Behind the Sound

By Kelley Freund, November 1, 2018

An Ithaca alumna makes noise to bring movies to life.

An alumna makes sound effects using a pine cone.

Shelley Roden '96 uses everyday objects to make sound effects for blockbuster movies.

(Photo submitted)

Behind Shelley Roden’s work desk is a grade-school report card with the following note from her teacher: “Shelley moves from quiet and pensive to making strange noises while walking in the hall.”

Roden ’96 says her teacher’s observations were spot on. As a child growing up in Victor, New York, Roden set up obstacle courses in her backyard and made random noises that were interruptive both in the classroom and in Girl Scout meetings. But it turns out, she just needed an outlet. Today, Roden is a Foley artist, spending her time running, splashing and banging at the Skywalker Archives Foley stage in Northern California, all in the name of creating a rich soundtrack to enhance movies, TV shows and video games. Roden’s resume includes the feature films “Moana,” “Black Panther” and “Dunkirk,” which won the 2017 Academy Award for Best Sound Editing, and the Netflix show “Mindhunter.”

Roden and her colleagues discuss how they make movie magic behind the scenes in this video.

It’s a career that was sparked by a summer course at Ithaca College. When Roden first visited the campus and stood on top of Textor Hall with its view of Cayuga Lake, she knew she had arrived in the right place. She could take liberal arts courses while still focusing on her art and join extracurricular activities like the snowboard club, crew and student government. Roden majored in cinema and photography and worked as a cinematographer for her feature film classes, but when a professor placed her in the sound department one summer, things changed.

“I loved living in the world of sound where I could put on my earphones and just observe and listen,” Roden says.

Alumna making sound with table saw blade.

Roden figures out how to manipulate different tools, like this saw blade, to get the sound she's looking for. (Photo submitted)

She picked up an audio minor, and through Ithaca’s Los Angeles Program, secured an internship at a post-production sound house, where she began performing Foley for student film projects after hours. A sound supervisor encouraged her to pursue Foley as a career, and Roden went on to work freelance jobs before joining Skywalker Sound in 2015.

Foley teams are necessary in post-production because a microphone on the set of a movie or TV show is meant to capture dialogue — whatever the actors are doing with their hands or body doesn’t get picked up. Adding the sound of footsteps (using the Foley artists’ footfalls), the clashing of swords (with props) or the swish of a character’s jacket (made by moving cloth) helps the audience feel like they’re in the scene.

“Let me compare it to cooking,” says Roden. “Imagine the production sound as a tomato sauce base. Foley does not add more tomatoes, but augments and enhances using spices. The end result becomes a complex, savory experience.”

With each project, Roden and her colleagues figure out how to layer sounds into a spectrum that’s also taken up by dialogue, music and hard effects. Working the Foley into that sonic real estate can be a challenge, as can selecting the right prop or shoe and manipulating it to create a unique sound. According to Roden, this is a team effort.

“Collaboration can result in greatness,” Roden says. “Together with my Foley partner John Roesch and Foley mixer Scott Curtis, we toss around ideas and experiment until we achieve something better than anything we could have come up with on our own.”

Alumna in front of the Roy H. Park School of Communications at Ithaca College

Roden will return to Ithaca College on April 6, 2019 for the school’s Music and Sound for Picture Conference.

(Photo submitted)

There are some props Roden uses over and over — like a stretchy-sounding latex Tin Man mask that has been everything from Elastigirl stretching (“The Incredibles 2”) to a fish trying to get out from between two rocks (“Finding Dory”). But sometimes Roden and her team build their own props or go shopping for new ones. For “The Avengers” — where every character has a metal weapon, wears armor and walks across the floor of a spaceship — Roden and her team took to shopping at salvage yards to find objects that would distinguish the metal sounds from one another. For Roden, these challenges teach her new things from one movie to the next.

“It’s a process of discovery and experimentation, and I love that,” says Roden. “Every second I get to do this, I feel so lucky. I get to move around, to be expressive and inventive, and to have fun with my team. Every day presents a different challenge.”