Foley Stage Designs?

I'm thinking of building a small foley stage, mostly for footsteps. Now looking at pictures taken at a few of the big film dubbing facilities here in the UK, a few seem to have the foley performer in the suite with the recording engineer (who is monitoring on headphones). Bad idea?

I can see advantages to this - uses less space, the recording room is already acoustically absorbent (why treat two rooms instead of one?) and the fact that you probably aren't going to do any major processing on the way in means headphones are sufficient. A more direct interaction with the peformer is possible.

Or is this a compromise approach? What do people think?

Rob Walker

[thierryd]

A more direct interaction with the peformer is possible.


This alone already makes it a good idea. I've recorde foley and ADR this way and it's very nice to be in one room with the talent and director.

Just make sure you don't have any noise making equipment in the room. Especially be careful with some equipment with annoying resonance frequencies. I've heard a Sony DMX-R100 ring when somebody shouted in the room...so, sometimes some damping is necesary.

Greetings,

Thierry