milotrain

There may be at some point in time a tool that lets foley be an automated process. It may indeed become close enough to the organic process we use to justify using it as an economic gain. 15 years ago we would all have said that the things we can do with melodyne and iZotope were impossible and required an organic process to tailor to the work. Yes technology will improve, even replacing art in the name of production cost reduction. That's the nature of what we do, but it won't ever replace the art completely and it will hopefully make Foley artists better. Only half the job of a good Foley team is recording things that you can see on screen, a lot of a good crew's job is to add quality to the soundscape by introducing creative elements that are not cued by the supervisor. A good supervisor will leverage a good Foley crew to this end, and non of that process could be automated.

The Soundstorm library is the best bang for the buck for a one shot library. Sound ideas is recorded rather boringly and it's vaguely out of date. The HD general library is more of the same. The Hollywood Edge is decent. All the independants are the best value. Frank Bry (the recordist), Tim Prebble (a hiss and a roar), Tonsturm, Rabbit Ears, Takoma, CASound, Chuck Russom are all great recordists and have great material for less than it would cost you to just master a similar amount of recordings. Boom library is good stuff but too expensive for me to justify. Always keep an eye on the designingsound blog. A great library: Soundstorm $6000 Various Independents $2000 A used 702 and a used 416 or pearl MS8 in a rycote $5000