Still confused on what "Foley" is? Check out http://www.marblehead.net/foley/

The foley sets On the left we can see the concrete floor set - one slab of stone. On the right you can see the elevator floor set, and yes, that is a computer. Too bad we didn't have the resources to get a real place to record the audios, but we had to improvice with all the stuff. The place where we recorded the sounds is just 2 meters away from loudly humming equipment so we had to try and isolate that area of the room from the buzzing computers using various items. I would have much rather been in a real studio. Heh. We did the foleys in 3 different phases: First special FX's were made using sounds ripped from various CD's and some were recorded earlier. Elevator doors, car's engine, falling objects, gun shots. No sounds were recorded live, but some very weird sounds were created using electric tooth brush and various other items for excample. Next step was foot steps. Following floors are seen in movie (and the item used to create the corresponding sound): Concrete (stone slab), gravel (gravel), forest (video tape), wooden floor (cork floor(?)). Shoes we used varied from rubber boots to dancing shoes. Finally rest of the sounds were recorded. Squeeking sounds from leather jacket, breathing and what ever was still needed.

Mixing table with Niko working the controls. Setting up this 'studio', or what ever you want to call it proved to surprisingly easy and to everyone amazement, things worked seamlesly and no glitches of any sort were encountered. On the table, you can see 2 ancient speakers, amplifier, mixer table, VCR and bunch of other equipment.

More to come...

Project "the big ride" was conceived back in the summer of 1998 on a small rocky hill. Filming started the same fall, in a cold rainy weather. After 2 days of "studio shots" and 3 days of freezing in the forest, the project was cancelled mainly because of a sudden snow and partially because the car we used didn't work too well, there was a pine tree in a wrong place, the rain, mic didn't work all the time, the cold and the dark and the damp, insufficient lighting, the camera broke down, a buzzing sound in the camera, wind & smoke, 16:9 was possible after all, gun jammed, a roadblock and a destroyed lawn. All this happened in Novemeber.

In the summer of 1999 the decicion was made to scrap everything we had filmed.

Fall of 1999 - the big ride v.2.0 - This time we had a complete storyboard, filming schedule, equipment and better timing. Our 4 men, or in some occasions, 5 men crew made 16 hour days for 7 days and needless to say, it wasn't always a picnic, but in the end, we were victorious.
In the following 2 months, there were a few 'studio' scenes and quite a few other locations shot. It was snowing in some the scenes, but luckily no one will ever going to notice that.

Time passed, and the movie was cut into a viewably whole. No sounds nor special FX, so it wasn't too great, but it did show that the ending was really bad, so it had to be reshot. Back we went to shoot the last scene again, but due to all sort of things, that night was about a complete and utter failure. We did manage to get something done. Filming was done, now it was time for the special FX.

..and those FX's, they were a pain. Time passed, they were tweaked, time passed and they were tweaked a little more. Finally, when they were tweaked a lot, they were changed a little more.

I don't even remember what happened when, but one thing is sure - we wasted months on various things - mostly on effects as no one knew how they should look.

...but when finally the effects were OK, after some 2 years, 'Bob' vanishes for 3-4 months. Then he comes back, recuts the movie now with effects. Everything is looking good when he starts asking for more effects and when there are no effects to be had since the person who creates the effects is annoyed. 'Bob' uses that as an excuse to resign from TBR completely.

With 'Bob' gone, we lose access to advanced editing facilities and we are thrown back few more months. Editing had to be redone, but this time it all happened on a PC using Adobe Premiere. Despite our struggles with inadequate resources, TBR was once again moving along nicely.

Music and foleys were created next while some of the effects were tweaked.

I don't pretend to remember how everything went, but after all the fights and frustrations, The Big Ride was ready an shown in a theater 15.10.2002.

Work was over, we thought.

We were wrong - the work never ends.