Julie Craft
In this engaging conversation, Julie Craft, a talented animator and motion design generalist, shares her journey from a high school nerd to a successful freelancer and founder of Boxfort. She discusses the evolution of motion design, the impact of technology like Rive on animation, and her experiences working with major brands in the automotive industry. Julie also highlights the importance of community in the creative field, shares insights on freelancing, and expresses her love for music production, showcasing her multifaceted talents.
Takeaways
Julie started her journey in motion design before it was a defined career path.
Her high school experience in media helped her find a sense of community.
The evolution of technology has significantly impacted the motion design industry.
Rive has opened new opportunities for animators to create and collaborate directly with developers.
Working with major brands has taught her valuable lessons about UX and design.
Julie emphasizes the importance of a supportive and collaborative creative community.
Red flags in freelancing include over-communication and lack of team cohesion.
Green flags include concise communication and a visible sense of team spirit.
She finds inspiration in both established and emerging artists in the motion design field.
Julie's passion for music has led her to explore electronic music production and live performances.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Julie Kraft and Her Journey
02:51 The Evolution of Motion Design and Technology
05:58 Navigating Change in the Motion Design Industry
08:55 Exploring Rive and Its Impact on Animation
11:59 Working with High-Profile Brands and Projects
15:08 Lessons Learned from the Automotive Industry
17:58 Passion and Frustrations in the Industry
22:26 Red Flags in Job Postings and Client Interactions
24:16 Identifying Green Flags in Collaborations
27:18 Inspiration from Peers and Influences
31:31 The Journey into Music and Performance
35:24 New Chapter
Transcript:
Mack Garrison (00:00)
Hey, what's up y'all? Mack Garrison here with Dash Studio and we got another good one for you. Another series in the speaker series. We got the talented Julie Craft hanging out with me today. And if you don't know Julie Craft, you should, because Julie is a technical minded animator and broadly skilled 2D and 3D motion generalist. From the day she first opened After Effects in 2001 until now, she has had her hands in almost every possible aspect of our industry. Julie is a highly successful freelancer and has become a trusted creative.
for countless studios and clients throughout her career. She has self-taught and began growing her skills before motion design was even defined as a career path, which is relatable to all of us. As a leader and founder of Boxfort, a thriving creative collective and co-working space in Detroit, she has been instrumental in fostering creative collaboration and community growth. And we love that. Welcome to the show, Julie. So glad to have you here.
Julie Craft (00:51)
I'm happy to be here very much.
Mack Garrison (00:53)
Julie, I'm just gonna be your hype person because I feel like reading your list of accolades, I mean, you've done everything, you've worked with everyone, you're so immensely talented. Maybe you could start the conversation off with a little bit of your journey. How did you find yourself into this world of freelance motion design? Where did that really begin for you?
Julie Craft (00:55)
Go for it.
Yeah. So like, you know, as you sort of mentioned in my bio, I grew up or I started doing motion graphics before it was defined, you know, sort of, what is it? like a aspect of the industry. Yeah. It was a field. Yeah. Yeah. Right. so it was like always, you know, video editor, whatever. So, the first time I even did anything with video, luckily my high school had a TV and radio station in the high school.
Mack Garrison (01:28)
field or anything. What the hell is this thing?
Julie Craft (01:43)
So there was actually after school radio shows, I had my own radio show, a Christian punk and ska music radio show. So that's something. I branched it into a little bit of electronic music at the time too. But yeah, it was like, but it was all like Christian music, you know, cause I grew up Christian, whatever. Another story for another time. Yeah, but that's why I started working with media. And then like on the, on the video side, they had a TV station. do like,
Mack Garrison (01:50)
Sick. Nice. Excellent.
Sure, sure.
Julie Craft (02:10)
video announcements throughout the school. Every classroom had a TV in it. So we kind of do like a broadcast style setup. And they had like an, I don't know if you know, like an Amiga video toaster. It's like an older dedicated hardware computer that could do a bit of 3D and mainly had this like sheep dropping transition thing, whatever. But that was my first intro to any sort of like nonlinear editing and stuff. And then the actual switcher thing that like did the newscasts, you could do lower thirds.
Mack Garrison (02:26)
cool.
Julie Craft (02:38)
And I was able to animate the lower third. So really the first motion graphics I did was an animated title slate underneath like people for the school announcements. Yeah.
Mack Garrison (02:48)
that's funny. When you were like
making it where people were like, this is so rad. What is this?
Julie Craft (02:51)
Yeah, yeah,
I mean, they didn't even, I mean, who knows if they even notice, like, just like still no one notices what we do now. But yeah, like, no, but like I excelled in the class and I loved it and I, you know, and it was also special to me because I mean, I was totally like, I know I'm like super cool now, everybody loves me, I guess, but I wasn't like that. No, in high school, like I was totally a nerd, you know, stuffed in the locker kind of whatever kind of person.
Mack Garrison (03:12)
So cool.
no.
Julie Craft (03:19)
No, I just, I like, had some close friends, but you know, when it came to the broader, like high school social structure, I, I did not have a place. I didn't understand it. didn't know who I was, where I was, whatever. And the TV and radio group, it was cool. Cause also, kids came from the other two schools in the school district. So it was like different people from different schools. We all came together and it was very much like my first, like taste of a community of, and it was kind of like.
You know, the movie, the breakfast club or freaks and geeks. was just like a whole mismatch of different, you know, some of it, some of the people were like football players, popular. some were totally like, you know, the misfits or the whatever the punk kids. Yeah. All that stuff. Yeah. You know, and it didn't matter. Like, like, all that status was like a race there in that little micro community. then, and honestly, like that's the vibe I bring like nowadays, like what I try to do with box for is that same vibe. It's just like.
Mack Garrison (03:51)
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Molly Ringwalls or whatever.
Julie Craft (04:18)
place where like, you know, all the freaks go and we all have fun and there's no, you know, pretentiousness. So that was a whole lot.
Mack Garrison (04:24)
I love that you said you're like,
I'm cool now, but we're still queen of the nerds, right? We're all still nerding out here in this like weird area.
Julie Craft (04:33)
Yeah, I mean, I'm like cool within a very small community, which is our whole animation community. No one else knows me outside of that. I'm not on like the Forbes, you know, 30 or what? I'm way over 30 now, so I don't know. I'm not, you know, I'm not known like anywhere. Sure. Maybe, maybe. I don't know. don't know. Yeah, so that all started in high school and then...
Mack Garrison (04:48)
If there was a Forbes for the animation industry, you might make it. You might get on there, right? Yeah. I love that.
Julie Craft (04:57)
Like after high school, I went to this school called specs Howard, which is like a broadcast school. It's just like a one year program. Did more like newsy stuff, did a little avid, a lot of nonlinear editing, you know, but we still had some real to real like, you know, analog editing, all that stuff. So I did a bunch of stuff with tapes, beta cam SP, all that stuff. so yeah, the really old school stuff. And that was all like just kind of starting to switch over to digital. So yeah, I went there and then my first job was like at this.
Mack Garrison (05:17)
How?
Julie Craft (05:27)
local cable station, doing like commercials. Actually, I started as like a production coordinator, just assigning work. And then like, like one day a freelance, here's, here's where my motion graphic like, career really started is in 2001, like I said, when I opened up After Effects. So a freelancer came in, to our, you know, studio, a freelance editor and he made like lightning, you know, use the AE lightning effect. And I was like hooked.
Mack Garrison (05:32)
cool. Yeah, yeah.
Julie Craft (05:53)
And it wasn't just the lightning, was also like the compositing he did to like make light go on like a person's face and stuff. And from there is when I was really hurt. So that's when I started learning After Effects. Like a year or two later, they moved me into a graphics position, you know? And I absolutely grew up with Video Copilot, Grayscale Gorilla. I learned like everything from them. And then, yeah, just sort of like watch the industry grow. And now it's a real thing.
Mack Garrison (05:57)
sure.
Mm-hmm. yeah.
Also wild. mean, like I remember those days when you had like Adobe on a disc, right? Like it wasn't, you weren't subscribing to it like we are now, you know, and just seeing that evolution, I think from really the hardware days of it to like how easy it is to get into and adopt now. mean, there's a lot of perspective that comes with that. I think, do you have any takes on just the change that's currently happening in our space? And the reason I asked this is because, you know, you've seen so much change in your lifetime.
Julie Craft (06:23)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Mack Garrison (06:49)
from when you started to what we're doing now. I think there's a lot of uncertainty and even discomfort that comes with change. I don't know, what's your take on this industry and how it's been evolving and how it's continuing to evolve?
Julie Craft (07:04)
Yeah, so this is definitely like in my talk, I'm going to dive right into that. Like all the topics that we usually dance around, I'm going to jump right in. You know, the whole specialist versus generalists. I have a lot of answers, you whether or not you agree with me or whatever. I have some answers though. So like I uniquely have become a very flexible generalist person in my career. I mean, in life also, you know, been thrown some curve balls in life and in career.
and so like, don't know, like I'm not really, I don't fear as much, know, like when VR came on the scene and 360 video and everyone thought this is the new thing, you know, none of it became the thing, you know, throughout all of it, there's been like a need for custom content creation and we're still doing that. And yeah, AI can like take all the stuff we've made already and make stuff like it, but it can't make anything new. It can't, it doesn't have intuitive leaps.
You know, the AI we know is Gen AI. It's not AGI, you know, which is general intelligence. So it's not, you know, it's not Skynet. It's not whatever. It's not the AI we see in movies at all. So it's like, it's just like a filter and you know, maybe I'll explain some of that in my talk a little bit if anyone cares. No, no, no, there's tons of secrets. I'm not giving away. Don't worry. But yeah, it'd be a fun time.
Mack Garrison (08:13)
Right. Right.
Yeah, I don't want you to give away too much, but I love that you're going to come with like some. Yeah, that's good. Well, it is interesting because it's like it has opened
the door to like, you know, I think I was talking to Michelle Higa Fox with Buck on another one of our interviews and just talking about getting into technology and new tech that's coming out. so with everything scary that comes down the line, there's also opportunity and cool areas to play. And one of those I know that you've been playing around a lot in is Rive.
Julie Craft (08:34)
Hmm?
Mack Garrison (08:48)
Maybe you can speak a little bit to some of your work you've been doing in Rive and what's kind of brought you into that space.
Julie Craft (08:49)
Yeah.
Yeah, so for me, weirdly, like, the abilities of software have usually drive my creativity. Like when I started learning After Effects or when I started learning Cinema 4D, I was like, oh, you can do this thing. That gives me ideas. You know, I came from like the opposite of a traditional art background. I was like, you know, video editor first, like computer stuff first, kind of, and then got into art stuff. besides that trade school I went to, you know, I'm self-taught. So everything designed kind of came later for me.
So for me, it's like when I get a new tool, I feel like it really inspires me. And with Rive, so leading up to like the recent years, and I used to do stuff with like automotive work, a lot of app UI work and everything. And all of that was like, you know, basically doing mockups and After Effects and like exporting it for developers and then learning how to like say, hey, like this is how it should look, here's a video. But then I would have to say like,
Mack Garrison (09:38)
yeah.
Julie Craft (09:55)
This should animate in like however many milliseconds. I could have to like document stuff for developers and they would do their best. You I mean, they're amazing. They can make systems and awesome things, but they often can't get the visuals quite, you know, right there. Like the nuance is not there. Right. So what's awesome with Rive it's like direct, you know, you, you build a Rive file, you build a system, you build the software and you, you give it to engineering.
Mack Garrison (09:57)
Mmm.
Right.
Julie Craft (10:21)
But you, give engineering all the inputs and everything. It's like they, they make it work, but like everything that moves you've created it. It's like, it's awesome. And that might seem like, Oh, well I'm, I'm an animator. I don't want to deal with the, you know, you know, that like side of it or whatever, but you know, you can go as deep into the programming side of it as you want or not. Like, cause you, you know, basically with Rive you can animate just like you do in After Effects. It's actually, would say it's more limited than After Effects, but has an awesome like puppeting tool or whatever.
Mack Garrison (10:47)
Sure. Sure.
Julie Craft (10:51)
bones and stuff. So yeah, you can totally animate and it's what you see is what you get. And you can get into the state machine and really pretty simply, you can start to make some basic interactions. And so it just opened my mind up. Like, like it's so much nicer to have direct control and, and the output. So that's what I love. Hmm.
Mack Garrison (11:07)
yeah. Well, it just feels like it's opening a new vertical for a lot of people that
haven't been able to operate in, right? There's the friction of, don't really know code. How do I get into it? Or how do I even work with someone who is using code on the backend, which I find really fascinating. Is there any project either personal or client related, if you're able to talk about it, that comes to mind where you've used Rive that you've just been especially proud of?
Julie Craft (11:21)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
I mean, all the Duolingo stuff, like I got to, you know, animate the perfect streak fireball. So yeah, it's something that people see. Some of that was like already kind of roughed in and after effects. And then I like read it a lot in, in Rive and then like refined it. You know, there's a lot of people touching it, but I definitely got to have a big part of it. And that was cool. Cause it's like, I don't know, like
Mack Garrison (11:38)
yeah, yeah, that's right, I remember seeing that.
Julie Craft (11:59)
I knew that what I was exporting was gonna be in the app. I'm like, oh yeah, this isn't gonna change. mean, know, if creatives changed it, but they didn't really. So it was awesome to like know that like, even though, okay, I'm putting this in, it's not gonna be in the app for like months, six months, a year later, I don't know. But knowing that like, oh, what I made is actually going in there directly. That's awesome. So yeah, it's so fun.
Mack Garrison (12:17)
Yeah, and just the visibility of it. Cause a lot of times
there's various projects that you work on that, you know, either don't see the light of day or it's internal and things like that. It's nice to have a very public facing piece to be like, Oh look, ma, I made that. This is what I do for a living.
Julie Craft (12:24)
Yep.
Yeah.
And I have very few of like, I feel like I've, I've been kind of in the background for a long time. Like I, you know, I haven't worked on spider verse or whatever. don't have any, like really, really big high profile things. Like I haven't really worked on any movie titles or whatever. I would hint, hint, but, um, it just, yeah, whatever. But I mean, it just hasn't happened and that's okay. And like, I had an idea for where I wanted my career to go.
Mack Garrison (12:38)
Mmm.
Yeah, that's right. anyone's listening, cough, cough.
Julie Craft (12:57)
when I was younger, I'm like, I'm gonna take over the world with 3D animation. And yeah, I've done some awesome 3D stuff, but like I said, I'm loving doing Rive, which is all 2D, and I'm faking a lot of 3D with shapes and stuff. But yeah, it's awesome.
Mack Garrison (13:09)
Well, it's really interesting to me, because I feel
like, you know, listening to a little bit of your background and how you came up through the motion space, it was really a hardware kind of start that moved into more of the software thing. And then you're really seeing all this transition. It just feels like you're really comfortable with tech. And I know you would describe yourself as a technical animator. I think about some of the programs you use from like Rai, Figma, know, Lottie, After Effects, Cinema 4D.
Do you still have kind of like a home that you feel most comfortable in? Like, is there always a starting point before you bridge into these other elements?
Julie Craft (13:43)
Yeah, I mean, After Effects is like, just like another hand. Yeah. I mean, I just, know it so well. There's always weird shortcuts and stuff. do nudging key frames that yeah, I just know it, you know? And yeah, it's still Cinema 4D. I want to try out Blender, but you know, I know Cinema quite well. So yeah, but I feel mostly comfortable in After Effects and you know, it's a bloated, like it's got some issues, you know, you have to install a million scripts to get what you want, but it does, you know, what we need and what I want, what I need. So.
Mack Garrison (13:46)
Bren butter. Sure.
Sure.
Julie Craft (14:13)
Um, that's why it's nice about Rive, like how Rive is very similar to After Effects in a lot of ways.
Mack Garrison (14:13)
While love, yeah.
Well, I was gonna ask like, you for some folks who might be listening to this, I think there's certain apprehension and trying something new. It's like, oh, I could do this, but I could get it done in After Effects. It could look okay, you know? So I'll just start there. How do you convince people to move past that? Try something new, get comfortable in the uncomfortable.
Julie Craft (14:24)
Yeah.
Yeah.
well, it can be refreshing. Like when I opened up Rive the first time I'm like, this is snappy. This is opening right up. I can open it in browser and in on desktop. can have two Rives like one on, you know, one monitor one on the other, and you can go onto the Rive community and open up anyone's Rive file and be like, how'd do this? Open it up in the browser. Look at it. Like that's how they did it. And then build it yourself. It's like, it's right there. It's so wonderful. You know, it's.
You can't open up two after-effects files or you can only report, know what I mean? But it's it's amazing to just have that. Cause like that helped me so many times just learn like, wow. That's how they did that. And then just one to one. Yeah. It just really. Yeah.
Mack Garrison (15:10)
Yeah
It's this whole like open source mentality a little bit almost right? It's like you can always have access to how
stuff's doing and the community gets better with every new creation that people are doing. that's super rad. I love that.
Julie Craft (15:26)
Totally. Yeah, that.
then there's another one, Womp3D, which is like a browser based 3D program. And I recommend that to anyone who wants to get into 3D, who's like never touched it. It's super not intimidating. So I think, yeah, it's like the chance of like, yeah, you think it's daunting, but you might actually have some surprise of like how refreshing it can be and kind of take you back to that, you know, Zen mind, beginner's mind. Like the whole beginner's mindset is super refreshing.
Like if you've been doing something one way for a long time and you just can't break through or you can't think of any new ideas, it can really change your perspective.
Mack Garrison (16:04)
that's super cool.
Well, I know you mentioned earlier that like you hadn't had a chance to work on like a feature film or things that Duolingo was really cool because it was a very visible piece, but you have worked with some dope brands like I think Ford, Toyota, Lexus. I mean, you're in Detroit Rock City, so you're doing all sorts of car stuff. How's it been working with like electric vehicle companies like those?
Julie Craft (16:14)
Sure. Yeah.
you know, well, haven't really worked with automotive in a bit now, but I did a lot, did do a lot and starting with like the auto show stuff and everything, lots of big screen, display stuff. yeah, it was interesting. So, know, just like with a big ad agency or something, they know it's a slow process. Feedback can come way later than it should and so forth. So the opposite of a nimble environment, right?
Mack Garrison (16:28)
sure, okay.
Sure.
Julie Craft (16:51)
so there's that there's responding to that and, also like checking your ego and be like, okay, you know, the feedback is coming from people that are far removed. So, you know, can't take anything personally, but so there was, you know, that it was, it's been a good lesson in that, working on actual in vehicle stuff was fun because like, that was the first time I really got to do like UI work. And it felt like with electric vehicles and stuff, they're trying to align new stuff. And it felt like designing kind of like spaceship user interface, you know?
Mack Garrison (17:01)
Right.
Yeah, I bet, that's fun.
Julie Craft (17:20)
Yeah. So that was fun. And like a ton of stuff like was made by me and others that was totally not used, you know, like tons and tons of different directions and everything, way too much, way too much work that wasn't used, but you know, it was a nice exercise and the muscle of like learning like, okay, well, this has to work with people barely paying attention to it because can't be distracting. And so that can like, I had a few years of like really being immersed in that. And that really gave me a good understanding of UX.
from a human interaction perspective. And I kind of take that with me everywhere now with Duolingo and app work and whatever. So yeah, it's cool.
Mack Garrison (17:58)
That's really cool.
You know, so interesting. think for anyone that's been in the space for a while or like we have, know, you've kind of seen it all. You know, I've done plenty of projects that never saw the light of day. They just got crushed, right? Or you get the last minute stakeholder weighing in on feedback and killing a project. I'm curious from your perspective, since you've seen so much, is there something in particular about our industry that you still just absolutely love? You're just like, this is like, I get up and I'm excited to do XYZ or I love these things.
Julie Craft (18:11)
Mm-hmm.
Mack Garrison (18:28)
And then conversely, I wanna know like what's the thorn in your side? What's like the one thing in our industry you're like, I'm so tired of X.
Julie Craft (18:36)
Yeah, you bet. Oh man, there's so many annoying things. So I love talking about annoyance. I'm going to, I'm going to complain about so much stuff on stage. I tell you it's going to be fun. So what do I love? mean, what I love is just like, there's very little ego, you know, like most people I work with, whatever, absolutely already considered friends or would consider friends. You know, there's a lot of people that I work with that don't live locally. And if they did, I'm sure we'd hang out a lot. It just, I don't know. It's just very refreshing.
You know, I feel comfortable, you know, yeah, it's like very little intimidation factor, right? so that's awesome. And, like, yeah, I love that, you know, at dash bash, like a lot of your intros you've done, like you're always like, Hey, make sure you talk to the talk to people here. Like people that inspire you talk to them. Like we, like we, all of us who are on stage or whatever, you know, have any sort of platform. We all want to hear from students, from new people, like we, it's the perspectives like that newer people have is very refreshing to us.
Mack Garrison (19:10)
Love that.
Julie Craft (19:34)
It's not just what we can teach you. what we can learn. So, you know, we might be busy. We don't mean to offend anyone by not responding, whatever, but you know, so yeah, the approachable necessary one is just so awesome. So refreshing. It's still a thing that everyone who's in a different industry is like, my gosh. Like, you know, in the insurance business, people aren't like that or a dentist in dentistry school or whatever, you know, it's, it's just, yeah. Right. Yeah. So it's just, it's magic. It's as, as, as intense as like.
Mack Garrison (19:55)
Yeah, Dennis aren't connecting with Dennis all the time, know, sharing tea stories.
Julie Craft (20:03)
the political climate and everything going on is like, we have our bubble. We have our kind of safe place where a lot of us can connect. So that is just so refreshing and I don't think that'll ever change. Festivus. my gosh. All right. I'll well, you know, okay. So the other day I saw like a job posting for like a producer or something, you know, whatever, and producers, which absolutely make our lives wonderful.
Mack Garrison (20:13)
I love that. Now I need the festivus,
Mm, sure.
Julie Craft (20:30)
but it was like something like, you know, we need this, this, and this. it was like, you know, working knowledge of C4D preferred. I'm like, C4D for a producer. I'm like, what are you talking about? Like, no, like, I don't know. Job postings have been off the rails for a long time. It's always like, yeah, we need, we need a, you know, rock star who lives in breeze, who loves branding, who loves working. my dog's barking. Great. Yeah. Cause I got excited.
Mack Garrison (20:37)
For a producer, yeah.
Superstar
Yeah, he got excited
too. Yeah, it's like unbelievable job post. Someone who knows all this stuff, you know, but like has 10 years of experience, but they need to be a junior role or whatever it is.
Julie Craft (20:57)
Yeah, there my dogs are like, my gosh, don't even tell me. Yeah, like, you know, we come. Yeah. Yeah. Like, yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Our studio is nimble and like, you know, we do things a little different here. And yeah, yeah, yeah. You love to, you know, just work all day, you know, I'm like, my gosh, I'm so over that stuff. It's like, I can smell like, you know, a spin or BS a mile away. And I'm like, okay, just be honest. Like, yes, be like, okay, to do this job, you do need a working knowledge of this software.
Mack Garrison (21:18)
I was sure.
Julie Craft (21:25)
You need experience in this. You need like, you know, one year or you need five years or this role of senior you need like 10 plus years. Like, yes, be honest about that stuff. But like the other stuff, you know, you're asking for something that doesn't exist, you know, like there isn't a person that was just the perfect rock star that's going to be able to do all that stuff and isn't going to have like really deep needs of like direction and guidance and or even like, you know, like the benefits they need or time off they need like like we're
flesh bags of meat. you you just, just think about like, I know it's like, it's like, if you're doing a job post for a person, like you gotta think realistically about it you gotta like start with some respect for that person. You know, it's like the environment right now, Linked In we're like kind of AI will filter resumes and stuff. It's like really crazy. within our industry, which is still pretty small and stuff, I think we can be a little more thoughtful with our job postings, a little more intentional for sure.
Mack Garrison (21:58)
Butts in seats, right?
Julie Craft (22:26)
So yeah, that's what I
Mack Garrison (22:26)
I love that. And I think, you know,
that's a good red flag is if the job description is a litany of all these different facets of multiple roles, that's a red flag for that position. How about from a freelance standpoint, what are some other red flags you look for if a client reaches out? What's something that gives you an indication that this might not be the right project or fit?
Julie Craft (22:48)
Yeah. Well, if someone emails me and then very quickly texts me or calls me, like if they contact me on multiple, platforms and it's been like not even 24 hours since I responded, it's like, no, this, don't like this, like this. And I've like, I've had very few, like bad things, like really nasty moments, you know, with, with people working with them, but there's been a couple like, you know, industry people I've had to like,
Mack Garrison (23:04)
No go. Too much.
Julie Craft (23:17)
you know, break up with quote unquote. cause I'm like, no, it's just you, this person adds stress to the project. And I mean, I'm fortunate that I have enough work that I can like, be like, no, I don't need to work with that person anymore. so I'm not going to, and some of those studios, some of those people, like most of those are, you know, aren't really functioning. You know, those, those studios aren't around or, or yeah, I've had that where like, so there's that. And then there's also like, there's teams I've worked with where I'm like, this, they're not gelling or they're like openly fighting on Slack, you know, like
Mack Garrison (23:45)
Mmm... Yeah.
Julie Craft (23:47)
Few things are like, can sense that this isn't right. know? Yeah. And I'm like, and often like, you know, I remember one time there was that and I'm like, I don't know what is going on with this studio. And then I got like a, you know, a thing in the mail saying they went bankrupt, you know, about billing and stuff. Fortunately I already had made my money, but I was like, okay, well that makes sense to me. Yeah. That team. Yeah. That team was not gelling and they were like, totally not in tune. Like very bad at communicating with me. Like, I don't know what was going on. So.
Mack Garrison (23:50)
some internal turmoil, right?
That's wild. You're like, okay. I saw how that happened.
Well,
that's really good point though too, is like you gotta kind of understand how you as an individual likes to work and seek out people that like to work in that regard. Cause you're right, there's many solutions to a problem. Some people like to work a certain way and others don't, but if you're not gelling or there's friction points on how you like to work together, that's problematic. So yeah, that's definitely a red flag. How about on the opposite side, not to be negative, we can be positive here. We're green flags. Where are some things you're looking for where like, these are good indications that this partnership is gonna go well.
Julie Craft (24:17)
Yeah.
Hmm?
Yeah.
so often the less a person says, so if someone contacts me and they're like saying, God, we've got all these ideas. We've got this whole thing, like this big project, whatever, whatever. Sometimes I'm just like, I don't think this is project that's going to happen. They don't know it, but it's not happening. I can like sense it. And then it's almost where it's like, they have to convince me it's like a real thing. I'm like, nah. Yeah. So when it's just like, Hey, we've got this, this is the booking, you know,
Mack Garrison (25:09)
Like this is really happening, I promise.
Julie Craft (25:15)
Um, you know, want a little bit of information about what it's going to be, but it's like a couple of sentences like, these dates, you know, what's your rate, you know, what are you available? You know, if I, it's just like a little bit of information where I know that like, okay, they don't have time to like say a whole bunch to me, they're probably talking to a lot of people. Like I like that. I'm like, okay, this is the thing that's really happening. Like this is serious. So I can kind of sense what's serious and what's not. And.
That also means that like, they're probably not going to ask like more of me than they should, you know, they're not going to ask for, yeah. Yeah. So there's that, there's, you know, just like not over-communicating, but communicating enough, you know, giving me time to do my stuff. And then also, yeah, a visible coherence to the team where I'm like, they're having fun. you know, they're, you know, they're a cohesive unit. I've definitely worked recently with some teams.
Mack Garrison (25:44)
they're just gonna be happy to get something done that looks good. Right.
Julie Craft (26:07)
Well, I worked with hook for awhile. worked with Shopify for a bit and I'm like, Oh, these teams are like, Jelan. Like I could tell that they were like having a good time, you know, not just goof around, but you have a good time. having same with Duolingo. I've been like, okay, these teams are, they're Jelan. good. They're doing good. You know, and it's yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. And they're not being like unrealistically positive or like, I don't know. They're, they're not like drinking the Kool-Aid in a way that you wouldn't like.
Mack Garrison (26:22)
Culture makes a difference. You wanna feel like you're a part of a support network, not that it's a bunch of different silos trying to work together, 100%.
Julie Craft (26:36)
You know, it's just like they're being realistic. They're like, I tried to do this. didn't work. And this workflow sucks. Or this thing about our company, like we need to change it. Cause I'm like, I had to do way too much last week and whatever. I'm like, that's why I want like, yeah, honesty. Like we're real people. Let's do it. Yeah.
Mack Garrison (26:51)
I love that. It's
just being authentic on everything. Be authentic on your job post. Be authentic on how you're working with people. Support one another. mean, it's like, it's not a novelty here. I mean, it's just like fundamentals of being a good human, right? Which our industry has done a good job of for a while. And I think that's one of the things that I do really like about it. I'm always inspired by folks. In fact, you mentioned Hook. I actually caught up with him the other day because I thought their work looked really good. I'd never met him before. So I reached out and just wanted to make the connection.
Julie Craft (26:54)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm. All right.
Mostly, yeah.
Mack Garrison (27:18)
From your perspective, I'm so curious. There's so many people who are coming to the bash that look up to you, the work that you do. Who's Julie Craft look up to? Who are some artists out there that you're like, I just love their work?
Julie Craft (27:27)
Who do I look up to? Yeah.
So like I said, I grew up, you know, with the golden age of MoGraph. So, you know, I started really getting into things when MK12 did those Stranger Than Fiction, you know, graphics. Awesome. That movie Oblivion that G-Monk did design stuff for, you know, and then there was like the Ash Thorpe, like FITC Tokyo graphic thing.
Mack Garrison (27:41)
yeah.
yeah, G-Monk, phenomenal.
yeah.
Julie Craft (27:55)
And these are all like things that are more on the like graphic design-y side rather than the illustrative style side. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. So that stuff, you know, some of goes in there, but, you know, can't deny a good work. Not, not just by, yeah, by a lot of people. And then there's a couple of that you probably don't know about. There's a studio called Zeitgeist. Um, they always did a lot of very interesting, um, like experimental 3d work. Um, also the studio one size and another lens.
Mack Garrison (28:00)
I was even gonna say experimental and technical side too as well, you know.
Mmm.
Ooh.
I'm familiar with one size. Yeah, yeah. I haven't heard of Zeitgeist though. That's based in Germany.
Julie Craft (28:25)
Yeah, yeah, you one size. Okay. So yeah, yeah, there's a ton of stuff that was no. Yeah. Zyka is yeah.
think so. Yeah. So those were, those are some of that, like throughout the years I paid attention to you. more recently though, now I would say like, like who I'm really inspired by Joyce Ho. I think spoke at the dash before. Yeah. She, she is, you know, very interesting. She's done some cool e-sports work recently, but, she does some good like experimental film and everything that I admire. And I'm like, yeah, I love that.
Mack Garrison (28:44)
Yes.
Julie Craft (28:54)
She like has this unique voice and she does these films that are more like not necessarily character driven, like more like design driven or experimental driven, which I love that stuff. But by far like so that's lot of my inspiration right now. But honestly, what I'm most inspired right now is Marvel Rivals, the game. Yeah, I'm playing it on I'm on PS5 and play on PC, whatever. But like the design in that game is phenomenal. It's like like there's so many
Mack Garrison (29:13)
yeah, nice.
Julie Craft (29:24)
motion moments. just like a feast for the eyes and ears. It's like as soon as you open the game, like the opening cinematic and it's all like kind of illustration that's flat, but then you know, combined with a little bit of 3D, but it all has like an illustrated look. yeah, I would even if you don't play games, I would try to like watch a highlight reel from it or at least like open up the game and just scroll through it. It's free. Wait, it's free to play so you can install it.
Mack Garrison (29:28)
I love that.
Julie Craft (29:49)
And can go through it. Even like you go to the hero section, you go through all the character portraits and like you go to a portrait and there's like a little motion, you know, like a little thing. And it's just like really well done. And yeah, games have done that for years. You know, I just play Overwatch and now kind of Rivals has overtaken Overwatch. And there's been a lot, you know, they did a lot of good work, but they kind of lost the drop the ball. And now Rivals is just like so crisp, so good. I don't know. It just like chef's kiss. It's like everything I want. Yeah. So it's
Mack Garrison (29:57)
fine.
I love it. I'm not even the
biggest gamer and I want to get in to see this game just based on the aesthetics and the eye candy you're describing.
Julie Craft (30:20)
Yeah, it's so
inspiring. can't, and like every state, you know, it's a team shooter. So you get into a stage and then whatever map you're on, you know, there's just a little intro for the map. They have like some story, but like, who cares about story? It just looks cool. Right. But yeah, there's a little intro and it's like, my God. It's amazing. Seamless combination of 2d illustration with parallaxing, a little bit of puppeting and 3d. I'm like, this is just so good. And somehow it loads instantly. It's just like the best like combination of like
current like technical advances in like game systems, being able to load all this stuff quick and just like, you know, short, short form content. It's like short form content at its best, like the way we, the way we want it to be. So there's tons of little quick digestible moments. You even move between buttons on the UI and like I put my headphones on the other day because I was talking with people playing as a team and I heard sound design that I didn't hear on the speakers before. was like, Whoa, those, clicks on the little buttons. I'm like, those are really
Mack Garrison (31:02)
I love that.
Julie Craft (31:20)
Good. my God. So I'm just like, this is so deeply, it's a company called net ease games. I've never heard of. So I, got to look into the team on it, but it's yeah. Marvel rivals is my, is everything now right now to me. So good. Yeah.
Mack Garrison (31:21)
I love that.
I love it. Even talking about the little elements of sound design, I'm sitting here looking
behind you. You've got a bass behind you. You've got keyboards over your left shoulder. I know before we start hopping on this call, we were talking a little bit about DJing. Speak a little bit to me towards your love of music. Has it kind of just become this side hobby and passion of yours?
Julie Craft (31:47)
Yeah.
Yeah, so I've been probably dabbling in like the synthesizer electronic music realm for like seven-ish years, I think. would say before that when I was younger, I took some piano lessons, played around with the Chinese violin, the Erhu. It's like a two-stringed violin. A little bit music stuff, but yeah, I've been dabbling in like musical hardware for a bit here. And I would say just the past couple of years, it really has come together into like a real thing.
Mack Garrison (32:18)
Nice.
Julie Craft (32:18)
Like
where I'm like, I feel like I've got like a sound I like, and I'm just enjoying making music. And then I just did Jamuary, which is like Inktober for music. I did 31, 31 days. I've yeah, I've got like a YouTube playlist and you'll see it on my Instagram reels, but yeah, I, I did, I recorded posted, you know, video, me making music every day for 31 days. So it's the most content I've ever created. I hate content creation. It's, you know, it's
Mack Garrison (32:27)
cool, that's right. January. my God, I love that. That's great.
You're becoming an influencer.
Julie Craft (32:48)
Yeah, I'll never do this again. was like both wonderful and extremely hard, extremely. Some days I was like, Oh, I do not want to do this, but it got me through like there's friction when it comes to making music with hardware, especially because like, Oh, I got to turn it on. Like, Oh, is it all connected? Right? You know, whatever. But this got me through this experiment, this short-term sprint of content creation, which, know, I definitely recommend short-term like, okay, I can handle this period of time of working really hard. Right. But there's an end in sight.
Mack Garrison (33:16)
Yeah.
Julie Craft (33:17)
This short term got me through a ton of friction of like making sure my setup was dialed in, make sure I could turn on, turn on the cameras, camera like right there, like just all ready to go, turn on record and like, you know, concept to completion, like one to two hours max. It got me through a ton. So now like, I think I've, I've been able to get through like the electronic music, like production hurdles that were kind of blocking me from creativity. And now I feel like I can jump in and make stuff. And yeah, now I'm feeling good all about like.
Mack Garrison (33:34)
Wow.
Julie Craft (33:46)
I performed a couple of times past few years. getting close to having an album ready and I'm feeling like, like, yeah, I like this and performing like in public in front of people, you know, literally like going and like playing like nine, 10 PM at night. Like, you know, I'm too old for this stuff and I'm just getting started. I didn't think this would be such a thing, but I love it. And it's such a like amazing creative flush and just like, wow, people are there physically like feet away from me enjoying what I'm creating.
Like, yeah, it's hard, it's difficult, but my gosh, it's so rewarding. More rewarding than anything, anything posting online or whatever. So yeah, that's where I'm at. Yeah.
Mack Garrison (34:19)
Ugh, I love that.
Well, and also the accountability to do that every
day, you know, it probably reduced, it took friction initially, but then it probably got to a point where you were more comfortable in just creating and just naturally getting into that flow state a little bit faster. Cause I know that's always hard with personal projects of any creative minded project is just getting into it, right? Cause there's the little friction points of it. Very cool, very cool.
Julie Craft (34:32)
Yeah.
Super hard.
Outtake.
Mack Garrison (34:46)
Well, we've been chatting here with Julie Craft, who's a technical minded animator, broadly skilled 2D and 3D motion generalist, and Julie is speaking at the Dash Bash this summer. So if you don't have your ticket, what are you doing? Grab a ticket. We have an optional third day of workshops on June 11th, and then a speaker series on the 12th and 13th. It's gonna be tons of opportunity for hangouts. You get to meet Julie, you get to hang out with all the other speakers and the fantastic industry that we call motion design.
Cannot wait to see you all there. Julie, thanks for hanging with us today. It was a good little tease. Excited to get to more of the nitty gritty stuff in your presentation, but really enjoyed talking today. Yeah, thanks everyone. Have a good
Julie Craft (35:22)
You bet, thanks.
Meet the speakers: John Roesch
An interview with John Roesch: Lead Foley Artist at Skywalker Ranch and co-founder of Audible Bandwidth Productions.
Q&A hosted by Meryn Hayes & Cory Livengood.
Read time: 15min
Meryn:
Meryn Hayes: For those who don't know you, could introduce yourself.
John:
Sure. My name is John Roesch and I'm a professional Foley artist that has been working in the film business for almost 44 years now. Playing in a big sandbox, making sounds that if I do my job right, you don't know I've done.
Meryn:
Foley is one of those jobs that people don't tend to appreciate until they hear a movie without it. We're really glad that you're joining us to talk about such an important part of the entertainment industry not many people know about.
Where the Sounds From the World's Favorite Movies Are Born - WIRED
John:
Well, I'm glad I am too because like you say, Thor is running towards saving the day, so to speak, and we're close up on his feet and he's running really fast. And wait a minute, if there's no sound there, I'd be like, "Is this guy really a hero?" Or same thing for a gal. So our contribution, and of course we're a small spoke on a big wheel, can lend credence to giving a sense of reality because of course, as we know, all filmmaking is just that, it's smoke and mirrors. But we want to make sure that you, the audience, feel that you're completely immersed in it and it's "real" to you.
Cory:
I'm curious about how you found yourself in this part of the filmmaking process. I know you dabbled in acting and directing at a younger age, how did those skills translate to Foley if they do at all? And how did you end up in your big sandbox, as you say.
John:
I was an actor in high school and I went to NYU film school and then I went to the American Film Institute thinking I'll be a director. And just so happened that a gal that did my script supervision for the one AFI film I did, she said, "Hey John, I need help doing sound."
And next thing I know they look around and say, "Well, this guy's got sneakers. Are you a runner?" I said, "Yeah." A guy goes, "Well, this film has running in it. Come to the Foley stage." What is that? The Foley stage? "Come to the Foley stage." Okay. So I show up and they say, "See that guy on the screen there?" Yeah. "Okay, run for him." All right, so I ran across the room. They said, "No, no, no, you have to run in front of the microphone. Like, "Oh, I see." They're going to record the sound. I went home that night and I thought, "That is the stupidest job ever."
And next thing I know, I get a call from her husband, Emile and he said, "Hey, I really like what you did. Can you come in tomorrow to this other stage, do Foley?" I thought, "Okay, I guess." So I'm leaving my place in Venice, California and I had a convertible, I was backing up and, oh, there's the landlady. "Hey Joaney, how you doing?" She says, "Hey Johnny, where are you going?" I said, "I'm going to the Foley stage." She's not going to know what that is.
Cory:
Yeah, of course!
John:
She says, "Hey, that's what I do. They just fired somebody there. Maybe they'll hire you."
Cory:
Your landlady?
John:
I thought, "Man, has this got kooky or what?" I'm not so sure. So I said, "Yeah, okay, sure. Thanks, Joan." So I drive off and do that. I get home and on my answering machine, the low budget film I was going to AD got pushed back out to three months and rent was going to be coming due. I thought, "Well, maybe I'll just call Joan and just see what happens." And that was 44 years ago.
Cory:
That's incredible.
John:
To answer the second part of your question, it indeed is important to have a bit of the thespian in you because the hardest thing to do are actually footsteps, to give them life. And to do that, you have to kind of act, if you will, that part of whoever's on camera. Are they a little drunk? Are they the hero or heroine or are they the bad guy or the villain? You're trying to embody something that's not there. You're trying to give soul to something that's not there. And that really comes from acting. So yeah, there you go.
Cory:
Yeah, that's interesting. Anytime I've seen video, probably of you before we met, of course, on television of Foley being created, it always felt very performative to me, like an actor in a way. And almost no matter what sound is being created, it's always very interesting.
John:
Yeah, it is by definition. In fact, it's called Foley named after Jack Foley, that is, in deference to him. But it was not called that. It was called the sync effects or the sync sound effects or the sync stage, or actually the A stage was a stage where they did a lot of what we now call Foley. But the true definition of Foley is custom sound effects. That's a differential between a jet plane's engines going by and then somebody grabbing the throttles with their hands and pushing them forward to make sure they clear the obstacle in the distance. Grabbing the throttles is unique to that moment in that film on a per-film basis, whereas the engine spool up, that might come from a library, it could be used in many films. But Foley has uniqueness all unto itself, hence the, as you just said, the performance aspect to it.
Cory:
Do you recall seeing or hearing a film that really inspired you from an auditory perspective when you were sort of starting your career?
John:
Oh, I say 2001 would have to be one of those. Just the way it's portrayed. Space and all that sound kind of in the background and then bursting into the back into the craft. And there's no sound there. I mean, it really kind of leapt forward for me, and I'll tell you all this now, I didn't really pay that much attention to sound until I got into Foley. I was more interested in like, "Okay, how do you block this scene?"
But of course, as time goes along, in fact the measure for me, if I'm watching a film and I start picking apart the Foley, that means I don't like the film.
Meryn:
Is there a particular project looking at the portfolio of work that you've done in your 45 years that you hold as one of your favorite projects or a few different favorite projects, and what would be on that list?
John:
I'd say there are three or four if I could go into that many. One of the hardest ones was a picture called The Abyss and that dealt with a lot of underwater water. And that's extremely difficult because that's an all-encompassing sucking of the frequencies, if you will. So we had to really experiment with that to come up with what's going to work. And of course, James Cameron, you do not want to disappoint him. And I've got a story which I'll probably hold back, maybe I'll share it during the meet and greet. We'll see.
Cory:
Now I'm curious.
The Abyss (1989)
John:
Good. I’ll whet your appetite. Another one, and I'll kind of put those two together would be Back to the Future, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit,. We’d been in a bit of an arc where Foley was really not used that much. And during those years, I call them the Camelot years of Foley, we were given license to do everything.
So when the plutonium is being sucked into the plutonium motor, if you will, on the back of the DeLorean, that was us using glass and certain effects in even a blooping sound. If you take a cardboard tube and you kind of hit it on one end, it can make a [bloop sound]. Things like that, which typically you wouldn't do in a film.
And Who Framed Roger Rabbit, there again too. You had not only humans walking, but you had toons. So we had to do a whole section from them, not only their footsteps, but their props. And that was really just a whole heck of a lot of fun.
One that I think is very important, would be Schindler's List because that's a period of history which we should never forget, I think.
And of course these days talking about animation, Soul is a particular project which I'm absolutely thrilled with. It really embodied a lot of things that are difficult to do for animation, and they were just so beautifully done. And I'm not talking about our aspect per se, although we had a chance, again, we had the time to do it.
And of course, you could take a Marvel film, something big, over the top. Think Guardians of the Galaxy type thing. So those are fun.
And last but not least, there would be what I'll call the student film. And I did a film many years ago called In The Bedroom and Todd Field was the director. And that was something we really did kind of bootstrap that not having much money, if any. And we did that kind of in the off hours because I believe that I... I saw it and I knew this is an incredibly good piece. By the way, if you haven't seen it, I would recommend it. This guy's going on to direct Tár and he's up for six Academy Awards.
Cory:
When you first get a project, walk us through what that process is from the very beginning when you're just starting up until you get to “we're in the studio now, we're making the sounds”.
John:
Okay. Well, we like to beforehand get a look at the film if possible. If we can't look at the film, we would at least like to get notes from the director. And there's something called a supervising Foley editor, he, she, or they, that are given guidance by the supervising sound editor, sound designer. Like, "Okay, in reel one, we want to cover these feet. We want to have you do the pickup of the special sword, yada, yada, yada."
So they will impart that information to us and also talk about the design of it, so to speak. Let's say in animation, if it's a cat running around, if it's a main character, even if there's not a little license or bell or something on it, we might try to cheat something there to give it life. But is that contrary to what the director wants? And then when the day comes we start, we'll look at the reel again and we'll have what are called queue sheets. Which will detail out Heidi on channel one, Dave on channel two, Christo the Cat on three. It'll detail out what we need to do. Footsteps first, then prompts, and then movement, if any.
When I say movement, it could be a leather jacket, which is... Let's see, a Guardian's [of the Galaxy], they wear those type of things, so that would be a separate prop. Whereas if we're just covering general movement, let's say for an animated feature, we might just do a one pass cover.. And that's how we proceed during the day.
And it could be that the director said, "I'm not really sure how I want Sally's footsteps to sound there and overall the feeling of her character." So we might try variations, we might try tests. So we'll do test A, B, C, D and just send them off. We won't say what we used. Test A's a tennis shoe, test B is gloves. We'll just send them off and then the director or whoever will get back to us and give us their feedback and we'll go from there. And that'll be established throughout the film.
Cory:
And how closely are you working with the director? Or is there any case where you're working with the music composer or is that a pretty separate situation?
John:
Typically, music and Foley, the twain don't meet. The only time they do in a sense would be, let's say with David Fincher, because he's very involved in all aspects. So he'll make sure that Trent Reznor or whoever is doing the sound is involved with Ren Klyce, who's typically who he uses. And then they will filter down to us what they need.
So typically we'll start a film, let's say... I don't know any of the recent films. Strange World. And maybe a week into it, they'll fly up to Skywalker [Sound] and sit down with us and play some stuff back. They'll play back some of the Foley and review it and if there's any changes, let us know. Now, mind you, again, if there's something we think we're really not sure about, we'll send a test down first to make sure we're on the right track, because time is of the essence.
Disney’s Strange World
Meryn:
And what about in terms of how long a project might take? I mean, I know it's a process, but say for Strange World, for example, I mean are we talking weeks or is it a one week and you're done or is it months?
John:
No, it's typically two days, maybe three days a reel. Now, Strange World, if I recall correctly, I think that was 18 days, all told. Whereas the last picture we just did, unfortunately, I can't name it. It's volume three, I can say that. I think that was 20 days altogether. And Pixar films tend to be even longer, like 25 days, which is really necessary because again, in animation you can get away with things that you really can't do in live action to some degree, which is wonderful.
Meryn:
I love that you said 18 days was long because in my head I was like, "That feels very short." So I think that's just a good reference point.
John:
Well, I don't know that I'd say it's long, but I'd say that probably is enough. I mean, given our druthers for animation, any project that comes in, we'd like 25 days because then we know it's going to get covered. And we also work of course on commercials, on video games, and a little bit of television that is streaming. Worked on Andor. That was three or four days per episode, if I recall correctly, which was necessary. Again, because I have a lot going on there. But if you're a Star Wars fan, I highly recommend that.
Meryn:
Yes, we are big fans.
Cory:
Maybe one of the best Star Wars shows that's been put out there yet. In my opinion, anyway.
John:
I would agree and I think season two's going to be even better.
Cory:
That's great. Looking forward to it. I'm sure you won't give us any spoilers, but...
John:
My lips are sealed.
Andor
Cory:
Well, speaking of Star Wars, I mean, I'm definitely curious about your process when you're coming up with the sound for something that's totally fictional. A laser gun or a spaceship or something that doesn't exist.
John:
When I see something on the screen, I hear its sound, so then I try to translate in my mind, well how do I create that sound? So like you say, if I'm picking up a weapon that's specialized or loading it, what would that sound like? And is it a used world like Star Wars or is it a clean world like Star Trek?
I'm going to want to embody the world itself and stay within those contexts, within those confines, I should say. And of course, the great thing with Foley, there's no rules. The only rule is there are no rules. So you can try something. If it doesn't work, do something else. That's the beauty of it. And so that would be in essence the process.
Meryn:
Is this a professional hazard where you're just going about your day, you're in your kitchen and you put a cup down and then you hear something and you're just like, "Yeah, I need to write that down 'cause that sounds like..." Your friends and family just like, "Oh, John's always stopping what he's doing and he's writing down that piece of paper that fell, sounds like a bird's wings or..."
John:
Every once in a while, something will happen where something will be delivered or who knows what, and it gets pushed a certain way and moved a certain way and I go, "Wow, I'm going to have to remember that and take it into the stage." And conversely, when we're working on a film, if we establish an unusual prop, I'll take either a text note or a picture of it or even do a video. In fact, Shelley might stand over me and I'll explain what I'm doing, how I'm doing it so I can recreate it throughout the picture and vice versa for her.
Meryn:
Yeah. That's amazing. Is there something that's a really strange sound that you can recall...
John:
Well, I'll tell you the Abyss story then 'cause I think it was probably the most difficult sound, one of the most difficult sounds I've ever done. In the picture, Ed Harris is sitting down in a suit that's now going to have a helmet latched on, and it will fill up with liquid, literally starting at his chin, up over his face, over his head. And he'll then breathe that in.
And the reason for that is that it's going to allow him to go to deeper depths than one could without being crushed. Anyway, that's the theory behind it. So there I am, looking at this going, "Okay, now if I hold a helmet upside down and I take water and pour it in the top, it's not going to sound right. It's not going to sound like a muffled helmet, it's going to sound like [clear]. So how do I do that?
I thought and thought and thought. The night before our last day of Foley, I had a dream. And I dreamed how to do it.
And the way to do it was micing in a certain way, where I was stealing the ambience of a helmet and yet having a way to pour into something also that would approximate a helmet so I could literally get the proper going from low to high up over his head. And then on a separate channel, I took a straw and did a couple bubbles to come out of his nose. Strange job, I know.
Cory:
Are there any big differences in your mind when you're working on a film versus television versus a video game?
John:
Well, yes, certainly a video game has a routine all of its own. And that could be, are we doing the cinematics or are we doing the in-game assets? So if it's the cinematics, we approach it just like a feature film. If it's in-game assets, we might do Batman's cape or 2 or 300 variations of it, one after another. Or footsteps just landing on a surface, on metal. We might do 50 or 100 of those because again, during game play, randomly it'll be pulled from the bucket as to what particular sound that one step is.
So that's very intensive for a Foley artist team to do. Versus if you work on a feature, it's kind of tag team, if you will. And now mind you, television is a bit of a different beast, because not so much when I mentioned about streaming, at least at Skywalker, but television itself doesn't typically have a budget that's as friendly as one would hope.
Meryn:
You started talking about the team just there. I mean, on average, how many people are kind of working together on this? Because it sounds like... I mean, you mentioned earlier it's a team effort.
John:
Totally. The day starts as a team and it ends as a team because even if I'm doing footsteps, Shelley is either helping run the sheets with Scott or Scott's what we call driving. He's telling me where we're going to go,. But she might be making notes for shoes for herself or certainly for doing props. While she's out doing props, I'm in another area looking at a monitor, looking at the actual reel, making notes for myself going, "Okay, so this cut... Actually we're cheating the hand grab of Thor on Loki." we’ll not actually see it, it's just literally on the cut. So I'm going to approach it a little differently than I would if I see it. Or the communicator that's being picked up and is being flipped out that has to have a certain sound to it because I'm seeing some detail here.
Mind you, while she's out there working, then we switch. So she'll do the same thing. She'll be in the monitor checking her notes while I'm actually performing. So that's exactly what happens. Does that happen at all for all of Foleydom? It's hard to say. You have a younger generation that I don't know that knows the joys of having a team.
So point being, I think it's a lot harder in a sense for younger Foley people, especially if they're just working by themselves.
Meryn:
That leads very nicely into the next question that was going to be about advice for younger Foley artists. And maybe the advice is to find people, find your team. Is there any other advice or things you can think about for people who might be early on in their career or wanting to get into this field and they don't know how?
John:
Certainly if one wants to be a Foley artist, I think number one, they need a good background in acting. Take some acting classes. If you can, direct some one-act plays and read a lot. Read Shakespeare, read just a lot of good books and watch films. AFI top 100. Pick them apart. Why do you like this? Why do you not like this? Take a television show, like Friends, and then just put down something to walk on. Because typically Friends is people walking in from off stage and stopping or leaving or maybe walking upstairs, so you can practice getting sync, not worried about the sound that has to really come on a Foley stage.
And of course Mom and Dad out there won't necessarily like this as much. A half hour a day of a first-person shooter video game is okay because you're literally training your eyes not having to look down at your hands, which is extremely important for doing Foley, performing. And, you'd want to have aerobics in your life along with stretching. Aerobics-wise... Swimming, you can't beat that. All those things are really mission critical to be an excellent Foley artist.
Hopefully then you can get on with someone who can mentor you and learn from them. And then also try out your own thing because nobody has the actual answer. It's in a sense experimentation and you'll find your path that way and having a belief in yourself and also being open.
I didn't go out and start out to be a Foley artist, but look where I am. And I don't say this to dissuade anybody from being a Foley artist, I'm just saying just be open. Hopefully you'll have a love of it because I think it's no longer a job, it's a career. And then surround yourself with people that'll hold you up. Because you don't want to be with people that are jealous, either overtly or covertly. That'll do you no good.
And those are people you really don't need in your life because there are people that are going to want the best for you because they realize, "Hey, if we work together and you're doing great, I am too." And why not? Especially these days in this world. Good grief. Hey, I'm going to be 69 by the time I see you all. I've learned the four words, "Be happy, love fiercely." That's it.
Cory:
That's great advice. it's just really interesting and something I hadn't thought of until we met and started talking about this stuff, how the hand-eye coordination, the aerobics, the performance of it and all of that is just a very different viewpoint when it comes to post-production and even audio, to a degree, which is really, really fascinating. It's just so much exercise, which is great.
John:
It's helped a lot, I'll tell you.
Meryn:
I have a burning question from my five-year-old who we watched Strange World for the fifth time last night. What sound does Splat come from? The character?
John:
Splat comes from many different parts. Now, we did some of the footsteps... Let's see, I guess you could say Splat, Foley-wise would come from a bit of a wet shammy, but that's a very small part of what Splat was.
Meryn:
The noises that come from Splat might be my favorite in that film because it's adorable. So everyone should go watch it. We can’t thank you enough for talking to us John!
John:
Well, I wish everybody a wonderful day.
John:
Yeah, absolutely. This was a great way to have a Thursday. Can’t wait to see you in July!