A couple weeks ago, a returning client asked me if I was available, and of course, I was excited to help her out! Anyway, as I’m spotting, we both know we aren’t doing a full foley pass for this project. It would be unnecessary and double the price. But I felt that getting some good footsteps in some of the slow motion shots would be really helpful.
For the limited number of steps I needed, I just cut them in from my library; some of them my own recordings, others from purchased libraries. But then, there was this one scene: a bunch of children entering into a bus. Some shots slow motion, others full. My library contains nothing of the sort. Enter Tovusound Edward Foleyart Instrument (EFI)!
I bought this on sale years ago for $49. It’s a wonderful little Kontakt instrument pre-loaded with some samples of well recorded footsteps with various shoes on various surfaces. All the general types of performances: creep, walk, run, jump, land, scuff. They even have mic perspective control.
I built a quick wash of a bunch of different walks, various pans and pitched it up a bit, rolled off the lows and highs, all in the plugin, and set them to use far mics. Then I thinned out the wash as the shots progressed since more kids were present in the beginning vs the end. Finally I did a hero pass for a couple foregrounded kids. Same deal, just nail the timing on the midi, and automate perspective, pan, and volume.
It all went super well, but I was in a rush to get her a draft with these in, so I didn’t really listen critically. Just a quick dial in to get the gist. Later though, I decided to double check. I played it, and WOW! I was shocked at just how good it sounded. The clarity of the hero track, the backgrounded nature of the wash.
I HIGHLY recommend picking this thing up, even for its current price of $99. Or, if, unlike me, you DIDN’T just buy a house and aren’t strapped for cash, get their bigger brother. The Pro Bundle contains a significantly upgraded version of EFI – you can mix between surfaces, the library is deeper and broader (more variations and more shoe / surface combos). It also contains a Custom plugin which is essentially the same engine, but you drop in your own samples. Sure you can do this in other plugins, but this one is designed for footsteps and it shows.
PS: This post is not sponsored, but if they want to, I’m open to it!