Whew. This was a tough challenge. And maybe one of the toughest of the semester.

We had to create foley sounds for a clip of the silent movie, The Circus.

Not sure what Foley sounds are? While I didn’t know either until I read this site. Basically, foley sounds are “everyday sound effects which are added in post production to enhance the quality of audio for films, television, video, video games and radio.”

To do this project we were given the a clip from The Circus, where the tramp gets trapped in the lion’s cage. Then we were split in to 30 second increments based on our birthday month.

My birthday is in December so I received the 2:31-2:55 segment. Technically it is only 24 seconds long. I watched the clip over and over again, taking notes as I did and trying to get down what happened in each second.

After taking notes and watching it like a million times. I started thinking of what to use to make the sounds. I also wrote up the little bit of dialogue I needed.

For the sounds:

• Girl running across hay- I just tapped on my MacBook Pro! 
• Girl Running up steps- tapped on my desk
• Lifting Latch- I lifted the “latch” on my keurig where you put the K-cups in.
• Opening door- I opened my closet door
• Walking across floor- tapped on my desk, again
• Scampering across the floor- I am shuffling/quicking “running” on the floor
• Flying down the stairs- tapping on my desk
• Girl Closing Latch-closing the cover of my iPad cover

Voices/dialogue

• I did a horrible job of representing a man’s voice. In retrospect I probably should have tried to look up Charlie Chaplin’s voice to see if I could find what it sounded like. I imagined the girl to have a sweet and innocent and concerned voice, so hopefully you can tell that. And I “roared” as well! I didn’t really know my voice could do that!

I layered everything into audacity and then uploaded it to SoundCloud. This was a challenging activity for me. I managed to get it right hat 24 seconds! Hope you enjoy.