If you have ever tried to create foley, the art of adding footsteps and other incidental sounds to picture, you will know how hard it can be, unless you have access to a foley studio where there are various surfaces and props to create in real-time and most importantly, the specialised, highly skilled foley artists who are experts at their craft.

However, these services are often out of reach for many low budget productions. Yes, you can use samples, but it can be very difficult, when using samples, to create a random sequence to the footsteps that don’t appear to have been sampled or a sound effect you have pulled from a library.

The good news is that there are a number of Foley instruments that enable you to perform foley using a VI and a keyboard. One of these is from Foley Collection who have released a collection of real Foley sounds with footsteps of various shoe types on various surfaces, clothes and other body-related movement sounds, all loaded into a Native Instruments Kontakt instrument with some clever programming to help you produce believable Foley with just a keyboard and a plugin.

That said, Alvaro de Iscar is at pains to stress that he never set up Foley Collection to replace the talented foley artists and a proper foley stage. Rather, his aim with the Foley Collection is to complement the use of a Foley stage or use the tools exclusively on low budget projects, that don’t have the budget to use a Foley stage.

The History Of Foley Collection Originals

Foley Collection was born back in 2013, offering a ground-breaking solution using real sampled Foley with the creation of small Foley instruments to help day-to-day sound editorial teams, especially when there isn’t the budget for a Foley stage.

During more than 5 years in development, all the samples have been recorded in the foley stage, with more than 20.000 samples in the final instrument. All of them, have been edited by hand, synced, to make sure that when you use any footstep on any surface every single sample is in sync with any other sample. Then all the samples have been mastered in large foley sessions as they needed to make all the samples are right, not just in terms of EQ or dynamics but also so that intention matches. For example, Concrete heels should not be at the same level as footsteps on sand. Alvaro and his team have used their extensive knowledge and experience of foley recording for film and TV refining Originals on real projects to make sure that every sample is just right so you can get on being creative.

Now the team at Foley Collection are able to finally release ORIGINALS so you too can enjoy recording foley more easily and quicker than ever. The main essence of the original Foley Collection, as you can see from our Show and Tell review from back in 2014 is that it is easy to use with 3 playable keys with a velocity response engine and these are still at the core of this new instrument, hence the new name: Originals.

What Is Originals From Foley Collection

Originals is the new release from Foley Collection. It’s an all-in-one product, with more than 100 combinations of shoes and surfaces. All redesigned and recorded from the ground up. Originals includes 2 decks for the footsteps and 2 decks for the clothes, with EQ, Reverb and Dynamics all in one instrument and have been designed to be the perfect tool to perform real Foley quickly and easily in sound post-production environments, with all the sounds are real sounds recorded on a premium foley stage by Alvaro de Iscar and Barto Alcaine at Blacktone Studio in Madrid.

Originals now works with Native Instruments Kontakt FREE, now Foley Collection is a Native Instruments Licensee product, and NKS Compliant) It also runs on Komplete or Maschine software.

Please note that in this demo, produced by the creator of Originals; Alvaro de Iscar with commentary by our own Mike Thornton, Alvaro has used a Native instruments Komplete Kontrol S49 keyboard, which offers complete integration as well as a screen on the keyboard, you don’t need this keyboard to be able to use the Foley Collection Originals instrument with a much more basic MIDI keyboard.

For example, Mike uses an M-Audio Axiom 25. Mike was able to use the Pro Tools Learn MIDI CC# Automation feature to assign the 8 rotary encoders on his Axiom 25 to control various controls in the plugin, with the option to adjust the velocity response to suit different keyboards or playing style.

That said, if you are using a lot of instruments in a Kontakt player then the level of integration offered in the NI keyboard is impressive, especially for the price.

In this demo video, we are using a clip from a documentary called Atlantic produced by Daniel Landa chronicling his travels through Africa in one year.

What We Think About Foley Collections Originals

It is great to see that Originals has not lost any of the simple but powerful features of the original version of the Foley Collection from back in 2014. Things like the use of 3 keys on the keyboard, 2 keys for left and right feet and the 3rd key for scuffs and stops. They all have the same 3 velocities for slow, normal and running via MIDI velocity, with the Foley Collection Engine using this velocity to change the envelope of the samples.

I am really pleased to see that Alvaro and the team have made the Foley Collection products compatible with not only the free version of the Kontakt player but also with Native Instruments’ Komplete and Maschine software. This both reduces the price of entry and extends the range of supported software in one go.

There is no doubt that this is a very cost-effective way to add believable Foley to low budget projects, where they cannot afford to play for Foley to be recorded by talented Foley artists. There was a project I was involved in last year that would have been ideal to use this new Originals instrument on especially as you no longer need to buy the full version of Kontakt just to do some foley, now and then.

System Requirements

• Windows - Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 10 (latest Service Pack), Intel Core i5 or equivalent CPU

• Mac - macOS 10.13, 10.14, 10.15 or 11, minimum processor Intel Core i5 or equivalent CPU

• The computer will need at least 4 GB of RAM (8 GB recommended), and 4 GB of free drive space.

• The computer will need to be connected to the internet to download the files and to enable the required product authorisation.

• Foley Collection Originals supports Kontakt Full and Kontakt Player in standalone mode or as, AAX 64bit and VST plugins on both Windows & MAC with an AU plugin version available for the Mac platform.

Installation

Once you have decompressed the files, save the ‘Foley Collection Originals BUNDLE’ folder in a safe place on your computer. The team at Foley Collection recommend that you have and specific folder for your Third Party KONTAKT Libraries.

If you don’t have it already, download and install the appropriate host software, whether that is Kontakt Komplete or Maschine Software. If you don’t own either of these then you can download and install the free Kontakt Player but make sure it is v6.5.3 or higher.

You will need to register your Foley Collection instrument. To do this you will need to launch the NI Native Access app.

The way you do this is to download Native Access from Native Instruments. Native Access combines software authorisation with a download manager. Once installed, on a Mac you will find the Native Access app in the Applications folder. On Windows computers you will find it in the Native Instruments folder in the Program Files folder on your C drive.

Either way, once you have Native Access open click on the Add a serial option and then add the serial number that came with your Foley Collection product.

Price And Availability

Foley Collection Originals is priced at 349 Euros

Foley Collection Total Bundle V2 (FC999) is priced at 599 Euros.

Note that this version 2 includes the new Originals instrument, along with updated versions of all the Extras instruments, which are now NKS and Kontakt FREE compatible, but only if purchased with the full V2 bundle.

The Total Bundle includes…

• Originals

• FC207 Modern Antikythera

• FC206 Moving Water

• FC205 Fight

• FC204 Trot & Gallop

• FC203 Olivetti Typewriter

• FC202 Phone Tones and Keys

• FC201 Mountain Bike Riding

• FC200 Laugh Track Pack

You can also get the instruments on their own, but not these will not work with the free version of Kontakt.

Updates

When it comes to updates, if you bought the Total Collection bundle after October 1st 2021 then you will be eligible for a free upgrade to the V2 bundle. If you bought the Total Collection bundle before October 1st then you should contact Foley Collection support for details on the discounts available.

Black Friday Deal - Get 25% Off

We can also give you a heads up that there will be a Black Friday sale where from November 20th to December 5th 2021 you will be able to take advantage of a 25% discount on everything in the Foley Collection store including the bundles. Click the button to get more information…