Bastian Gerner, an accomplished Foley artist, lecturer, sound designer, and influencer, has a rich background working with industry giants such as Ubisoft and Warner Bros. Recently, he has shifted his focus towards teaching and coaching, dedicating his efforts to sharing the knowledge he has accumulated over the past 15 years in post-production and game audio. Bastian is passionate about helping both aspiring and experienced sound designers integrate Foley into their work, drawing from his own journey from sound effects editor to Foley artist.

View the full video interview below:

Can you please introduce yourself and your mission with your own words?

Bastian Gerner (BG): My mission basically is I want to share the knowledge I gained within the last 15 years I'm working in post-production and game audio with people who are either starting out or already working as a sound designer and also want to integrate Foley into their daily life and also something I realized from elevating from being a sound effects editor to becoming a Foley artist. The thing I never did when I was working as a sound effects editor was that I didn't record my own sounds too much. I just went out for field recording if it was really necessary. otherwise I was always pushing very hard with the sound effects libraries in order to get the projects done. Now I realize if you have a little corner in the back of your room and your microphone is set up, maybe a couple of modular surfaces and some props, you can do a lot of stuff on your own before you even go to the sound effects library and to get that kind of vision into the world and into the audio pro community. I'm doing my channel The Foley Teacher and actually I'm helping people to set up their own modular Foley corners in their edit suites and smaller mixing studios and whatnot and that is my mission.

And of course I'm also working as a freelance Foley artist in my own studio now since almost one year now and mainly focusing on movies right now on feature films and the game audio thing is also slowly slowly coming back into my life.

If you could only bring one item to your foley studio, what would it be and why?

(BG): I mean we're not talking about gear we talk about items to make sound with and for me it is definitely the the stone I'm using I have a little stone that is poured into concrete I can even show you it's right next to me I always have it in front of me, ah around 40 kilos maybe.  That is the one thing I would definitely bring.

The response and the result we get in our recordings varies greatly with the microphone type, the room, positioning. Do you have any tips you can share on this topic?

(BG): Yeah, I'm basically learning myself regarding with that topic all the time. So my initial learnings up to maybe very recently was to manage a small room with also not too far of of a distance from the microphone to the sound source because you you you always gather all the room from the small room and it will always be this tiny kind of early reflection kind of sound that is very easily unmasked, you know, you can really hear it very easily.

That is this small room. And even when you work with perspectives and a room mic in Foley, I felt this is not really working too good because you always have the same kind of small room kind of perspective. You can mix in, but there's no real variation within a small room. Whereas if when you have a big room at hand, the early reflections, they come in. very much later because all the walls are far more far away and maybe also the ceiling is very high so that is an ideal room for recording foley and sound effects. If you don't have that I always argue to stick with a distance that is maybe not more than 60 centimeters both for your shotgun and also for your big condenser. In addition to that I developed a technique with a SM7B which I'm treating very heavily towards low end and sometimes it's necessary to cut a lot of low end on your main mic because your room is very boomy when you walk in the room and in order to get the low end back I then mix in the SM7B and now with my studio here I have a port concrete and it's very non-resonant so I don't have that problem still I'm using that microphone because I can create some perspective and weight. I can design some weight into the footsteps in a way that is very quickly and easy for me because I'm also recording myself. So let's say I'm moving a bit closer with my feet towards the low-end microphone, which is also very close to my surface. I then can create this kind of proximity low-end beefy aspect in the sound.

So imagine someone is walking and crossing the camera so you have that moment where it's really close towards the camera and that I can insinate I can design here on the go.

And one other thing, because I got feedback from some clients lately that they would appreciate rather to have a little bit of room on the footsteps, even if it's an outdoor scene, then having those heavy transients when you walk on a road with dirt, for example.

So I tried that now with my current project and moved the microphone even further away and yeah I think they are right even because You have the ambiences, you have the dialogue, you have the music. And even if it's a really quiet scene, the the little bit of room that you are recording within the foley, it kind of disappears within all the other soundscape. And if you can achieve, therefore, a more natural feel within the footsteps, I think the trade is definitely worth it.

And so I'm basically changing my own perspective about the things I teach, you know, just right now as we speak.

How do you handle some kind of explosion sounds in our foley studio?

(BG): So recording explosion sounds doesn't really happen often in my case. When I imagine doing this, I would then analyze the scene first and and look into what is actually needed from my end as a Foley artist. I would believe it is a lot about debris then and maybe some low end deep impacts that I can maybe additionally layer for the sound effects editors and sound designers that they can use that. So I think the whole issue with recording those loud sounds and heavy transient sounds is how to capture that in a way that it doesn't sound tiny, right?

It's also the case when you record body falls maybe. I think you have two options. One is yeah you use a lot of force and you have a room that can handle that. And then a more distant miking approach and I don't know, post-processing and whatnot. This is not my approach because my room is too small.

Click image to view a sample recording of bodyfall sources

Capturing sounds like debris and crashes can be challenging. When working on a game, you need to consider variations in size and pressure. For example, if a wooden crate falls from a great height, the impact is uncertain, and the sound’s intensity will depend on the game’s physics. How do you approach recording in such scenarios?

(BG): We always discuss with the implementers and the audit directors, how many variations they want and how many intensities. So usually we go with soft, medium and hard, but sometimes they even want more than that. They want, I don't know, soft, medium soft-medium and medium hard and then medium-hard hard and very hard I don't know so that is then a lot of that is the difference between those two is so huge because then you have to really think about how you can define those small differences between the sections let's first start about talking about three levels of intensity so with the soft. I try to define the really lowest point possible. Again, with my microphone technique and also the reference loudness in mind, I then so see where is the lowest point I can start actually in order to get the levels correct and to build up on that. Because if I'm already too loud on the small or on the soft, then how can I build it up towards hard and loud? And then the medium amount of force and level and intensity. And then for the hard ones. Because that's exactly what we talked about before. If it is a transient sound, it doesn't do the trick if you just hit the thing harder on the ground because you get more sound pressure in the room, but the the thing you will record will sound maybe more tiny than the medium sound.

So that I work around by using other techniques and then start layering for the assets. So for example, I try to get to the maximum force before I you know just record into all my compression and everything and the things get tiny and then I use for example a contact mic and get a whole different set of sounds that are much more close up, much more related to low end. And those sounds I edit and layer together with my main assets. So that and way I can create that dynamics of soft, medium and hard.

As a Foley artist and sound designer, your work involves imitating many of the sounds we see on screen. I was surprised when I first realized that the real sounds of some animals in the documentaries don’t match what I hear on TV. Can you give a few examples of how you manipulate or imitate sounds in your recordings?

(BG): I recently did a nature documentary first time. So I had to do the footsteps for jaguars and turtles mainly. It was about the story about a beach where the jaguars live and their big turtles come and they have their eggs there and then the jaguars live from the turtles and all the story about it.
I mean, I can maybe more or less repeat myself because I use my technique in order to get this kind of thump, this kind of low end in with my SM7B and then I use my fingers, you know, to to walk the animals.

And I try to give them some weight, which is, of course, not true in reality. But for our ears, we need that kind of thing. And also what I did for the jaguars, I did the for the the two feet in front first, and then the legs that are at the end of their body. So I separated those two, because otherwise I couldn't get the really the hang of it with four impacts at the same time. If that answers your question.

How does the foley process differ between game and film productions?

(BG): I think the main difference is that film is much more straightforward because you have the timeline, you have your image and you just have to design the sounds that they match with the image and you can always test that immediately you know I just have to play back the scene with my sounds and I can distinguish is it good or not and with games it's not that case if you're not implementing the sounds yourself right after you recorded and edited them so there's the first difference even if you implement it yourself you first have to properly name it you have to edit it in a very different way because let's say each footstep is one sound asset in the end. So I have to perform the footsteps a bit differently so that my tail is defined and I can then edit one footstep properly. I have to really go in the beginning of the file and find the first transient and don't make any delay in the beginning, even not milliseconds, because I want the footstep to be triggered right away and I don't want to add additional delay

After doing all that, which is always related to naming conventions, to Excel sheets, to really being organized and to exporting into the right folders and then uploading it in the right folder in Wwise. And if you're implementing yourself, hooking it up correctly with the with the game engine and all these things, then you can see how your footsteps work in the game. And that is not the end of it because you are then dependent on so many factors that the middleware is doing together with the game. So there are there are so many filters and I'm lacking the terms now, of attenuation curves and obstruction and occlusion and all these things that play into how your sounds actually being played back in the game.

So you have to get an overview about all this and then maybe ask certain people if you can adjust certain parameters before you can actually judge your sound.

And maybe then you have to come up with a very different approach in your recordings because the things you might want to change within the middle where you cannot because other things are dependent on it. So you have to change your approach in recording and get it right for the settings within the game. So that is very different from just recording straightforward to an image and getting it into the right perspective and nuance and detail and level. Because this is all I cannot do with the game and so performing foley's for game is feels very unnatural in a way because I cannot decide all the things I would usually decide when I'm working on a movie.

As you are recording thousands of stuffs at a time, the naming and organizing files should be very important. How do you prefer to organize things?

(BG): Yes. I mean, depending on what it is, if it is assets, I can, I try to, let's say what a certain sound I have to record. I want to do in one take. If I have to layer stuff, of course I have to do more takes, but then they are in the same place in my door, and then I'm editing. Those sounds exactly where they are and get the right markers in.

In Nuendo, for example, I use cycle markers and then I name them correctly. And this is then organized already. It's organized in the DAW and once I export it, it is already correctly named in the folder that I then upload, for example. If it is cinematics, it is a bit more complicated because I have many files in the timeline, but I have to know in which sections I have to export those. It is both vertical and horizontal approach of organizing the session. So maybe I make some certain groups, character A, character B, character C, and then also the time within the cinematic. Let's say the beginning, middle part and end so I have those definitions and then Correlating with the excel sheet I get all the namings. Right in my head first so that I know okay those names have to go into this field of the session and then I just try to be as efficient as possible because otherwise it's you can get lost and even though if you're organized my experiences it takes longer to get the naming in than actually to record all the sounds.

How do you approach creating the footsteps for a large crowd?

(BG): It's depending on what it is. In general, I focus on certain areas within the moving image. For example, There's a main character, maybe. I will maybe do this character separately. And then there are certain areas, more in the front, more in the back, more in the right, more in the left. And depending on the budget and the time I have, I then go in and record those several areas and then you know play them back together. And I also use a technique that I record myself seated so I can use them both of my feet in order to get a double rhythm in. And sometimes I then folk with my right foot. I focus maybe on something specific so that I can have something that I can orientate towards. I'm always looking to my screen, which Is on with that as a movie on there so I'm looking at that right now so I'm focusing there and then walking with one foot in sync to something I see and the other foot I try to just you know use in addition to that and create some feeling.

That's how I do that and I did a documentary. Where there was archive footage of armies, Second World War armies marching and stuff like that. And it was a like a five minute scene. And this was like in part of an installation and it was so complex, but I had to do all the armies that were like coming here and there and from different angles and originally and then within a setting in the theater. So it was basically doing the marching for five minutes in different speeds and different angles and different situations. So I ended up using all the gear, you know, like I had my, my rifle and some metal items and some leathery parts and whatnot all year in my hand. And I then also used my feet and recorded everything at the same time in order to, I don't know, achieve those five minutes of marching in different speeds in a reasonable amount of time.

How can we make the best use of lower grade microphones to record Foley audio?

(BG): Just use them. I have like a 170 euro big condenser microphone I'm using at the moment. And I own this microphone for more than 20 years and it does a great job. I was lucky just to buy this one.

I feel it's very good value for the money. It's a T-Bone SC1100. And we did, back in the days, we did shootouts for vocal recording with very expensive microphones. And in the end, I wouldn't care which microphone, to be honest, to use for vocals.

I think it's much more about the preamp. and Other than that, my first choice, if I have more budget, I would always go for the lowest noise floor when we talk about Foley. Because that's always what makes the difference. How low is your noise floor? Because when you record cloth movement, it get easily you see easily the difference between a low-noise floor and a very low-noise floor, let's say. This goes so also with high-budget microphones. So for example, the Sennheiser MKH416 in my ears has a lower noise floor than the MK41 from Sheps. So if I have to choose between the two, I would rather go with the Sennheiser because of the lower noise floor, even though I like the natural sound of the MK41 more.

If you had to record Foley in a home studio with some acoustic treatment but potential background noise (e.g., fans or distant cars), would you prefer a highly directional microphone to avoid unwanted noise or a microphone with a wider polar pattern and remove noise during editing?

(BG):  Definitely the the shotgun microphone. Because even in a controlled environment, I feel, especially for movies, working with a shotgun works way better than with a big diaphragm condenser microphone. I think if you have that issue with cars and noise coming from outside, you will be denoising anyhow. So having less of that to denoise is always better. And yeah, I mean, I use my SC1100 for cloth movement. And also when I do stuff on the desk, it's like props handling or stuff like that.

And I also use it maybe as a room microphone, an additional kind of source for room information. But it is actually not really because of the sound it is more a convenience because I don't want to use my shotgun and you know tilt it all the time tilt it from footsteps back to cloth and then back there and I don't want to do all the adjustment all the time I want a setup that is a bit more efficient And I don't know, maybe I someday change the big diaphragm mic against another shotgun. I'm not sure about that, but actually I'm considering it right now because I have some electrical interference sometimes in my room and the the the condenser is picking it up way more than the shotgun. And that already is a reason for me to change that.

But in the end, It's not about the gear, you know, you can do everything with both of those kind of microphones.

I know foley artists to work only with a big condenser and they even do the low-end trick with a big condenser, but you have to treat it completely different than my approach with the SM7B. You know, the one is kind of the diva and you have to be really subtle about it and SM7B is a workhorse.

Can you let us know more about your services and how the students reach you? Do you teach online or on-site?

(BG):  So my main platform is Instagram and LinkedIn. People can follow me there and also approach me there directly with DM. I also have a website where people can apply for my coaching services and can schedule a free first introductory meeting with me on Zoom. And other than that, I'm also teaching on-site in different universities. I'm doing that for Game Audio Lab in Cologne and also for SAE and other universities. I'm giving talks and lectures every now and then. Yeah, basically that's it.

Before we wrap up, is there anything that you want to share with our audience?

(BG): Yeah, basically that I appreciate the whole social media realm and the thing we are doing right now very much. And I encourage people who start out or who just want to get their next gig or they'll have a vision. To put themselves out there in a way that is comfortable for them. I think we are past the time where a showreel with just some redesign is cutting anything anymore and also knowing why is something maybe five years back was you know giving you some attention when you applied it because not many people did know but now everyone knows that stuff so you have to kind of stick out of the masses and make yourself you know interesting so that is always something I try to convey to people who are asking me for advice if you are comfortable with doing such a thing that you show your your face and you explain stuff about you and you make a show reel that doesn't just show your work but also your personality and how you are and what it would feel like to have you in the team and if you're funny or not or what are you about you know so this is much more important these days, I believe.