EDITING AND MIXING - OM FOLEY

I had originally recorded these footsteps with 2 wooden sticks that had a flat edge however I felt that it sounded too closed in and thin as the sticks had a very small surface area. It was mentioned during the playback session with the class that perhaps layering a scuttling sound would work as the character is insect like. I recorded this scuttling sound with metallic drum brushes and this worked perfectly as it reinforced, not only the insect nature of the character, but the metallic side too. I then closed the drum brushes and used these to replace the wooden stick footsteps. The drum brushes have a wider surface area and are heavier so this added more weight and made them sound more like footsteps. As the main body of frequencies appeared in the mids, I used a high and low-cut filter while giving it a slight boost in the mids. By shaping the EQ this way, I felt it added some density which aided in making it sound like real footsteps. They do sound quite staccato, but this is due to the character having long, skeletal legs with a sharp point at the end as my idea was to recreate something sounding like a thin stiletto heel.

I also sculpted the EQ for her hands this way although the footsteps have a slightly narrower band. As stated earlier I used two whisks for the sound of her hands as they are made of sewing needles and wanted something of the same material as well as thickness to recreate this. These had a peak in the high mids, so I used a low-cut filter to take some of the bottom end out to avoid the sound of the whisk spokes ringing through the handle being heard. I wanted to emphasise how thin they were to relate to the thinness of the needles. I used a high cut filter to remove any extra ringing of the spokes as this had a tinny sound and wasn’t what I wanted so I cut that out. I also gave a little boost to the high mids as this was where the frequency content was the strongest.