Alchemy has collaborated with Paul on a numerous projects, including Cartel Land, Weiner and The E-Team. “Every time I book Leslie and his team on a show, I breathe a sigh of relief, because I know I’ve secured a solid element for my mix,” Paul said. “If my next thought about Foley is to push the fader up at the mix, I can trust that it will be just right. They are truly a well-oiled, and very experienced machine.”
For most documentaries, Bloome aims to make the Foley effects as realistic as possible, and subtle enough to blend seamlessly with production sound. The subject matter of The Bandit, however, cried out for a bit more creative license. “It’s a story about stuntmen,” explained Bloome. “It ought to sound bigger than life. There are moments where stuntmen are taking brutal hits and we thought, ‘let’s make them a little harder than they would have been in real life.’ When stuntmen are flying through windows, it should sound painful. When a guy jumps off a building aiming for a horse and misses, it’s got to hurt. We took it a little over the top.”
Bloome, who works in a purpose-built Foley stage at Alchemy’s facility in New York, points to a scene depicting a classic Hal Needham stunt. Needham falls over the side of a hill, rolls down an embankment, drops into a river and floats away. “That scene was all MOS (shot without synchronous audio),” he recalled. “We had to recreate each moment – breaking through the trees; rolling down the hill; rocks, sand, dirt and other debris; the big splash when he lands in the water; the water lapping against the body as it floats downstream.”
Not all of the Foley work for the film was quite so raucous. Bloome also produced atmospheric elements for interview segments and archival scenes. Those moments required a more nuanced sound treatment. “There’s a scene where Burt Reynolds is teaching an acting class,” he recalled. “And, there was a need for footsteps as the actors walk around the stage, but it couldn’t distract the audience. They need to sit deep in the mix, feel right and be in the right perspective.”
“Creating perspective is a big part of our job,” he added. “It’s about understanding mic placement and, on the engineering side, understanding how to blend mics.”
The Bandit pays tribute to the bravado stuntmen like Needham brought to the screen in an era before digital effects. “It was a great film to work on… outright fun,” said Bloome. “Smokey and the Bandit was one of the movies I grew up with, long before I knew what Foley was, and to be walking footsteps for that film…that was excellent!”