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We talked to several Foley artists about how they create the sounds behindsex scenes.
The explanations are at once more pedestrian and more interesting than you might imagine.
Theyll run fingers through hair (theirs or someone elses) or against facial scruff (ditto).
Centuries of teenagers practicing their make-out skills have it right: lips, meet back of hand.
They love each other.
So how do you communicate that with Foley?
You cant get the sense of that from a library effect.
You have to have someone like me sit there and perform it.
Fang performs her work in sync with the scene, watching it on a screen while being recorded.
There needs to be a firmness in the hand, but you still need to actually create a sound.
By way of demonstration, she slaps her arm, then drags a hand across her forearm.
I think people forget that sex isnt purely pleasure and reproduction, she adds.
In film, sex is used in dramatic ways.
Kissing and TellingBloomes key for kissing: Dont make it sound like your characters are chewing gum.
Because in reality, a kiss doesnt sound like much of anything.
Kissing sound are funny, because theyre surprisingly gendered, she adds.
Men kiss differently than women.
They never play it.
Because its not a sexy sound.
In re-creating the sounds of cunnilingus, Fang notes, shell use kissing sounds instead of disgusting licks.
Because you want a mouthy sound, but you still want it to have this gentleness and this sweetness.
And if youre just licking your hand, its like a pudding pop.
Thats not sexy or tasteful.
Its just going to sound like youre licking your hand.
Like, for example, the sound of flesh rubbing on flesh.
Moore cites a sex-adjacent scene fromCalifornicationwherein a character sticks his hand inside a Fleshlight.
You dont want to take the audience out of their watching experience.
It needs to soundpretty,she says.
It cant just sound like a bunch of hardware.
Heres how Moore recreated the sound of those Ben Wa balls being inserted into Ana Steele: moistened chamois.
Yes, the soft sheepskin you use to dry your car.
It has aheftto it, almost, Moore explains.
And itisskin, when you buy real chamois.
Its not that far from what youre really using.
In fact, in speaking to each of the Foley artists, the chamois emerges as the not-so-secret star.
(The sounds, she notes, are remarkably similar when you get right down to it.)
The homoerotic mud-wrestling scene in the hazing dramaGoat:chamois.
Moore puts is succinctly: Its chamois!
Its very unglamorous and unsexy.
On the more disturbing side, theresGone Girl.
The bottle scene utilized various layered sounds mainly, Moore manipulating a bottle in her hands.
Again, it goes back to using sound to tell a story and create a mood.
I dont know what that sounds like.
Because its still this weird sex scene, you know what I mean?
But really, the bottle scene, you do have to make that cringeworthy.
In real life, sex is mostly sweaty, big movement physicality, says Fang.
Its not even a sound.
If we can communicate that, then we win.
