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Generally when I'm cutting Foley, if someone walks off screen or out of a room I'll cut at least a handful of footsteps to follow them out - their sudden absence would certainly be missed.

I'm feeling a little more iffy when it comes to cloth Foley though. Cloth is far less a discrete sound than footsteps and in my mind is thus harder to place when not keyed to a specific visible action.

My question to you all - do you let cloth movement continue for off screen action or does your cloth Foley go away once a character has left the screen?

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Cloth accompanying the footsteps for a character leaving a scene can be very useful, so I would cut for perspective in the same way that you would for the feet. However depending on how detailed the foley artist is with their cloth pass, I find the attention is often drawn to the next on screen character pretty quickly, unless they make a point of discrete passes for situations where characters leave.. so you don't always have much to work with.

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Depending on the context & type of cloth I'd tail it off fairly rapidly.... but a leather jacket would be heard longer than a silk blouse... same for Batmans cape vs the cats pyjamas.... Footsteps are relatively a lot louder than cloth so they would/should trail longer.... Another context to bear in mind: if there is ADR, cloth is important

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  • Exactly!!!! The material, rhythm and speed of movement in harmony with the actors actions will determine this.
    – oinkaudio
    Mar 3, 2011 at 6:16
  • Thanks for the suggestions everyone. The dialogue edit primarily relies on the lavs, so I wanted to ensure that the Foley tracks covered everything that was lost with the sub-par boom mic track. I ended up cutting most of the cloth for onscreen action only to keep things simple and straightforward for the mixer.
    – Paul Fonarev
    Mar 4, 2011 at 7:38
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My practice is to cover it anyway, even a few seconds offscreen. Let the mixer decide how much of it to hear if at all.

If I'm recording/editing Foley and then doing the mixing too, it's easier to decide at the mixing stage too, when you have all the stems in a session. The cloth might get lost over the BGs, rest of the foley, music, etc. Then you'll be able to bring it up or get rid of it completely if unnecessary.

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I agree with everyone above, but as an object lesson pay attention to people that leave your field of sight or walk out of the room you're in.

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