Pic­ture a muted video of a per­son wal­king inside a house. Ima­gine what the foots­teps might sound like going up crea­ky steps or slight­ly drag­ging on the floor. Turn up the sound and become com­ple­te­ly diso­rien­ted as you hear foots­teps wal­king in crun­chy snow, birds and a sym­pho­ny of frogs. Sound artist Guillaume Jab­bour demons­trates how to use an iphone to shoot and edit a short video in iMo­vie and cap­ture, edit and mix real sounds in Gara­ge­Band. The sounds are then syn­ced with video to create a sur­real expe­rience. The pro­cess offers insight into how movie sound effects are made by Foley artists.

Mate­rials : iPhone or iPad with Voice Memo, Gara­ge­Band and iMovie

Tar­get Audience : 10 years old +

Group Size : indi­vi­dual or pairs

Intro­duc­tion (15 min.)

• Watch the sample videos below with music AND without music.

• Dis­cus­sion :

  • What do you notice ? (e.g. the audio does not match the visual, sounds like snow, nature).

    • ADAPTATION : The dis­cus­sion could be direc­ted by asking “Com­plete these sta­te­ments, “I see… I hear…”

  • How do you think this was done ? (e.g. audio was made sepa­ra­te­ly from video, eve­ry­thing was glued toge­ther after).

• Watch the Foley Artists video below.

• Dis­cus­sion :

  • What does a Foley Artist do ?

Step 1 : Cap­tu­ring and Edi­ting the Video (30 – 60 min.)

• Open the came­ra app on your iPad or iPhone. Choose Video.

• Choose a loca­tion indoors where you can walk for at least 1 min. without interruption.

• Use your device to film a short scene (1 min. max). You can film a lon­ger scene later but for now, keep it short. Film your own legs if you are wor­king alone or take turns fil­ming each other walking.

• Don’t wor­ry if there is extra foo­tage at the begin­ning and end of your video ; you can trim that out afterwards.

• Watch your video and ans­wer these questions :

  • Does the video look good ?

  • Is the ligh­ting even ? Is any­thing blown out (very bright and dif­fi­cult to look at) or too dark ?

  • Is the image stea­dy or is there lots of unwan­ted movement ?

• Consi­der the ans­wer to these ques­tions and decide whe­ther you need to reshoot your video or not to make it look as good as possible.

• Once you are hap­py with the qua­li­ty of your video, open the iMo­vie app, select new pro­ject > Movie > choose the video you just shot and click on the + sign to add it to your iMo­vie project.

• Tap the video in your iMo­vie pro­ject and at the bot­tom Tap Detach to detach the audio. Remem­ber, you will be over­laying a dif­ferent audio track later.

• When you see the sepa­rate audio track below your video, tap and hold down to select it and press the delete key or flick it towards the top of your screen to delete it.

• Trim the video to the desi­red length, cut­ting out any unne­ces­sa­ry footage.

• To remove parts of your video in the middle of the clip, place your cur­sor close to where you want to cut, tap the video region and choose the “Split” option. Then pull the lit­tle scis­sors down to split your clip into two regions. You can now trim out any unne­ces­sa­ry foo­tage on either side of the split.

• Click on the Gear to access set­tings and toggle the sli­der to add a Fade in and out to your video to make it look smoother.

• Once you have deci­ded on the final ver­sion of your video, you are rea­dy to begin wor­king on the audio.

Step 2 : Cap­tu­ring and Expor­ting the Audio (30 min.)

• Open the Voice Memo app on your iPhone or iPad – this app allows you to record even if you leave the app to watch your iMo­vie video at the same time. This is impor­tant for syn­cing the audio with the visual.

• Figure out where you will walk to create a dra­ma­tic mis­match with the video foo­tage. Crun­chy snow, leaves or shal­low water are great options.

• When you are rea­dy, start recor­ding in Voice Memo, then leave the app and open your iMo­vie pro­ject. Hit play in iMo­vie and fol­low the video so that the audio cap­ture of your foots­teps matches your video. Do this as many times as you need to, until you are happy.

• Go back to the Voice Memo app and stop the recording.

• Rename the file to a name that makes sense so that you can find it easi­ly later on if neces­sa­ry – e.g. Foots­teps crun­chy snow

• From the file­list in Voice Memo, click and hold down on your file, click Share > Save File > Gara­ge­Band > Gara­ge­Band File Transfer.

• This is how you will access your file in Gara­ge­Band so that you can mix the audio adding effects, pan­ning, EQ and compression.

Step 3 : Mixing the Audio (30 – 60 min.)

• Open the Gara­ge­Band app, then tap new pro­ject > microphone

• At the top right, tap the loops symbol

• Tap Files > Gara­ge­Band File Trans­fer > drag the file you just expor­ted to the Gara­ge­band workspace

• Wear ear buds, air pods or head­phones and use your ears to edit the track until you are happy.

• Use Track Pan to send your audio signal to the left or right.

• Use the EQ func­tion to bring out the high, middle and low fre­quen­cies of your audio track.

• Use the Com­pres­sor to reduce the dif­fe­rence bet­ween your lou­dest and quie­test sounds.

• Use Effects (Reverb, Echo) to enhance your track.

• Once you are hap­py with your track, tap Pro­jects at the top left, then rename your pro­ject to some­thing that makes sense like before (e.g. AV Mis­match Foots­teps). Then tap Done.

Step 4 : Adding the Audio to the Video and Expor­ting (15 – 30 min.)

• In Gara­ge­band, tap and hold down on your pro­ject then select Share > Song > High Qua­li­ty > Share > Open in… (this may take a few moments as your pro­ject must be expor­ted) > Tap Open in iMo­vie > Choose your iMo­vie project

• You will now see the audio and video in the same project

• Place the audio where you want it.

• You can add other audio tracks using the same process

• You can also use Gara­ge­Band to create music to use as a sound­track for your video.

• Tap Done.

• Tap the Share arrow.

• Decide how you want to export the file. A good option if you have access to a Mac­book or iMac is to Air Drop the Movie file to that and watch it there. Once the movie file is on a com­pu­ter, you can also upload it to your You­tube account.

Taking it Further

What other audio­vi­sual mis­matches can you ima­gine ? Here are some examples :

• Birds chir­ping during a scene of a spa­ce­ship lan­ding on the moon

• A lizard wal­king with foots­teps that sound like pia­no keys

• Sounds of springs and saws during a scene of a doc­tor exa­mi­ning a patient 

Hap­py edi­ting and have fun !