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The PNW Section visited the wonderful world of sound effects for its May 2022 meeting, held on Zoom. Sony Interactive Senior Foley Artist Joanna Fang joined us, Zooming live from the Sony Interactive Foley stage in San Diego, with many of the props and sets used in producing her sound effects. About 34 persons attended (22 being AES members).
Joanna started with her background, growing up in SoCal as a singer, and going to NYU for music tech and singing, then transferring to NYU Tisch film school. She was initially asked to try Foley based on her sight-reading skills. After graduating, she landed a position at Alchemy Sound in NY doing sound and Foley, working on many great projects for seven years.
Next, she went into the history of making sound effects - first for film, and now other media. Don't forget, Foley is capitalized since it's named after early sound effects artist Jack Foley. Things have change over the years, with technology and media, so the old definition of Foley being "sounds performed to match picture" is changing. Sound effects editors and Foley artists may do similar tasks now, and sounds nowadays tend to focus more on hard-to-capture sounds or artistic interpretative sounds. She described working as a sound effects/Foley team, effects for documentaries, and her philosophy of making imaginative sound effects, which she compared to impressionistic paintings.
Joanna performed a live effects example by using a stalk of celery and dry pasta noodles. Foley studios need a grocery budget to create some sounds. She also talked about working during the pandemic lockdown.
After some chat and attendee self-introductions, the line of questioning went further into Foley work. She also spoke on this topic on a blog post
here.
About Joanna Fang
Joanna Fang is an Emmy Award winning Foley artist and sound editor. An alumna of NYU Film,
Joanna spent the first 12 years of her career performing custom Foley and sound effects for film and TV
in New York with Alchemy Post Sound. Having transitioned into interactive work, Joanna was recently
brought on to co-lead and develop Sony Playstation's in-house Foley team. Her Foley can be heard in films
(The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), games (Horizon Forbidden West), and music videos (Mitski's Working for the Knife).
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