Hear, hear!

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/12/2009 (6060 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Call him a foley artist or an audile: both sound good to John Gzowski.

The son of the late CBC broadcaster Peter Gzowski is credited as the sound designer for both current MTC productions but it’s due to his additional role as foley artist in It’s a Wonderful Life — A Radio Play that he has emerged from his usual anonymity.

He’s hard to miss on stage, surrounded as he is with a mini junkyard, a.k.a. creative clutter. Gzowski is part of the MTC cast because in radio dramas the narrative is told strictly through voices and sound effects. It’s his job to manipulate these found objects to create live sound effects that match the action with the storytelling of the 10 actors.

"I bring that sense of place and a little bit more context," says the tousled-haired Gzowski, 45, during a recent interview. "I can sometimes help set up the world (of Bedford Falls) a little bit better."

The foley artist uses sound to convince your mind that what you are hearing is real. Of course, no theatre can afford to have all the denizens of Bedford Falls onstage, so people like Gzowski must recreate not just the literal sounds but the perception of them in a particular moment.

Gzowski, as foley artist, has enjoyed the briefest career, limited to just one show. Toronto’s CanStage asked him out of the blue prior to last Christmas to be in the radio version of the iconic Frank Capra movie. The technique of synchronous effects is named after Jack Foley, the pioneering sound editor at Universal Studios. Most foley artists today work in film.

"I have a lot of fun up there," says Gzowski, a guitarist who once appeared at the Winnipeg Folk Festival. "It’s a fun new way of working with sound."

For a while he was stumped as to how he could simulate the sound of crickets. For days he walked around his house picking up objects conducting impromptu trial and error experiments.

"I finally found this key with this copper decorative cap kicking around," he says. "The combination of the two works pretty well."

To replicate the sound of a character hiding in a bush, he scrunches reel-to-reel audio tape ("It happens to be Harry Belafonte singing, which gives it a more tropical bush sound," he cracks). He settled on celery to simulate the sound of ice breaking after failing with cracking several kinds of wood ("The celery is a fun visual as well.") The MTC props department built him a rain stick filled with dried mung beans, which was deemed too noisy onstage, so barley was substituted.

Playing with all those unusual noisemakers onstage makes Gzowski endlessly theatrical and watchable.

"I have to balance being interesting and showing the audience what I’m doing without taking focus," says Gzowski, who remains expressionless throughout the show, which runs to Dec. 19. "I can have a little fun but I can’t be laughing and joking around or people will stop paying attention to the story."

Since becoming a foley artist, Gzowski’s ears are ever attuned to new sounds.

"I travel around with a digital recorder so if there is a great sound I try to add it to my sound-effects library. I have 10,000 to 15,000 sounds."

kevin.prokosh@freepress.mb.ca

What’s that sound?

 

Foley artist John Gzowski identifies some of the noisemakers he uses in It’s a Wonderful Life: A Radio Play and for what dramatic effect.

 

1. Metal stairs — the sound of running on a bridge.

2. Fuse box — used for a switch bring flipped.

3. Ball of reel-to-reel audio tape — a person rustling in a bush.

4. Stalk of celery — twisted to sound like cracking pond ice.

5. Key and decorative cap — rubbed to produce cricket chirps.

6. Bell tree — tapped to indicate characters are in heaven.

7. Round drum — wind machine.

8. Crank siren — Police car siren.

9. Sewing machine with attached bass drum — old jalopy.

10. Leonard refrigerator — slamming door sounds like a car door closing.

11. Rain stick — a downpour.

12. Cellophane and bubble wrap — a crackling fire

13. Cookie cutter scrapped over wringer washer — train creaking to a stop

14. Bell — rings to indicate a customer has entered a store.

15. Old push mower — creaking sound of a floor opening over a swimming pool.

 

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