People don't understand foley. They think you just drag a shoe across gravel or snap celery near a microphone and suddenly you've got realism. That’s not realism. That’s desperation disguised as craftsmanship. Real sound is sculpted. It’s curated. It’s hunted.
That’s why I carry a recorder. Always. Not just any — a Zoom F8n Pro. I have it rigged in a custom leather holster under my jacket like a weapon. Because sound is a weapon. If a car door closes two blocks away and the tone is pure — rich metallic decay, subtle rubbery seal — I need that. I need that texture in my collection. If you wait until you're in the studio, you've already lost the sound.
There are rules. Techniques. You use mid-side when you want surgical control over width. It's for environments with instability — a crowd with unpredictable dynamics, maybe — or wind you want to tame with phase cancellation. Stereo XY for naturalism, when the spatial image needs to mirror human ears. Mono for isolation. You want a footstep to stab the silence like a scalpel, you record it in mono. Anything else is indulgent.
Sometimes, reality is inefficient. You want the sound of a skull fracturing, you don’t use a skull. You use frozen romaine lettuce. Quick twist, sharp break. You layer it with a watermelon crack for wetness. That’s foley: lying until the truth sounds better. A revolver click? That’s a toaster. An old one. Spring-loaded, worn out, tragic.
You want the sound of bones shattering underwater? Cook spaghetti al dente. Submerge it in a basin with contact mics on the bottom. Snap it gently, slowly — let the room breathe in before the sound hits. It’s not about noise. It’s about tension. You wait for it. Then you break it.
I don’t sleep much. Not really. Most people lie in bed thinking about their mistakes. I lie awake, thinking about reverb tails. The unnatural ring of a room tone that doesn’t match the visual space. A gaffer knocks a light stand in the background — it’s in the take. You cut it. Or you replicate it. Perfectly. If you do your job right, no one notices. If you do it wrong, the whole world falls apart in a whisper.
Sound is control. Sound is detail. And detail — that clarity — is everything.
