Status: 02/18/2021 1:45 p.m.
A good film not only requires script, direction, actors, camera, sound and costumes, but also sounds. So-called Foley Artists like Peter Burgis in Mecklenburg record these noises.
It is a low mountain range of shoes that piles up in the recording studio in a village near Goldberg: mountain pines, cowboy boots and elegant white business shoes lie on top of, next to and in confusion. Peter Burgis grabs the black women’s high heels and pulls them over his thick gray wool socks. “If I can’t sound like a woman, I’ve failed as a Foley artist,” he explains before running off. “I know it looks a little strange that one of the socks is pulled over your pants, but that belongs to Foley.”
The sound is everything to the Foley Artists, and what they look like is completely irrelevant. What the two-time Emmy winner Peter Burgis does is particularly worth seeing: a dance with full body tension, up and down stairs. He actually only walks on a one-square-meter wooden plate with a blanket underneath. “When you go up the stairs here, you walk on toes. If you go down the stairs, you do the same thing, but you put more pressure on your heels. And when you walk normally, you step on the heel first,” explains Burgis .
Hollywood films get sound from the “Foley Factory”
Real walking sound only with socks pulled over the pants: Foley artist Peter Burgis at work.
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Peter Burgis is a rock star among the noise makers: he walked through Hogwarts as Harry Potter and set daring flight maneuvers as James Bond in “Quantum of Solace”. Sherlock Holmes, Bohemian Rhapsody, Slumdog Millionaire – the list of films he has starred in seems endless. The noises for a Japanese Netflix series are currently being created in the Foley Factory studio.
The fact that he now lives in a small Mecklenburg village near Goldberg and works in a converted sheepfold has something to do with Franziska Treutler. After twelve years in London, she wanted to set up her own studio in her old home and asked Peter if he would work with her.
“Franzi’s wish to me was: ‘Design the workplace that you always wanted.’ And I did. I designed three separate stages that we could work with, “he says. “Why should I ever go away? As an artist, I’ll be able to work in the perfect environment. Plus, I’ve spent my entire career with huge production companies and post-production companies like Pinewood and Warner Brothers,” says Burgis. “And after 30 years it gets a little tiring. I wanted a slightly slower pace of life. Not less work, but a less pressured way of life,” he adds.
Tea, animals, landscape – and silence
And yet he made conditions for his stay in the north German province. Three things should never be missing: “A really good cup of tea, animals and a landscape.” And so Peter Burgis now stands every morning at one of the large windows in the red brick house, drinks his cup of tea, looks out at Mecklenburg pastures, and four dogs and three cats dance around him.
Like a tidy Messi household: Franziska Treutler guides you through the warehouse of the Foley Factory.
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For Franziska Treutler, leaving London and setting up her studio in rural Mecklenburg is also a story about silence. Because the recordings in the British capital had to be aligned with the subway timetable. “With Foley you take very quiet recordings: for example, if someone rubs their hair, it has to be recorded,” she explains. “And in the city it’s very difficult to get a studio so quiet that you can’t hear anything. That’s why we said: Okay – we’re ready for the country!”
In addition to a large studio for the sound recordings, Foley Artists primarily need space: Because the warehouse looks a bit like a Messi household, albeit a tidy one: In 50 meters of shelves, boxes with so-called props – props from small change to wind machines to thermos flasks are stacked all versions. “We sort by materials,” explains Treutler. “Here is the metal shelf, then we have a wooden shelf, clothes and a collection of suitcases.”
In planning: A pool for (under) water photography
This year they want to build a water system eight meters long and two meters wide in the former stable, the largest in the world for sound recordings. “We can pick up a boat in the water and we can dive in there. The facility is two meters deep and has such an amount of water that it sounds really good.”
Because that is the philosophy of the Foley Factory, which will soon be renamed Foley Farmers: to create as many sound effects as possible naturally. And to create a character for each film character with just noises. Once a week they sit in a team with the sound engineers in their improvised cinema and see whether they have succeeded in creating a “3D image with depth” from moving images using only sound.
Noise maker Peter Burgis reveals a trick
Foley Artists are the film’s invisible clay magicians, and sometimes they even reveal their tricks. Peter Burgis takes a cloth from the table and quickly pulls it taut several times: “If you are in a hospital and someone needs to be monitored with a stethoscope, you can make a heartbeat out of an old piece of cloth. These are exactly the things that inspire me, always better to become and make the right noises. “
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NDR culture | Classic in the day | 02/20/2021 | 07:20 am
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