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Enhancing BlacKkKlansman’s
tension with Foley
By Jennifer Walden
Director Spike Lee’s latest film, BlacKkKlansman, has gotten rave reviews from both critics and audiences. The dramedy is based on Ron Stallworth’s true story of infiltrating the Colorado Springs chapter of the Ku Klux Klan back in the 1970s.
After seeing a recruitment ad for the KKK, Stallworth, who was a detective for the Colorado Springs police department, decided to call the head of the local Klan chapter. He claimed he was a racist white man wanting to join the Klan. Stallworth asked his co-worker Flip Zimmerman to act as Stallworth when dealing with the Klan. Together, they tried to thwart a KKK attack on an upcoming civil rights rally.
The Emmy-award winning team (The Night Of and Boardwalk Empire) of Foley artist Marko Costanzo and Foley engineer George Lara at c5 Sound in New York City were tasked with recreating the sound of the ‘70s — from electric typewriters and rotary phones at police headquarters to the creak of leather jackets that were so popular in that era. “There are cardboard files and evidence boxes being moved around, phones dialing, newspapers shuffling and applause. We even had a car explosion which meant a lot of car parts landing on the ground,” explains Costanzo. “If you could listen to the film before our Foley, you would notice just how many of the extraneous noises had been removed, so we replaced all of that. Pretty much everything you hear in that film was replaced or at least sweetened.”
One important role of Foley is using it to define a character through sound. For example, Stallworth typically wears a leather jacket, and his jacket has a signature sound. But many of the police officers, and some Klan members, wear leather jackets too, and they couldn’t all sound the same. The challenge was to create a unique sound that would represent each character.
According to Costanzo, the trickiest ones to define were the police officers, since they all have similar gear but still needed to sound different. “For the racist police officer Andy Landers, we wanted to make him noisy so he sounds a little more full of himself. He’s got more of a presence.” The kit they created for Landers has more equipment for his belt, like bullets and handcuffs that rattle as he walks, a radio and a nightstick clattering, and they used extra leather creaking as well.
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