Doing the foley today was not my first attempt at foley, however it is definitely my first try at doing it to video, I’ve done bits here and there in my audio drama Chain of Being (my favourite being flapping my coat at the mic for the wings of a gargoyle). However this is definitely a different process, there is far more guidance in the form of having the actions of the actors to follow along with, the force and timing and length of any action is layed out for you and as a performer you have to follow along in kind.
Today I mainly wanted to do the sword sounds, sheathing, and clashes. I brought in a spatula which has a really nice ring which we didn’t really use to its full capabilities but it was nice to be able to control it by placing our fingers further along to deaden the ring. I think for the other parts i will try and do more location based foley. The footsteps, for example, are one of the most prominent parts of the scene, they guide the audience through the scene and are going to be heard the most. Because of this I think I would like to do footsteps at a location in order to get more variety per step in order for it to not become grating. There was also a part in the scene where a sword is cut in half and while we did record he sword clash, I feel that it will require a bit more sound design than foley.
In terms of microphone choice for the unsheathing of the swords we used the Sennheiser 412 shotgun mic. This recorded in mono but the sounds of the unsheathing was not so important to capture in depth, and because I want to pan and mix these to be more directional it makes more sense to have them be mono. For the sword clashes though we figured that switching to the Neumann mic which records in stereo, because the number of actual sword clashes is quite few, having a more in depth sound makes more sense as it will make each one a lot more impactful.
I think choosing a scene with relatively few sound effects allows me to really focus in each one individually and give them a lot more care, the whole scene oozes tension and I really want each individual element to reflect contribute to that.