Lectures > Conversation about Foley with FX Supervisor Hanse Warns

Hi Frank Kruse,
I saw in "Making of Perfume Foleystage" that Carsten Richter does his footsteps sitting down.
Also, I noticed that he does all footsteps (both left and right feet) with only one foot, his right one. Here in Argentina, we are used to foley artists who use both their feet and perform standing up.
Is this the way Carsten works in reality or is it just a performance for the "Making of ..."?
Thanks,
José Luis Díaz

PS: Could you eventually send me Carsten e-mail adress? I have some other specific questions for him.

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Hi José,
I'm forwarding your e-mail straight to Carsten and Hanse (the foley mixer). Maybe they have time to talk about how they do stuff. I think this will work out easier than with me in between you. I'm not sure what secrets they'll want to share with you though ;-)
Best,
Frank.

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Hi José,
The "Making of..." is a performance for the camera, but its not unusual in Germany to work from a sitting position.
Its not only the right , but sometimes two persons with different shoes on left and right feet.
Carsten also works with both feet or standing up. But the stool is not an uncommon practice.
I think Foley in Germany started with in-sync recordings of cheap US TV series, which came without any IT tape or sound at all.
2 Foley artists had to perform a complete episode on 2Track tape, at the same time, and most probably with really small pits and minimal space... that's a lot of footsteps together.
Is this why some people work sitting down? I don't know.
You can change the sound of the step in the sitting position much easier than standing up, because you can walk with the side of your feet and in unnatural ways. ;-)
Interesting, because you can achieve some strange sounds.
You definitely can imprint more weight in the step standing up, but you can run faster while sitting.
The German artists are very efficient sync-wise in this position, but I really don't know what the original reason was. Someone just started doing it like this.
Feel free to ask any questions.
We usually use what we need to get the best performance or the best sound and sometimes mix different steps together.
Best,
Hanse

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At this point, I inquired some questions and asked him permission to upload our talking in my YouTube Channel and in my web page.
He answered in the following way...

Jose,
You can use the didactic stuff, but keep in mind I'm not a native English speaker, nor a writer, and there may be some screw ups hidden. ;.-)
Translate it to spanish and it should be fine. ;-)

1- Do you use two simultaneous mics? I mean two simultaneously open mics. Or is each mike for two different sound perspectives and you balance during the recording of different shots (with different sound perspective)?

Yes. We have 3 or 4 mikes and I use a minimum of 2 and mix them for all the different perspectives during the recording.
I always keep 3 fingers on the faders and constantly fade and EQ, mostly lows and highs and locuts/ hicuts. I look at the picture and adjust the balance in any moment of the recording. Risky but lively. :-)

2- Do you add reverb (digital reverb send) during the recording?

No. We tried it in dead sounding chambers, but a live room is much better. I always have some very distant mikes to add reverb.

3- Do you record simultaneously footsteps AND objects on a table?

Only for very cheap TV series and if we have absolutely no time.
The bottle thing in "The Perfume" movie is just an example.
We did all that one thing at a time, and even recorded up to 8 takes with different perspectives and objects to get it to sound perfect.

4- How big is your recording room? Is it very dry?

We have a 50 m² recording room, 5 Meters high and with a round brick celing, (It was a 19th century factory building) and a 500 m² big hall with equipment, 12 Meters high.
The studio is not like a normal recording area, you cannot record dialog in there. It has absorbers in some places but it is far from being dead sounding.
50 percent of the walls are deadened to avoid echoes. Appart from that, the room is very natural and we use the reverb a lot.
In one of the corners we have a tent-like structure where the room is dead, for exterior stuff. That is also where the sandpits are.
The floor is concrete. We can throw garbage and water all over our studio without a problem. We also have a real car inside, and a 10.000 lt pool in another room.

5- Do you use some kind of fast limiter when recording footsteps? I'm thinking of high heels, for instance.

Never. We try to avoid clicking sounds with clever mic positioning and maybe use transient modulators in the edit.
Not that I hate limiters, but I try to fade it and make it by hand. I use a valve preamp for FX, which compresses the signal, but only to use as an additional FX mike.

6- What's your preferred mic for footsteps? At which distance?

We mainly use Neumanns (KMR 81, TLM 170, TLM 127) and some Schoeps.
The KMR 81 and other shotguns can stand far away and sound more like production sound than the big diaphragm mics like the TLM, which sound more open and high-end.
It depends a lot on the movie and the production sound. We often use all mikes and try to combine the best of all worlds. It also depends on the shoes, the day, the artist and the weather...I never found a perfect thing. You have to try and change it every day and every minute. ;-)

7- One of the characteristics that I dislike of our footsteps (Foley) is the excess in transitories. I mean, really peaky sounds that lack weight and just sound tiny. How do you deal with this? What do you recommend?

Try to put the mike 2m away from the source or in a different direction, like off-axis. Use a second Room Mic to smoothen it.
We also use EQ, harmonizers, transient modulators and valve preamps to fatten things up.
Like recording a drumset. :-)
Best regards,
Hanse