During the movie, there are a lot of dancing and jumping and characters walking around scenes. And in such scenes, all the characters’ footsteps are captured exceptionally well, and in the dance scenes we always hear the clear crisp of their feet stumbling on the ground, just like the microphone is held inside their shoes.
This connects to this week’s reading where post-production is used to achieve this effect, which is foley sounds. Below is a link that is useful for us to read
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https://soundgirls.org/lara-dale-foley-artis
A foley artist may have many many shoes they use to create certain sounds the characters made during the film. “If you work long enough on diverse projects you will eventually need to have every type of shoe, or at least the sound of that shoe, that you possibly can.” Artist Lara Dale said so, and she herself have more than 300 shoes.
Lara Dale also notes that the movie stars rarely record their own footstep tracks, but Gene Kelly did record his own footsteps. This makes Singin’ in the Rain one of those rare cases where the on-screen dancer is also the off-screen “Foley walker.” That choice keeps the choreography’s exact groove while still giving the mix team freedom to shape space and texture.
In addition, notice how the footsteps all sound like the special shoes used by tap artists, but the characters in the frame are either wearing leather shoes or high heels. This is clearly not a sound such shoes can make in real life, and foley is employed here to mimic the optimistic sound. Sound enriches the image with expressive information the picture alone can’t carry, it offer fun and wit into the shots.
If we are to listen to the actual footsteps that is recorded during the film taking period, it probably will be unclear and not so rhythimic that we are able to capture the beet and feel their dance as they do the moves.
So the thing I noticed that how his feet sound turns out to be the point. The film wants you to feel the dance as music, not just see it. Foley makes that happen.
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