make use of the authentic location and take advantage of the props on hand. The obtained the other effects fairly shortly afterwards as they would be an integral asset of the film and I was keen to get them in place as soon as possible. The general procedure would be to highlight the most delicious elements and layer them to illustrate the most graphic interpretation possible in the Pro tools timeline, and then export the combination, apply some EQ to accentuate the frequencies around 2.00-6.00hz in Soundtrack Pro for a sharpened squeamish effect, and then re-paste it back into the Pro Tools Project as one clip.

The combinations were a necessity, as alone the effects sound lacklustre, for example to bring the finger nail removal to life I used pliers on a thin piece of wood, the bone of a sheep skull that was on hand, and underpinned it with the squishing of banana and melon skin. I found chocolate to be a preferable substitute for soap when forcing it into my mouth, yet the similar consistency made for a satisfactory sound as it scraped my teeth and reverberated in my gob. The closest recreation had to come in the form of the face carving, re-using the pork leg we had made a prop thigh out of and dragging a blade across it (the genetic structure of pork is the same as human meat after all).

Taking a leaf out of Hannibal's cookbook, it also made for a delicious communal dinner that night after wrapping!

I had always intended on using a melon for their versatility in recreating pulped sounds, but did not consider using a cabbage until watching Berbarian Sound Studio (Strickland, P. 2012), and wanted to try it out in honour of this sequence, but again alone it was insufficient and had to be combined with other melon and banana sounds.

Whilst at the Matlock set I also ensured to record foley of everything in the room in the evening after shooting, with the rope tying being of particular importance to heighten the discomfort of it scratching against wrists.  For the body fall that occurs after Tabatha's head smashes against the cabinet I had the director drop onto his back several times, partially for authenticity, and partly for my own amusement. He had after all put the lead actor through a string of agonising shooting conditions, so I feel it was important in improving his empathic methodology when commanding a performance.



I provided Steve McCaig with my melon and banana effects to make the impacts of the fight scene in March Before the Rain (Beattie, 2014) a little juicier. He did well to use them subtly so as not to detract from the realism of that film.

Viers, R. 2008. The Sound Effects Bible: How to Create and Record Hollywood Style Sound Effects, Studio City: Michael Wiese Productions, p.263)