Foley artists bring a human touch to moviemaking even with rise of AI

In a small studio tucked within the Sony Pictures lot, Gary Hecker makes art with sound.

His canvases are some of Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters — from Zack Snyder’s “Justice League” and Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” to Disney and Marvel’s Spider-Man flicks and the Academy Award-winning “Master and Commander.”

Hecker is a Foley artist, the maestro tasked with crafting the everyday sound effects that occur in a scene: squeaky doors, swishing cloaks, the slap of leather reins and even the “thwip” of Spider-Man’s webbing.

“Foley is a key element in this magic trick we do of convincing the audience to believe in the movie they’re watching,” said Rodger Pardee, professor at Loyola Marymount University. “Foley is not for explosions or jet engines. It’s for the footsteps of someone running through a forest or rock climbing, or the swish of a superhero’s cape, that kind of thing. Foley gives you the details. It’s the sound texture that anchors the sound mix.”

As Hollywood is grappling with the rampant growth of artificial intelligence capabilities — and how, or whether, they should be used — Foley artists remain a stalwart and deeply human part of the moviemaking process.

The performative nature of the craft makes it difficult for studios to use AI to match the artists’ skill. However, there are few people who work full time as Foley artists, and there is currently no collegiate program for Foley. Those who wish to break into the field have to get apprenticeships with already established industry veterans.

Created by Jack Foley in the late 1920s, the sound technique that became his namesake emerged in Hollywood when the industry transitioned from silent films to “talkies.” Early recording equipment couldn’t capture dialogue and ambient noise, so sounds had to be added after the film was shot.

Foley discovered that performing the sound effects live and in sync with the finished product created a more authentic soundscape and helped keep audiences immersed in the film.

Artists today still use many of the same techniques that were employed nearly 100 years ago.

“We do the film from top to bottom,” Hecker said. “Anything that’s moving on that screen, we provide a sound for it.”

More than 50 pairs of shoes are aligned on shelves in Hecker’s studio. Some are sturdy and produce thick thuds, while others create the sharp, click-clack of high heels. There’s even a set of spurs crafted by a blacksmith in the 1800s that Hecker used in Tarantino’s “Django Unchained.”

“The true art of Foley is to master the sound,” Hecker said. “I’m a 200-pound guy, so if I’m doing Arnold Schwarzenegger, I’ve got to dig deep, but if I’m doing a little geisha girl from ‘Memoirs of a Geisha,’ a 90-pound girl in those little wooden shoes, I have to match that performance.”

His sound lab has a makeshift kitchen area teeming with cups, bottles, bowls, cloches and spray bottles of varying sizes and materials. Bins of rakes, shovels and mops galore stand next to a pile of rocks, and in the corner is a well-worn battleship howitzer shell.

He’s even got a stash of swords, guns, shields, armor and chains, as well as a specially built metal tower to create unique, rich metallic sounds.

The floor has a collection of Foley pits — areas of wood, concrete, stone, gravel — the doors feature an assortment of handles, locks and chains, the closets are filled with a collection of jackets so Hecker can find just the right zipper sound, and, of course, there are some coconut shells.

Hecker’s collection of props is more than 45 years in the making. He got his start apprenticing on “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back” and has more than 400 film titles under his belt, including “The Running Man,” “Three Amigos,” “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure,” “Home Alone” and “300.”

Hecker’s partner in sound is Jeff Gross, a mixer who transforms the crashes, clatters and clops captured in the microphone into a resonant symphony.

Hecker and Gross’ partnership started in the middle of the Covid pandemic while they worked on the sound effects for the video game “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III.” Since then, they’ve worked on both “Rebel Moon” films, “Venom: The Last Dance,” and “Mufasa: The Lion King,” among other projects. Last year, the pair were nominated for a Golden Reel, one of the most prized accolades in the sound editing world, for “Mufasa: The Lion King” and won for their work on “Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver.”

Hecker and Gross tackle one film at a time and typically spend 18 to 20 days per project, depending on the film’s sound budget. Bigger-budgeted movies get more time, while smaller or independent features often get much less.

While the tag team of Hecker and Gross operate out of the Sony lot, they work with all of Hollywood’s major studios. These companies provide six to eight reels that contain around 15 minutes of the film each. Hecker and Gross then go reel by reel, adding all the footsteps, prop sounds and ambient sounds.

The footsteps come first. Hecker stomps, trots and sidesteps in pace with each actor’s performance, often accompanied by a smattering of coffee grounds to add grit to the sound of the shoes, creating the illusion of walking outside. Then he begins layering in the prop sounds.

To create the metallic scrape of a sewer cover against a paved street, for example, Hecker grates the howitzer shell against a concrete slab. Gross then adds resonance to the captured sound via computer to give it a more realistic quality.

Hecker has even developed techniques to recreate the sound of explosions, pushing the limits of what sound artists can provide studio movie projects.

Gross, who sits in a sound booth while Hecker works the microphone, often can’t see what his partner is using to mimic what’s on screen.

“You have to just get in your head and go, ‘Yeah, that sounds like it,'” he said. “And then I’ll stand up and look down onto the stage and I’m like, ‘Are you using a shopping cart and a toothbrush?'”

And Hecker’s skills aren’t just in the physical performance. For decades, he’s lent his voice to Hollywood’s gorillas, aliens, dragons, monsters, horses and even lions.

He’s snorted, chortled and grunted to bring to life the dragon from “Shrek,” the aliens from “Independence Day,” zombies in “Dawn of the Dead,” the giant gorilla in “Mighty Joe Young,” and, most recently, a pride of lions from “Mufasa: The Lion King.”

“It just was really cool to do all the breathing and the purrs and the efforts,” Hecker said of working on “Mufasa: The Lion King.” “The actors do the voices of the character and tell the story, but these lions are moving around throughout the whole movie, and there’s nothing there. So, it all had to be custom crafted and performed. So I would do that, and then Jeff would help me with making it sound like a giant beefy lion.”

Hollywood is at a crossroads. New AI technology offers studios a chance to cut ballooning production budgets, but copyright law and a desire to keep human art in films has led to tensions.

The 2023 dual writers and actors strikes were partially extended because of fraught negotiations with studios over rights, payment and use cases for AI in filmmaking and television.

Those conversations were reignited in the wake of “The Brutalist” earning a best actor win for Adrian Brody even as his performance was altered using AI voice-generating technology — and amid fears that President Donald Trump’s White House could roll back copyright protections at the behest of AI companies.

When it comes to Foley sound, Hecker and Gross aren’t too worried about AI programs taking away their jobs.

“Actors’ performances, between motion and detail, AI can’t do that,” Hecker said. “And an artist expresses themselves by acting and performing these things, you know, with a light touch, a heavy hand, emotion to it, those kinds of things that I don’t think AI will be able to reproduce.”

Loyola Marymount’s Pardee noted that companies are already working on software programs to try to create Foley sound, but “the results lack these very subtle, specific variations.”

Independent studios and productions may opt for these programs in the future, but Pardee doesn’t expect the major studios to follow suit.

Where Hecker and Gross see trouble is in the shrinking number of film releases coming out of Hollywood.

“We typically try to work on 10 to 11, but the industry is definitely changing,” Hecker said. “They are making fewer movies right now.”

Part of the decline has come from pandemic-era production restrictions and the labor strikes, but also from the merging of prominent Hollywood studios. Executives have become more budget conscious as well, slimming down the number of features outside the typical blockbuster franchise fare.

And streaming isn’t going to pick up the slack. Hecker noted that streaming content doesn’t have the same sound budget as feature films and so the creators often turn to smaller Foley houses.

In the meantime, Hecker, who has garnered the nickname “Wrecker,” is known for putting his human body on the line for Foley.

“I would do anything to get a sound,” he said. “If a guy’s getting slammed into a door, against a car, you’ve got to physically put that same intensity that you see on the screen. If you don’t, it just won’t sound right.”