Fear the Chamois

Boo! Photo: Arterra/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

If you’re a Foley artist working at a palace of sonic art like Skywalker Sound, every possible tool is available to you. Water pools of varying depths, stores of wooden sticks and fabrics and metal pieces (one of which is specifically reserved for Mjolnir), so many phones and fax machines, staple guns and cleaning gloves, phone books and old tape. Whatever might be necessary to throw, slop in, set off, or rub together to get the perfect cinematic sound, it’s there. If you’re a freelance sound artist, maybe you keep some of these essentials on your person — dozens of shoes tucked in a suitcase just in case you need footsteps on the go. And there’s always your fridge and pantry to pick through — groceries like celery, uncooked pasta, coconuts, and cornstarch make for great crunchy, cloppy sounds.

But whether you work for a studio or yourself, chances are you’ve got the one great equalizer on hand. It’s arguably the most versatile tool in the Foley repertoire. It can be soaked, wrung out, and stuffed inside squash to recreate the sound of blood dripping or lungs heaving or organs reeling. It’s the king of unassuming multi-tools, heralded by almost every Foley artist we spoke to this month. He is tiny, square, and comes from the skin of the least terrifying creature on the planet (lamb or goat). He is the leather chamois.

“If you don’t have a chamois for a horror movie, you’re in a lot of trouble,� David Aquino, a Foley pro whose credits include X, Halloween Ends, and Smile, told Vulture. “You need a chamois to do all the gooey, gloopy, gross blood sounds, stabbing, dripping, blood moving. A wet chamois is very important.�

When Foley artist Gary Heckler needed to make malevolent splattering sounds for the remakes of Nightmare on Elm Street, Fright Night, and The Thing — he squeezed a soaking leather shammy and let the water gush near microphones. He wrapped a leather shammy around some vegetables (celery and carrots) to mimic the sounds your bones make when they break inside your body. Soak one in water and stab at it, he suggests, to create the squelch noise of a knife penetrating human flesh.

Did you watch Midsommar and wonder how Ari Aster achieved the breathy noises emitting from Will Poulter’s splayed-open lungs? That was courtesy of Foley artist Jay Peck, who soaked a shammy in water, stretched it tight across a concrete floor, and when it was suctioned down flat enough, pinched it in the middle and pulled it up slowly, creating a “huhhh� that sounds a lot like the intake of air.

Lest we make it seem like the chamois is only relevant to horror, take in its multi-genre power: When Shelly Roden at Skywalker Sound needed to make the sound of a puppet eating oatmeal, she, too, got out her wet chamois and squished it around as she sloshed oatmeal in a bowl with the other hand. And along with her Foley partner John Roesch, Roden used a wet chamois to give voice to a sentient vine in Pixar’s Lightyear; she told The New Yorker it makes just as great mud noises as it does stabbing sounds.

“It’s, in essence, a rag that’s used to dry off vehicles when you wash them,� Alchemy Post Sound Foley artist Leslie Bloome says, “but they just hold a tremendous amount of water, and when you’re working with it, it has this thickness.�

Making movies is hard. It takes time and resources and money and money. But if you have dreams of making a splatter movie and don’t know the first thing about pulling off a good blood gag, spare a few bucks for the humble chamois. Whether it’s a student short film or you’re out there getting paid by A24, as long as you’ve got one in your kit, you’ve got the foundation for a kill scene that will make anyone twitch with discomfort.