Foley for War of the Worlds

I started by booking out a Marantz 661 and a Sennheiser 14 and recording the breathing of the girl and the man in the Workstation protools studio myself trying to make my voice softer for the girl and lower for the man. I recorded the video on my phone so I could watch it then breathe along with the video.

In the Harmer protools, with the same equipment, I recorded the footsteps of the man in one of the foley boxes, again watching a video of the clip on my foot so I could do the steps in time. As the basement in the clip seems to be dirty and cluttered with debris scattered everywhere, I imagined that the floor underfoot would sound slightly crunchy and dusty but would be a hard surface so I scattered dust from one of the boxes on top of a concrete slab and wore heavy shoes so the difference in weight would be evident after I recorded the little girls shoes. I asked Peter Farley to do the footsteps for the little girl because he was wearing light trainers and I wanted there to be a difference in sound and weight for the two sets of footsteps. I also asked him to do the scraping of the shoe on the concrete for the part where the girls foot accidentally slips out and her dad pulls it back in.

The mirror recording was hard because I wasn't sure what to use that sounded heavy enough for mirror being picked up and then dropped onto the floor. Also, I had to factor in the fact that the people in the clip are trying to be quiet so the sound wouldn't be that loud anyway but I wanted to get an accurate recording. 

I recorded the mirror being scraped across the floor as it is picked up by the man by using a broken piece of concrete scraping across a debris scattered piece of concrete. I realised that the sound sounded too harsh and loud on playback so I took a piece of newspaper and put it underneath so the sound wasn't too loud and was a slightly dampened. 

For the mirror being picked up and put down, I decided to use another large piece of concrete against the debris scattered one and place it down so it sounded like a large mirror that had a weight to it.

For the mouse scurrying across the floor, I used two little pieces of cable ties and scraped them quickly along the concrete so they sounded like little feet running away from the alien probe. I also recorded both of my hand scuffing along the debris scattered concrete for when the man is crawling on the floor, creeping away from the alien.