My theory is that the early percussion sounds of cartoons trained audiences to accept strange non-literal sounds for their cartoon sound effects, and then anything was possible.įor me, SpongeBob makes the best use of this permission.
Cartoons have always had permission to have the sound be whatever they want. It’s supposed to sound like the world we live in and know. Most uses of foley in film are going for a very realistic sound for everything. Even before I was working on this show, I would have named it as a major influence. I’ve been a super fan of SpongeBob since it first aired. "Ssssssss.!" Ethan Slater makes a meal of a role out of SpongeBob Joan MarcusĪny specific thoughts on the sound design in the SpongeBob animated series? A lot of great and strange ideas came from the early experimental days of sound in film. Then, suddenly, all of these cartoon people had the ability place every note of the music at exactly the right place and treat the music as it’s own type of foley. No one was able to do that before because everything was played live, and they weren’t playing that specifically to the picture. The Mickey-mousing, where the music is super tightly connected to the action, like foley, is very interesting in the early cartoons. The sound palette that the drummers used-cow bells, drums, slide whistle, gongs-these quickly became the standard in early cartoons and we still hear these sounds in cartoons to this day. The first silent films and cartoons were accompanied by the same band and drummer that played the live show.
Yes, absolutely! It’s interesting because it all comes from the same place. In a past interview you mentioned the use of foley in vaudeville and circus, but did you have any particular love of the sound effects and “Mickey-mousing” music of cartoons? Those possibilities are what excites me most now. Not just cartoony sounds, but any situation where you want sound to feel connected to a movement, as though the actor or performer actually created the sound you heard. Over the years, as I learned more and incorporated more and more ideas from film foley and theatrical sound design, I became much more interested in how it could support the storytelling and provide new ways to use sound live. It can get very virtuosically challenging. It’s now a mostly forgotten technique, but once I started learning about it, I became somewhat obsessed.Īt first, the draw was the challenge of playing a song with the band, while also hitting all the sound effects for the onstage action. Before recorded sound, it was normal for the drummer to do the sound effects for all kinds of shows. In traditional circus, the drummer is expected to provide sound effects for the action on stage, while also playing drums in the band. It first started for me in college when I took a summer job playing drums for a circus. When did you first encounter foley art as a concept? What interested you about it? So, rather than forcing him to be rigid, doing it as foley allows it to happen freely, while also making the connection between his foot and the sound very specifically timed for each step.
He just crosses the stage and it’s a little different every night. We don’t talk about how many steps he will take, or exactly what path he will do. As an example, I make a squish sound for every step that SpongeBob-played by the amazing Ethan Slater!-takes. The detail and sheer quantity of sounds, I think, requires that it be done as foley to work in a live setting. Our show, like the cartoon, uses lots of sound effects throughout. Mike, how does live foley contribute to SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical? Ahead of this Sunday’s Tony Awards, I asked Dobson a few questions about bringing some very silly noises on Broadway.
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