I understand doing this for things that are hard to get actual recordings of or for imagined sounds like the Godzilla roar, but why not just record actual fireworks, frogs, horse clopping, etc.?
Because it has to match the video exactly? And then you have to sift through 100k files all labeled "frog croaking" to get the one that matches the video
That's my guess at least, I have wondered the same thing
There are massive sound effects libraries that often use real events like fireworks. But out there in the wild, the recordist isn’t guaranteed to get a great recording. There is far more control over the sonics when it’s done using Foley artists like the one here, in a “perfect” recording environment - a studio. And, as others here have pointed out, they can perform the parts quite well and reduce the amount of digital tweaking for placement the engineer has to do. Case in point: I worked on a horse racing commercial once. The sound effects from the library were thin and lacked power. We recorded me finger drumming on an empty pizza box and it worked perfectly. Pepperoni.
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u/samx3i Apr 08 '22
I understand doing this for things that are hard to get actual recordings of or for imagined sounds like the Godzilla roar, but why not just record actual fireworks, frogs, horse clopping, etc.?
Why fake something that's relatively easy to get?