I want to take a moment to express my heartfelt gratitude to all of our valued clients who stood by us and continued to work with me and my team despite the challenging circumstances. It means a lot to us that 90% of our clients chose to continue their partnership with us during a time of uncertainty. I also want to acknowledge and appreciate the decision of the remaining 10%.
How To Build a Foley Studio. Chapter I & II
July 19 2024
60 min
6185
Author
Yuri Pridachin
Own and Operate at Foley First
Hey there, dear reader! Thanks for joining me. I really hope you'll enjoy diving into the fascinating story I'm about to share.
Normally, I write in a professional style, providing a dry summary of useful facts and technical advice based on my expertise. However, this time I want to begin more autobiographically, touching first on my relocation to a new country and the initial stages of setting up a Foley studio before I get to the technical details.
If you're keen on jumping straight into a practical guide for building a Foley studio, feel free to skip this part. However, if you're curious about the backstory, grab yourself a cup of Turkish tea and settle in. All three chapters make for a lengthy, but interesting, read.
Contents
February 2022: Unexpected changes
March-May 2022: Turkish studios and remote survival mode
June-July 2022: Looking for a good facility
Features of basements in Turkey
If you want to get it done fast and without any fuss, just don't do it!
July 2022: General plan — two and half months to the deadline
Wall soundproofing plan and building materials
Beginning of work: filling openings in the room
Foundation for the walls of the Foley studio
August 2022: Ceiling — six weeks to the deadline
Filling the frame with mineral wool
Cladding the ceiling frame with plasterboard
Ventilation and air conditioning
All set for the first round of tests!
September 2022: Acoustic wall finishing — 20 days to the deadline
Partial dismantling of the floors and pouring of Foley pits
September 2022: Complete dismantling of floors — 6 days out
The story begins in August 2021 when my family and I moved to Antalya, Turkey, primarily in an attempt to ease my son's asthma. Antalya, a stunning coastal city, welcomed us with perpetual sunshine, delicious fruit, and friendly locals. Thankfully, the Turkish climate worked wonders on the asthma, bringing us immense joy.
Initially, Antalya wasn't inundated with Russian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian expatriates, and everything from food to real estate was surprisingly affordable compared to Moscow. This was especially appealing as our daily life now revolved around the seaside and the pleasant climate. However, six months after we moved in, a surge of immigrants arrived, causing prices to skyrocket by three to four times and triggering a real estate bubble. Inflation reached 70%, exacerbated by the influx of immigrants.
Throughout most of our first year in Turkey, I frequently shuttled between Russia to work and Turkey to be with my family. The flights were not only affordable and direct but also not too tiring. Living expenses, from renting apartments to accessing healthcare services, were economical. Although I couldn't stay in Antalya for an extended period, I fell in love with the city's breathtakingly clean sea on one side and the incredibly beautiful mountains on the other, along with the well-developed infrastructure, e-commerce, delectable sweets, and affordable European cuisine.
Remarkably, despite the soaring real estate prices, the local Turks remained hospitable and untroubled, always displaying their inherent warmth and willingness to assist. It was truly captivating.
February 2022: Unexpected changes
On February 23, 2022, I flew from Antalya to Moscow to work on a vital project with my team for what was supposed to be three weeks. However, I found myself having to curtail my trip and return to Turkey after just three days due to unforeseen circumstances. Being accountable for my team, I felt that remaining in Russia posed significant risks due to the rapidly changing situation. It became apparent that our work could be jeopardized by external influences very quickly.
Fortunately, my wife and I had previously obtained long-term stay permission in Turkey, which proved to be invaluable. This allowed me to quickly and seamlessly utilize the resources available in Turkey to continue meeting our client's needs and fulfilling all obligations under the new conditions.
February presented us with a significant challenge. My team and I had to quickly adjust to a rapidly changing environment every day. Setting aside the geopolitical and human impacts, from a business perspective, this was quite exciting! I hope everyone understands what I mean here. Any crisis within a company brings new opportunities and growth, strengthening us significantly. A crisis is an excellent chance to test the resilience of the entire team and the mechanisms within it.
March-May 2022: Turkish studios and remote survival mode
My colleagues in Istanbul
In March, it became clear that completing projects planned six months ahead would be tough. As the sole Foley artist responsible for recording footsteps for all our projects, I needed to find a suitable place in Turkey to do my job without disappointing our clients.
While Turkey is a large country with its own domestic film production, the options for Foley studios that I could use were limited. I got in touch with local studios and ended up going to Istanbul to meet up with colleagues and talk to them about recording for an extended period. There just weren't any established studios with the right resources available outside Istanbul.
All Foley studios are unique, with their own acoustics, microphones, props, boots, and so on. You can't really say that one studio is better or worse than another. They're just different, and that's okay. Still, I was trying to stick to the standards and sound profiles our clients were used to so they could get the exact sound they wanted. Luckily, one of the studios was really good, but it took a lot of time and effort for me to make it workable for me. I even had to purchase and modify suitable shoes and surfaces. Meanwhile, project deadlines were looming.
During my last trip to Turkey, I had brought along all the necessary equipment: a microphone, laptop, audio interface, etc. Working in someone else's studio was a bit of a challenge, but having my own microphone and headphones made it easier to catch any issues with the sound performance during recording. This sped up the process a lot but also slowed it down in some ways. For example, all the flaws and artifacts in the recording became obvious, and I couldn't overlook them. Our team's established standards and “sound” were ingrained in my mind, and I was still aiming to achieve that familiar sound I was accustomed to. However, being in a different studio environment meant that everything was different, and that was okay — mostly.
Unfortunately, some of the surfaces just didn't cut it for me. They had some annoying resonances that were hard to ignore. Thankfully, my colleagues knew about the problem. All they needed was for someone to swing by their studio and tell them to fix everything, haha. To improve the sound, we ended up redoing the concrete and tile surfaces to make them solid. Thankfully, the studio guys spoke English, which made the whole process a lot easier. At the time, I didn't speak or understand a word of Turkish.
In the end, I managed to almost finish recording the footsteps for one of the theatrical projects. But after spending ten days recording instead of the five or six it would have taken in Foley First studios, it was clear that this wasn’t going to work in the long run, time- or budget-wise. Also, dealing with unfamiliar, new, and finicky shoes while recording was really getting on my nerves.
Remote work with my team
I decided to stop wasting time customizing someone else's Foley room and focus instead on training the Foley mixer who recorded me at our studio in Russia to also be able to perform as a Foley artist. It's common for mixers to transition to Foley artists on our team, providing flexibility for the whole team by making most of us interchangeable. However, this needed to be done urgently and quickly.
We worked day and night online in realtime to meet tight deadlines for simple projects. This process demanded a lot of physical and mental strength from all of us. Thankfully, Steinberg VST Connect came to our rescue. This app allowed me to hear the Foley artist's and recordist's microphones with minimal latency and see the Foley room through the webcam. My team also could share their desktop through the app. We prepared the surfaces for each scene, selected the best shoes, and worked on every take together. We did 15-20 takes of each scene to achieve the desired result. It was a challenging test for everyone, but slowly this approach started to work and produce results.
What’s the plan, Cap?
Despite getting results working in tandem virtually, it was pretty clear that we were going to have to build a separate Foley studio in Turkey. It was also becoming necessary to have a separate legal entity outside of Russia. Pulling off such a plan quickly in a foreign country seemed like an impossible task, but we had to do it.
My family and I were living in a rented apartment in Antalya, but by March 2022, it was obvious that the situation wasn't getting any better and wasn’t going to resolve quickly. We decided to head back to Russia for a couple of weeks to sell our property and then come back and buy apartments in Turkey. It was quite a challenge to transfer money from Russia at that time because SWIFT was almost completely out of service thanks to the geopolitical situation worldwide. Nevertheless, we managed to sell the apartments and cars and successfully bring the proceeds out of the country.
We weren’t the only people relocating right then. Many people from Russia and other countries were moving to Turkey, making the tricky inflation even worse. By June, real estate prices in Antalya had shot up significantly. The Turkish government had closed most residential areas to obtaining a residence permit based on property ownership. As a result, we weren’t allowed to buy an apartment where we had expected. The areas that were still open were on the city's outskirts and didn't have the best infrastructure. Plus, the views from the window weren't great. We had to look elsewhere.
So what about Istanbul? I gotta say that after living there for a month, I couldn't get used to it. I couldn't fall in love with the city; it was the total opposite, actually. Istanbul really put me off. Unlike Antalya, the place was noisy and not always clean. And with 15-20 million people around, it was really getting to me, haha. So we decided Istanbul wasn't the place for us.
With the money from selling our apartment in our home country, we could have bought a three-bedroom apartment in Antalya in August 2021. However, by June 2022, when we needed it, our budget would only get us a one-bedroom apartment, which wouldn’t work for our family. All thanks to the crazy inflation.
After mulling over our options and having a good long chat, we settled on Mersin, in the Adana province, to make our move and buy a new place. It's a pretty developed city with about one and a half million people, and it's just 90 km from Adana, where there's an airport. We ended up sealing the deal for a 3+1 apartment on the waterfront in Mersin without even seeing it in person first, and then off we went!
In May, I had to make another trip to Russia to finalize a project in our studio that I couldn't complete in Istanbul.
During that same month, once it became clear that my family and I were relocating to Mersin, I tasked a real estate agent there with finding me several potential locations for commercial spaces suitable for building a Foley studio. Given my status as a foreigner and the uncertainty of my long-term residency, purchasing land seemed impractical, time-consuming, and risky. I would rent, instead. I was optimistic that when I arrived back in the city in June, there would be plenty of options to choose from. Time was running short to get the studio build underway because there were significant projects in the pipeline that would be challenging for my team in Russia to manage due to their busy schedules. We urgently needed a new Foley studio and a small local team by September.
Certainly, no one but me was aware of all the specific requirements and potential issues to watch for when selecting a space for our studio. I turned down nearly 90% of the options the agent presented due to unsuitability or being overpriced, and I quickly realized I was going to have to do much of the work myself. Therefore, upon my arrival in the city, I took it upon myself to scout for locations, research the real estate market, and investigate building material prices.
June-July 2022: Looking for a good facility
Features of the city
After putting up several studios in my home country, I had a pretty good idea of the results I could expect based on the input variables. If I had to build another room in Russia, I'd be about 80% sure of the outcomes with each decision. However, Turkey is a different country with distinct infrastructure, construction standards, and placement of commercial facilities. These disparities significantly complicated the process, especially considering the tight deadline. I had only three months to get the studio up and running. September was coming fast.
In Mersin, the vast majority of the available commercial rental properties were spaces with ground-level, continuous glass facades facing busy streets. While this was advantageous for businesses who wanted to sell stuff, it was useless for a Foley studio because of the noise. The constant din of traffic, including loud music from cars and noise from old motorcycles, reached levels of up to 100 dB. Not a perfect choice for building studio. Instead, I decided to focus on exploring basement rental options, despite the limited availability within the city.
Large space does not mean expensive
I was really surprised to find out that, unlike in Russia, the rental prices for commercial real estate in Turkey weren't directly tied to the size of the space. I could rent a space larger than 200 m2 for a great price, which gave me a lot of flexibility in building the Foley studio. On top of that, a lot of the rooms had high ceilings, which are pretty rare in Russia or else cost a ton of money. This got me thinking about creating a medium-sized room instead of sticking with the original plan for something small.
Features of basements in Turkey
As I explored various property options, I took into account the potential issues and advantages of each place, as well as the financial commitment required. I was disappointed to find that in almost every instance it seemed that the property owners had overlooked the necessity of a proper ventilation system, leading to mold growth within the premises. This rendered many properties uninhabitable. In most places, the walls had a lingering dampness, and waterproofing was nonexistent. Additionally, there was a good chance that groundwater could seep in to most of them, which would mean a lot of money would have to be spent on waterproofing and ventilation. It could also cause major delays in the construction process, which I couldn’t risk.
My even bigger concerns were related to the extremely hot and excessively humid climate. My typical studio soundproofing methods, like using wood, fiber insulation, and plasterboard, just wouldn't work in a super-humid climate. Wood tends to warp in those conditions, which affects studio soundproofing.
In Turkey, construction is swift, but the materials used often lack the density required for effective sound insulation. Most partition walls consist of 18 cm hollow blocks. Although the basements had solid concrete walls, low frequencies easily came through from outside through the stairwells, which meant more concrete walls were needed.
The situation with the concrete floors was relatively better. Most spaces had monolithic slabs directly on the ground, albeit without insulation or waterproofing. These slabs appeared quite solid and did not produce significant resonances.
In the places I checked out, there were a lot of high ceilings (around 3.5 – 4 m high), which is great for a Foley room. Unfortunately, the floor slabs between the basements and ground floors didn't have great soundproofing and were made with blocks topped with thin concrete. But because of the height, I could build a freestanding Foley studio box — a room-within-a-room — which would provide soundproofing benefits and be easy to take down if my plans changed suddenly and I had to move.
Unfortunately, none of the options I initially found were suitable. Neighboring the various spaces were a car repair shop, a store with huge industrial equipment, and an elevator located behind the walls. Building a studio in such conditions is like shooting yourself in the foot.
The choice is not obvious
After a thorough two-week search, I realized that finding a nearly perfect option (meeting at least 80% of my criteria) was not going to happen. I had to come to terms with the fact that there would be challenges ahead. Missing project deadlines was not an option, so waiting for better real estate to come on the market was out of the question. Consequently, I settled for a 180 m2 semi-basement with a 4 m ceiling, which seemed sufficient.
The chosen place turned out to be dry but noisy, with open space, concrete walls, and columns that would pose challenges for soundproofing the studio, resulting in decreased interior space. Despite these drawbacks, the rental price was reasonable, and, most importantly, the owner seemed reputable and trustworthy, a crucial criterion for a foreigner starting a business in a new country.
The electrical network in the building was robust, and there was existing internet access. The recess into the ground helped reduce noise from the road above, although the position seemed less than ideal from an acoustic standpoint. The floor appeared solid.
However, the entrance to the room was secured with roller shutters made of thin metal, lacking sound insulation. Furthermore, the room appeared to have numerous openings in the walls for natural ventilation, unsealed holes, and cracks, making it impossible to gauge its soundproofing characteristics during the inspection. The whole room looked like a sieve. Despite these challenges, my instinct assured me that these issues could be resolved quickly. It would certainly be a daunting but fascinating journey ahead.
We had found our place.
I will delve into more detail about the entire construction process, replete with challenges, victories, and setbacks, in the next chapter. Get ready!
CHAPTER II: THE FIRST ATTEMPT
If you want to get it done fast and without any fuss, just don't do it!
If you're thinking about setting up a studio and business in another country, it's really important to understand the local laws, rules, language, mentality, and prices. In my experience, finding a local person to assist, advise, and guide you through all stages of construction is a great idea. This person can talk to the builders, help you find the best places to buy materials, and make sure everything is done the way it should be. Basically, their job is to do whatever they can to save you time and money and make your life easier. You need someone who knows both your world and theirs. Let's just call them "supervisor."
When I first checked out the place that we ended up choosing, there was a local there chatting with the landlord about buying some industrial equipment. After I was done speaking with the landlord, the guy offered to help me out. I figured having someone who knows the local market and can speak the builder's language would be super handy, so I said yes. It saved me a bunch of time I would've spent looking for a supervisor on my own. It all seems like a lucky break, but there are a few things to consider…
Know the price
Even though the locals are super friendly and willing to help, it's important to be cautious about money matters. It might sound strange, but in Mersin, you almost never see price tags in the markets, small shops, or even at pharmacies or hair salons. Everyone bargains, and it takes some time to figure out the actual prices, especially with the crazy inflation. Despite their kindness, locals might quote prices that are way higher than they should be. It's nothing personal, just business. Not bargaining can lead to overspending.
Objectless bargaining is also a common practice in the Turkish film industry. When potential clients from the local film production market approached me, the conversation always started with bargaining. This is part of their culture.
For some reason, Turks think that Russians have loads of cash and can splash out more. To be fair, back in 2022, stuff in Turkey was way cheaper than in Russia, so us Russians ended up forking out two or three times the prices the locals would pay on a regular basis. It wasn't fun, though, 'cause most expats were not accustomed to Turkish culture and had to make fast decisions without much experience in haggling. Bargaining is easy for Turks. It’s just in the Turkish people's DNA, I guess, and they are very good at it. We Slavs are not used to bargaining, and it feels a bit weird for us to have to negotiate for even the smallest stuff or services. You get used to it over time, though, and just go with the flow. Humans can adapt to anything, I guess.
In Mersin, there is an unspoken pricing difference for locals and foreigners, and bargaining is expected. The less you know the language, the more you'll end up paying. Also, each time you come back, the prices shoot up way more than the inflation rate for no apparent reason. The only thing that saved me was knowing what I’d previously paid for the stuff and services I'd used in that country, and subconsciously comparing to the prices I would have paid in Russia. Only by instinct could I tell when they were trying to sell me something at a "special" markup.
Always analyzing and comparing prices and trying to negotiate down from the initial high prices was distracting and stressful. But I had to deal with it and keep going. I was on a deadline as well as a budget.
Building standards
Oh, this is my favorite!
I was so impressed by how inventive Turkish craftsmen were at every stage of construction. They devised effective solutions that not only looked risky to me but also seemed unimaginable! I definitely don't mean to cause any offense. It's just that in this respect, Turks and Russians are very different. The two nations have very different approaches to construction. The shift from what I was used to since childhood to completely new building standards, expectations, and creative problem-solving methods was really tough for me at that time. I think it was also tough for them when I was their client, haha. Especially at the beginning, I just couldn't grasp their way of thinking, and they couldn't understand what I was trying to get them to do. It felt like we were saying the same words, but we just couldn't understand each other due to the cultural differences.
I won't delve into specifics here, but I feel like I won't be able to stop myself from coming back to this repeatedly.
Approach to meeting deadlines
“Tomorrow.”
It's interesting how different cultures have varying approaches towards fulfilling expectations and meeting deadlines. In Russian culture, if someone says they'll do their job tomorrow, there's a high chance they'll show up the next day and do it, or at least communicate if they can't. Reputation is crucial in the Russian business environment, and a good reputation in Russia comes from doing precisely what is agreed upon precisely when it was agreed upon.
However, in Turkey, the concept of "tomorrow" is more flexible—it doesn’t always mean the very next day, and the local people seem to understand this and not mind. It's common for people to forget agreements, even among Slavs who have lived in Turkey for a long time. Perhaps the environment, with its sea and sun, influences people's attitudes. I knew it would be devastating for my business, though, if I lost the ability to keep on a schedule myself. My industry is deadline-driven, and I could not afford to start missing deadlines, including for having the studio finished.
During my building project, my supervisor and I more than once encountered builders who were unreliable or irresponsible, seemingly unconcerned about their reputations. It was frustrating when they would disappear and not respond to calls. In our industry, meeting deadlines is crucial, and adjusting to these differences in a new country has been a learning curve for me!
During the first week, the construction site was a total mess, at least from my perspective. I was struggling to figure out how fast we were working and the expected time frames for tasks. Nobody could give me a clear answer, as some jobs needed either three days or a week to finish. It made it really hard to plan ahead. I couldn’t make heads or tails of their workflow or plans, or even if there were plans. By the second week, I took matters into my own hands and made a work plan with specific deadlines using a Numbers spreadsheet. I noticed that when deadlines were written down rather than just spoken, things started to fall into place.
As a side note, it seems to me that this more relaxed pace is typical of many Southern nations. From my experience, people in northern latitudes are more structured, deadline-driven, and keen on following standards. The warm climate seems to have a relaxing effect, but of course this can vary from person to person.
July 2022: General plan — two and half months to the deadline
Studio plan
I'm usually super picky about designing my own studios. I love diving into the design process, working on room acoustics, and even getting my hands dirty in the construction process. I find it very satisfying to create something tangible and meaningful. I usually take plenty of time considering different sound insulation options, acoustic finishing, and ergonomic designs. However, this time was different. I didn’t have time to ponder or delay. We had to be up and running in just a few short months.
During the initial stage of construction, nobody could tell me for sure how much the building materials would cost per unit or how much the work itself would be. In order to kickstart the process and have some idea about the budget, I spent one night sketching a general plan for the studio and figuring out how much material we'd need for the first stage of construction. This involved sealing all the holes and openings in the room and building a studio box, which is a double-leaf wall made of cement blocks. I hoped to get a rough idea of the prices of building materials and labor in the country with this specific request to my supervisor. It might sound odd that I didn't have a fully detailed project then, but I was in a rush and had to move fast. We’d have to make decisions as we went along.
The general idea
At the start, the area of the space available for constructing a studio consisted of two large rooms of approximately equal volume, each about 90 m2. Since I didn't have a clear idea about the initial investment amount, I considered two options for the construction: building a large Foley room where both the mixer and the artist would work in the same room, or creating a separate room for the Foley recordist in an adjacent space. Each option had pros and cons.
Having both the Foley mixer and Foley artist in the same room would mean better communication and help with moving heavy props. Plus, the recordist in the same room can also work as a Foley artist.
On the flip side, a separate room for the Foley recordist would allow for working with speakers, significantly affecting sound perception and control compared to using headphones. However, it would reduce storage space for props in the adjacent room and also mean additional costs for the control room, ventilation, and air conditioning.
Both options were viable, so I had not ruled out either of them. I would make a decision during the construction process.
Wall soundproofing plan and building materials
It was July — you know, when the air outside gets really sticky and the temperatures are crazy high. So using wood for the load-bearing walls and ceiling of the studio didn’t seem like the best idea. Also, I was pretty sure that a wood and gypsum board structure wouldn't do well against the low frequencies coming from the road above. Plus, having a room four meters high was cool, but it would require having beams more than three and a half meters long to get a useful Foley room height of at least three meters. This non-standard length of timber would mess with the budget and delivery time. Everything seemed to go against this plan, so I had to find another way.
Concrete blocks?
In Turkey, most houses are constructed using cement blocks. While not the strongest or densest material in the world, Turkish builders are able to erect block walls quickly, which aligned with my timeline requirements. Additionally, these walls have good load-bearing capacity in humid conditions. The market offers a wide variety of cement blocks in different widths and heights, and they are typically delivered to the construction site within two days of purchase. Seemed like the perfect solution!
I had a road right upstairs, so I needed to lower the resonant frequency of the walls as much as possible to get great soundproofing on low frequencies. So I decided to use double-leaf walls with 210 mm cement blocks and place a porous absorber between the two walls to reduce resonance. The mass of one square meter of one wall, including the mortar, was about 105 kg/m2, much higher than walls made of a wooden frame and gypsum board. If I’d had more time, I would have filled the voids of the cement blocks with sand to increase the mass of the walls and reduce resonances, but I didn't end up doing that.
Beginning of work: filling openings in the room
Once the first batch of building materials was bought, the first thing we did was to fix up the existing walls of the building, which had holes and open spaces that were letting in a lot of outside noise. As I mentioned in Chapter I, the entrance to the space originally had metal roller shutters in place of a door. The space where windows should have been were completely open, allowing street noise into the room. It was easy for the Turkish artisans to seal up all the openings, and they finished in just two days.
As a result, the room was much quieter. Most low-frequency standing waves were gone, although not entirely eliminated. From a sound insulation point of view, the picture in the room began to become clearer. On the third day, the builders were all set to start building the walls of the Foley room. But then, a serious problem popped up out of nowhere...
Bummer #1
After closing the openings to stop the street noise, we could hear the floor resonating. When I checked the newly-sealed room, I found out that the floor, which seemed really thick and solid, was just a low-quality, thin layer of concrete. It turned out the construction of the floor was pretty bad—the cement didn't stick well to the ground, leaving air cavities throughout the room. Plus, the thickness of the cement layer varied from five to twelve centimeters in different spots.
We couldn't install heavy cement block walls on this kind of floor. Also, since the existing floor was firmly connected to the building's load-bearing walls, sound and vibration could easily travel from the walls and ceiling to the studio box, which really messed with the soundproofing of the Foley room. This meant I had to rethink my plan completely.
So I got the builders to tear up some of the floor to see what was underneath. It turned out that under this concrete mass, there was either sand or soil characteristic of the Turkish strip, which looked like compacted sand mixed with stones. Moreover, when it collected moisture, it turned into a large sandy solid mass that perfectly transmitted vibration. Are you freaking kidding me??
Okay, great. Let me give you an idea of how bad it was! When you stepped on this sand, you could easily feel the vibration transfer to the floor and spread throughout the entire room. You could also hit one side of the concrete floor with a crowbar and feel the same vibration on the other side, even though they weren't connected! I'd never seen soil like that before, given that I was used to the typical black soil of central Russia.
After recovering from the shock, I realized the studio walls needed to be decoupled from the load-bearing floor. I also decided to build a really thick and solid foundation for the walls to add more weight and reduce the vibrations traveling through the ground between the studio and the rest of the building. A massive foundation not only helps with sound insulation but also dampens vibrations.
Foundation for the walls of the Foley studio
Preparation
We started by marking where the Foley studio's load-bearing walls would go. Then the workers used a big concrete saw to cut out the floor, which took about a day. After that, we used a hammer drill to clear the rest of the concrete and hauled the debris outside.
It wasn't easy for the workers in those hot, muggy conditions. The room was really humid. There was no ventilation or air conditioning. Just ten minutes indoors was enough to cause moisture and sweat to literally drip off our clothes!
Despite the discomfort, we prepped the space and dug the soil down 40 centimeters below the existing floor level. The plan was to lay a foundation of forty centimeters of sturdy, metal-reinforced concrete. I didn't have time to calculate the exact depth needed for the foundation, so I just estimated it, making sure to add a margin for extra support. Since working with cement and building materials was inexpensive at the time, I didn't see the point in cutting costs and taking risks.
During the work we had to be as careful and prudent as possible because
in old Turkish houses, extra reinforcement runs underground and holds the walls and columns together, beefing up the structure. This reduces the risk of building collapse in an earthquake, and it would be uncool to damage that kind of reinforcement.
Two days later, some metal reinforcement arrived at the construction site. The builders used it to make a frame for the concrete foundation of the walls. It was nothing special — just a regular thing the Turks do everywhere to strengthen building foundations.
Pouring the foundation
I made sure to put rigid polystyrene foam (aka foamed plastic) on the outside of the perimeter and inside the pit before pouring. This would ensure a gap that would act as a vibration insulator between the future foundation of the studio walls, the existing floor, and the adjacent soil. Once the cement was set, we removed the foam.
The foundation base was prepared, and the builders set to work. While they were preparing the mixture, I could only guess what proportions of sand, cement, and water they used. They seemed to be eyeballing it. Okaaaay... I had to trust them, which wasn't easy, but luckily, the result was a really solid and strong foundation.
I take my hat off to the builders who worked on pouring the foundation for the studio walls. A team of five or six people worked incredibly fast and smoothly. They did all the work manually since they couldn't use a concrete mixer with the finished mixture. They mixed concrete outside with shovels and then transported it on carts. I was pretty surprised to see this, but I guess that's just how things are done in Turkey! They're really skilled at what they do.
Three days after completing the work, the foundation had gained sufficient strength to start building the walls.
Construction of studio walls
So, first things first, before the walls could be built, I had to get the room ready by swapping out all those old sewer pipes that were running along the walls and ceiling. It was pretty clear that they were on their last legs and would need replacing soon. If they were to burst after the studio walls were up, reaching and fixing them would be a real nightmare. I definitely didn't fancy ending up knee-deep in a messy situation like that, you know?
The plan was to build walls over three meters high. This would ensure that once the ceiling and acoustic finishing were done in the Foley room, the usable studio area would have a minimum three-meter height. It would also ensure that the room had nice proportions from an acoustic perspective.
Once all the pipes were replaced, we got going on the studio. We put up the outside walls of the studio and cut holes for the communication, ventilation, and air conditioning systems. Then we started building the inside walls, which were constructed the same way as the outside ones. There was a hundred millimeter air gap between the two walls, and we filled it with insulation to minimize resonances. I had to closely monitor the builders' work on every row of blocks to ensure the gap between the walls didn't deviate from that exact 100 mm.
Ultimately, we built around 200 m2 of walls using blocks with narrow air cavities inside. The narrow slots inside the blocks, if they resonated at all, would resonate on high frequencies. I couldn’t fill the cavities with sand — the openings were not wide enough.
I’m not kidding when I say I had to “babysit” the construction site from the morning to evening every day, which was quite a change from my experience in Russia. In Russia, I was accustomed to giving precise instructions to my builders and then checking their work at the end of the day, but here in Turkey, it was a whole different story. It felt like I was my supervisor's supervisor, and sometimes I even had to pick up the tools and show the craftsmen how I needed things to be done in order to meet my expectations. This highlighted the differences between the two countries’ building standards, as I mentioned earlier.
As we were building the studio walls, we inserted insulation between them. In Russia, I usually used Knauf or Rockwool mineral wool. These brands are pretty popular there — you can easily find insulation in any thickness and density from either one.In Mersin, we lucked out and found Knauf mineral wool, but only in classic 600x1000x100 mm slabs with a 32 kg/m3 density. These slabs are pretty soft and light. I was expecting a density of about 58 kg/m3, but surprisingly, according to my supervisor, insulation from other brands turned out to be twice as expensive.
I was worried that the soft wool insulation would start to sag and crumble inside the walls over time. But Turkish builders to the rescue! They fixed the insulation to the walls using bits of plastic cut from bottles and small nails. How cool is that? 
As a result of the design, the studio’s soundproofing is pretty heavy duty, with walls that are over half a meter thick and weigh 235 kilograms per square meter, thanks to their double-leaf construction with a layer of insulation on the inside. I aimed for the low-frequency soundproofing to be effective enough with this setup. However, it was too early to know for sure how well it would actually work. Soundproofing a studio requires ensuring that the doors and, most importantly, the ceiling have comparable soundproofing properties to the walls.
I'm not exactly sure how long it took to finish building the walls, but I think it took about seven days with five people working on it.
Before deciding to use cement blocks as the main building material, I initially planned to build the walls using solid red bricks. However, I couldn't find this material in Turkey. As an alternative, I could have used cast-in-place concrete by creating a wooden formwork and filling it with a ready-mixed cement mixture. But this would have made dismantling the structure difficult. Additionally, the concrete mixer couldn't reach the construction site for a continuous supply of the mixture. Doing this kind of work by hand would be incredibly costly, and we didn’t have that kind of budget.
August 2022: Ceiling — six weeks to the deadline
Ceiling plan
After finishing up with the walls, I jumped right into working on designing the ceiling. The design I wanted to try out seemed like something fresh and a little complicated. It was a new experience for me, but it turned out to be quite rewarding.
Since the studio had good soundproofing in the walls, I had to ensure the ceiling also had a high soundproofing factor without being too heavy.
Just like with the walls, I decided to go for a double-leaf design because the studio walls were double-layered. This allowed each ceiling level to be attached to a wall, accommodating their different heights and creating an air gap of around 150 mm between the independent ceiling frames.
When considering the high humidity and the significant size of the room, along with limitations on available building materials, I realized it was not reasonable to use wood for the ceiling frame. Typically, in a seven-meter-wide room with regular indoor humidity, I'd go for laminated veneer lumber (sometimes called structural composite lumber), which we used in one of our Foley rooms at Foley First. Kiln-dried wood holds up well under normal conditions and doesn't compromise the studio's airtightness. But in this case, using wood was risky, with high humidity and a seven to ten meter ceiling span.
After thinking about it, I figured steel could be a solid alternative. The great thing about a metal structure is its strength and ability to handle heavy materials. This would improve the chance of getting a high soundproofing rating for the ceiling at low frequencies, with minimal risk of the entire structure warping.
Hey boss, we're gonna need a bunch of steel!
Construction of the frame
As for steel, Turkey's got plenty of it. The steel we used to build the ceiling frame were these long H-shaped beams, about 15 centimeters high and 8 centimeters wide. That guaranteed the structure would be super strong. These H-beams were about six meters long when they were made, so we had to weld and add more steel to make 'em work for the whole seven meter span of the room. We also added metal plates to make the welded seams even stronger. I really didn't want the ceiling, which could weigh a couple of tons, to fall on the Foley artist while they were working. And yeah, I always had to keep earthquakes in mind.
So we had a team of six people working on unloading all the material and getting the load-bearing steel beams installed quickly. We aimed to finish installing and securing the main load-bearing beams in three days and then tightening them with thin metal tubes for extra rigidity. This would allow us to attach gypsum board as a facing material to the thin metal element. The load-bearing metal beams were installed directly in two levels on each of the constructed Foley studio walls.
I have to admit that, in my hurry, I didn't follow the basic rules of studio design and didn't use vibration decouplers between the steel ceiling frame and the walls it rested on. But the outer and inner walls of the studio box weren't rigidly connected. If vibration was transmitted from one wall to another, it was only through their common foundation, and that was minimal because the foundation had high mass and density. For the best effect, it would have been better to decouple these two walls by installing them on two independent foundations, but we didn't have time for that.
While we were constructing the ceiling, another team started puttying the walls.
In Turkey, it's customary for craftsmen working on walls to stick to that kind of work and not do other construction jobs like drywall. Turkish builders tend to specialize. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not. I’m mostly familiar with Russian builders, who are generalists — one team will do all the different jobs involved in building a studio from start to finish, without compromising quality.
When putting together the ceiling frame, we had to pay extra attention to a couple of columns that were already in the room. We had to make sure not to tightly connect the metal from the ceiling frame to the columns. This was to prevent vibration and noise from traveling from the columns to the ceiling.
At this point, it was tough to be in the room because there were no functioning ventilation or air conditioning systems yet.
Filling the frame with mineral wool
Once we assembled the metal frame, we filled both ceiling levels with 100 mm mineral wool. To ensure this light and bulky material stayed in place between the metal elements, we had connected the load-bearing steel beams with thin metal square pipes, which also made the whole ceiling more stable.
I always make sure to cover all the mineral wool with windproof non-woven material before finishing the walls with decorative fabric. It's just something I always do.
Don't forget about this — it’s critical: using windproof non-woven material can really make a difference. It helps keep out tiny particles and formaldehyde that can shed from mineral wool. I've seen situations where people just cover the mineral wool with decorative fabric in a room's acoustic design. But here's the thing: decorative or acoustic fabric doesn't do the same job as a wind barrier. It lets those harmful particles into the room, and that's not good for your health. It's crucial to use the correct materials.
I warned you, so now I have nothing to worry about.
Cladding the ceiling frame with plasterboard
The basic concept of the ceiling design was to cover the metal frame with three layers of plasterboard on the outside and two layers on the inside. Using plasterboardis a standard soundproofing method based on the mass-spring-mass principle. The 12.5 mm Knauf plasterboard that I usually work with was readily available in Turkey and sold at a reasonable price. The entire ceiling structure looked like this from top to bottom:
3 layers of plasterboard
100 mm mineral wool
150 mm air gap
100 mm mineral wool
2 layers of plasterboard
The distance between the solid layers of the soundproof shell was about 350 mm. This inner space had different environments (the air gap and mineral wool), which is great for the sound insulation of the structure. The ceiling structure was definitely an opportunity to reduce the resonant frequency and increase the sound insulation efficiency at low frequencies for the room as a whole.
Screwing two layers of drywall on the inside of the room at a height of three meters was no big deal.
The outside was harder. The tricky part was that from the outside of the studio, the distance from the metal ceiling frame to the original ceiling of the building was only 30-35 centimeters. In order to maximize the usable area inside the room and its height, I deliberately planned for such a small gap, but I checked with the builders multiple times to be sure they could fix the drywall on the outside of the room with such a small space at their disposal. They assured me that it wouldn't be a problem.
But wait! When the builders actually started working on this, they were really surprised by the parameters. Ah, okay.
It took them three days to get the plasterboard installed and screwed to the ceiling frame on the outside. The conditions really were pretty challenging. They had to get the materials to a height of 3.5 meters without a lift. They had to work around the columns, cutting out drywall, putting on putty, and sealing the seams. The plasterboard didn't have a solid connection to the walls or columns, inside or outside the room. We used Knauf vibration tape as a cushioning material between the columns and drywall, putting on three layers.
After the first three layers of drywall were laid and screwed, the plasterboards began to sag between the support bars, and, more importantly, small gaps formed between the layers. Failing to secure the three layers together appropriately would have compromised the soundproofing of the ceiling and could have led to additional unwanted resonances. It turned out that the support bars were spaced too far apart at 120 centimeters. So I had to purchase additional steel tubes to reduce the spacing to 60 centimeters. After this modification, the three layers of plasterboard on the exterior of the ceiling no longer sagged, and they formed a solid, 37.5-millimeter-thick layer.
There was this crazy incident. Some workers were unloading a bunch of drywall using a crane, and things went wrong real quick. The crane's center of gravity got messed up, the cable broke, and boom! A whole pallet of plasterboard fell to the ground from a height of 30 centimeters. Luckily, no one got hurt, and the building materials were all good. If you think the picture below is Photoshopped, nope... The truck literally hung in the air for half a minute. That's nuts!
The ceiling is ready
So, a couple of weeks later, the ceiling was all done! It's crazy to think about how much weight that thing can hold. The builders swear it can even support a car if need be, and I'm starting to believe them. At first, I was worried about using metal in the ceiling because of the sound resonance steel can potentially produce. But after a year of working in this studio, I can confidently say that if there's any resonance, we can't hear it in person or in the recordings.
Ventilation and air conditioning
Ventilation system
I didn't come up with anything revolutionary for the ventilation system. Our Foley Rooms and Control Rooms in Foley First use direct inlet and outlet air systems with air filters, but they don't have humidification, or dehumidification features. Through experience, I've found that it's best to have the system running with a strong airflow only when we're not recording. This saves significantly on ventilation system costs and, more importantly, eliminates the risk of sound from the ventilation unit interfering with the recording.
I made sure to create all the necessary openings in the studio walls for air ducts, air conditioning pipes, and electrical cables as we were building the walls. Luckily, I managed to keep their number to a minimum. The more holes in a studio's soundproofing design, the more carefully you need to approach them, as otherwise sound may leak into the room.
I typically prefer to install powerful air ventilation units that can completely replace the air in the room with fresh air within five to seven minutes while we are not recording. However, if I instead wanted a system that would continuously supply air to the studio room during recording while minimizing noise from the ventilation unit, I would have to reduce the speed of the incoming airflow to 1 m/s, and I would prefer a Foley room with a much larger area. But that wasn’t the case for this room. And the HVAC system I needed was not going to be cheap.
I didn't see the need to use a ventilation system with an air recovery function since the climate in Turkey is warm, and there was no need to heat the incoming air from the street. Besides, the studio box functioned like a sealed thermos. In the summer, the air coming from the street quickly cools down when entering the room thanks to the air conditioning system. Even when it's 35°C outside, with the ventilation system running at medium power, the temperature indoors does not exceed 22°C. During winter, when the temperature outside drops to 5°C at night, the studio maintains a comfortable 18°C for the Foley artist. That’s why I say the studio is like a thermos — it maintains a relatively stable internal temperature, regardless of what’s going on outside.
As I was quickly putting together the studio design, I realized that the room would have a volume of about 180 m3. I figured I'd need a ventilation unit that could handle at least 2500 m3/hr to ensure good air circulation. This way, I could quickly replace all the exhaust air in the room within five to seven minutes. When selecting the system, I also had to consider the length of the ductwork and the presence of a silencer, both of which can affect efficiency.
I decided to keep the ventilation system pretty straightforward. It involved about twenty meters of ductwork, the ventilation unit, and a big silencer. To ventilate the studio, I arranged it so that the exhaust air would exit through the open doors of the Foley room with minimal resistance. Then the air would be pushed into an adjacent room where an extra fan, running in reverse, would send the air outside. This way, both the studio and the adjacent room would stay ventilated, and I wouldn't need to install two independent ventilation systems.
The ventilation unit is positioned outside the studio and is connected to the original room's ceiling through vibration-damping elements. When air from outside enters the ventilation unit, it first passes through a silencer, which is also located outside the recording room. Subsequently, the air travels into the studio through a smaller-diameter air duct containing sound-absorbing material.
This setup reduces aerodynamic noise and prevents sound from the street from entering the studio room through the air ducts.
Later, I made some updates to the ventilation system. The ducts had rigid connections to the studio walls, which allowed structural noise to enter the Foley studio. To fix this issue, I sawed the aluminum duct in two and secured the pieces together with aluminum tape to break the connection.
Silencer
So, while we were waiting for the ventilation system unit to arrive at the construction site, my supervisor and I were working on designing a silencer for the system. It's a crucial part for a sound studio ventilation system. Building this box was pretty fun, but I have to admit, I ended up cutting the plywood to the wrong size twice — oops!
You know, you can buy industrial mufflers, but for some reason, I've never been interested in them. Maybe it's because they're kind of expensive, and I'm not sure how well they work. When it comes to ventilation systems, I prefer making my own silencers. Basically, it's a closed and sealed box that slows down the air, reducing the aerodynamic noise. Plus, there's this sound-absorbing material inside that helps dampen the airborne noise coming from the ventilation unit and street. This kind of silencer really works like a charm!
I am pretty sure, you can find a plan for this design on Google. You can even calculate the silencer volume needed for your specific room and ventilation system power.
Using a silencer in your ventilation system will definitely reduce its power, but it will also help to cut down on the noise from the street and the ventilation unit. You can make the silencer box using different materials, but I prefer using thick plywood. It's easy, effective, and doesn't break the bank. Twenty or twenty-two millimeter plywood is enough to keep the structure sturdy and prevent noise from getting in from the room where it's located. For the internal filling, you can use mineral wool or acoustic foam for sound absorption. Just remember to tightly cover the mineral wool with a wind barrier to prevent particles from getting into the air you breathe.
Make sure all the joints between the plywood pieces and the inlet and outlet openings of the silencer (its connections to the air ducts) are sealed properly to prevent any air leaks.
All set!
Electric heads-up
I did encounter a problem in one of our studios. The ventilation system had a heating unit with a power of 7 kW. Whenever we turned the ventilation system on or off, it sent strong electrical impulses into the electrical network, affecting the professional audio gear. I realized that the ventilation system should have its own separate electrical network and not be connected to the one the audio gear was on. Companies that install ventilation or electrical systems often don't know all the details needed for a sound studio, as they usually cater to residential clients. It would be a good idea to make them aware of this potential problem.
Regarding the electrical setup, it's important to power all audio gear through a high-quality stabilizer, preferably with a backup function. After installing the stabilizer, we achieved a stable 220 volts and clean 50 Hz, despite the input voltage fluctuating between 225 to 255 volts. Our sound equipment definitely appreciated the upgrade.
Air conditioner
When it came to the AC, I had to find the most powerful household wall-mounted air conditioner available in the city. It had to cool, heat, and, especially, remove moisture from the air (Mersin's humidity is just crazy — did I mention that before?). After looking around, I ended up choosing the most powerful LG model available at the time, with a capacity of 24,000 BTU.
When it's super humid in Mersin in August, the air conditioning system pulls out a whopping 35 liters of condensate during twelve hours of running at night. I can vouch for this from experience!
The installation of the ventilation and air conditioning systems are all done! We've flipped the switch, and it's like a breath of fresh air!
An additional wall
So, after setting up the studio box, I thought I should add more soundproofing by putting up another wall in the second part of the room, next to the road. This wall also created a small vestibule space by separating the two parts of the room. It was just a normal wall made of the same concrete blocks as the studio walls, and it was mortared, and plastered on both sides. After we built it, the vestibule was more than two meters wide, which was great for extra soundproofing and for dividing the workspace.
The team that helped with the studio walls had to leave for another job, so a new builder I hadn't worked with before jumped in to help with this wall. Even though it might seem straightforward to build this kind of wall, I ran into some unexpected surprises.
Once the builder finished the first one and a half meters of the wall, it was obvious that the wall was curving like an arc. I pointed this out, but the builder insisted it was normal and there was no issue. I had to spend ten minutes explaining that such a structure is unsafe and could collapse easily during an earthquake or if it's leaned on or bumped too hard. However, the builder refused to redo the work and instead resorted to kicking the wall with all his might to try to straighten it out! It worked! 
Doors
I remember spending a bunch of time figuring out what kind of door to use when I built my first home control room. I came up with this solution: a super thick door made of plywood, a wood frame, mineral wool, and a vinyl membrane. I think I got the idea from Philip Newell, but I’m not sure. Even though it was only 60 by 180 cm, the door weighed about 90 kg and had really awesome soundproofing. But it wasn't very durable, so I didn't use this type of door in my later studios. Also, building such doors by hand was a real pain.
Fire doors are also common in recording studios, but they require wide doorways and are quite expensive. I needed to find a cheaper and quicker option.
When I was setting up my second control room ten years ago, I ran into some tough acoustic design challenges. I needed some guidance, so I reached out to a well-known acoustic engineer in Moscow. When it came to the doors, he suggested using PVC doors with three layers of glass of different thicknesses and two vacuum chambers. It sounded simple and the best part was that these doors could be custom-made without breaking the bank. After trying them out for the first time, I can't imagine building a studio without them!I talked in more detail about such doors in my other article about the construction of a control room. Here's the link.
After speaking with my builders to see if they knew anyone who could make custom doors in Mersin, they hooked me up with the right person. The craftsperson made all three doors in just ten days, and we had them installed in the studio in no more than three hours. Two doors were for the Foley studio, one in each of the double leafs of the studio wall, creating a neat 45-centimeter vestibule that really helps with soundproofing. The third door went on a new wall, creating a vestibule between the whole room and the studio box.
All set for the first round of tests!
Finally, the soundproofing for the studio was almost done. The walls, ceiling, and doors were all in place and the cracks in the room were sealed. I was so excited to do the first tests! I didn't bother with using a measuring microphone because I figured any serious issues would have been noticeable to my ears at that moment.
It's important to understand that checking how well a room can block out sound if it's acoustically untreated can be pretty tricky. With unfinished concrete walls that are parallel (I didn't even think about making them slanted), you'd expect the room to have a lot of resonances across different frequencies, making the soundproofing seem bad. Still, running the test at this stage was super important and really informative.
I switched off the ventilation, walked into the room, shut all the doors, and the first thing that popped into my head was,
"What the heck?!"
Bummer #2
I could hear every single car and truck driving on the road above!
It was like there was nothing to block the sound from coming into the room and getting louder from the echoes. What surprised me the most at that moment was that the sounds that came through and bounced back had a frequency range of 200 to 400 Hz!
After analyzing the situation, I quickly ruled out any issues with the walls. I mean, it would be pretty crazy if the sound at this frequency could travel through those massive walls. If there were any major design mistakes with the walls, it would more likely show up in the low-frequency range. Also, I highly doubted that the problem was coming from the ceiling.
Besides the car noise, there was this distinct buzzing in the room at around 250 Hz.
In a big room without any acoustic treatment, it's really tough to figure out where the sound is leaking into the room because once it comes, it bounces off all the hard surfaces and gets louder. But I started listening really carefully.
After two hours of non-stop digging, I finally figured out the issue: it was the columns!
These little guys, which I had totally ignored when soundproofing the room, channeled all the noise from the street and the building right into the Foley studio.
Once again, this proved the golden rule of soundproofing: the soundproofing of your room is a soundproofing of its weakest element. True!
Soundproofing of columns
Alright, let's tackle this. I figured soundproofing the columns didn't seem too hard and shouldn't take much time. At the same time, I thought we should start working on the acoustic finishing of the walls and ceiling. The builders wouldn’t get in each other's way, so we could work on both tasks at the same time.
The method used for soundproofing the columns was pretty simple. I took a classic approach. It involved two layers of 12.5 mm plasterboard on an aluminum frame, with roll insulation filling the space between the frame and the column itself.
Before I put in the aluminum frame, I decoupled the existing floor from the column by cutting part of the concrete floor next to the column and reinforcing the base of the column. That way, the existing floor and the columns weren't rigidly connected, so no structural noise could travel between them.
I installed the lower part of the aluminum frame on the existing floor with several layers of Knauf vibration decoupling tape, ensuring there was no rigid connection with the columns. The upper part of the aluminum frame was attached to a wood framing fixed to the ceiling, which had been installed for acoustic finishing. The structure wasn't fixed to the column in any other places. I later found that this design is reliable and stable. Oh, you will see too!
While working on the column problems, I realized that a wooden frame had already been placed on the ceiling for the acoustic finishing. Because I was in a rush (note to self: never rush when building a studio!), I ignored that the metal frame didn't fit tightly to the ceiling plasterboard through the vibration tape, leaving a four-centimeter gap. This mistake cost me extra work to redo the entire soundproofing structure of the columns. I'll elaborate on this later.
The bulky cladding took up a lot of space. Initially, each column was 40x40 centimeters, but after the finishing, they grew to almost one square meter. To be precise, with the sound insulation, the dimensions became 90x90 centimeters. It looked solid, but I regretted losing that much useful space. On the plus side, this design allowed for the installation of shelves, heh.
The work done went above and beyond my expectations! All the annoying noise from cars and other stuff in the 200-400 Hz range totally vanished. Awesome job!
Acoustic ceiling finishing
I really dig the ceiling design we have had in all our studios. It's a classic Armstrong drop ceiling, attached to the room’s ceiling with a 15-centimeter gap. We fill that space with 10 cm thick mineral wool, held in place by the thin aluminum profile of the ceiling frame and the Armstrong tiles themselves. It's super practical and easy to put together, and if any Armstrong tiles get messed up, they can be easily swapped out.
I want to emphasize that the tiles we use for our studio have to be special sound-absorbing ones, not those cheap office tiles. This is to stop high frequencies from bouncing off the ceiling.
Basically, the idea was to stick to the same plan and build the Armstrong ceiling in this Foley studio as well. So, I figured, finishing up the ceiling with acoustic treatment shouldn't take long, especially since I don't put huge bass traps behind the ceiling (but I might place them behind walls or in the corners to save space overhead).
I asked my supervisor to find all the stuff for the Armstrong ceiling in the city, but guess what? There were no sound-absorbing tiles anywhere close by. Not in the city, not in the nearest cities. The only place we could get them in the right quantity was Istanbul, but they were four times more expensive than regular tiles, which blew our budget. We also checked with a factory to make the tiles, and while the price was okay, they needed three weeks to make them. This was not feasible for our timeline, so we had to look for other solutions. Again.
Our metal ceiling could withstand heavy loads. Well, well, well, it looked like we could use the wood! Wood planks are pretty light, easy to set up, and we can find the right sizes in stores. Even if the wood starts to change shape over time from the moisture, it wouldn’t mess up the studio's sound insulation because we’d be attaching the wood directly to the solid steel ceiling frame.
The acoustic ceiling design was pretty straightforward. First, we attached the longitudinal beams to the steel frame of the ceiling through two layers of plasterboard. Then, we screwed transverse boards, which supported the mineral wool, into the beams. Lastly, some decorative fabric was fixed on the boards to make the ceiling look nice and finished. It's worth noting that the beams and boards didn't touch the walls or the columns.
I was excited to design this ceiling because, unlike the standard white Armstrong tiles (which are the cheapest option), I could now cover the ceiling with fabric of any color. I'd always wanted a dark blue ceiling in my studio, and now I finally had the chance to make it happen!
The space between the wooden planks and the ceiling was filled with 10 cm thick mineral wool. It's important to cover the mineral wool with a wind-proof fabric to keep out tiny particles. Also, try to cover it tightly so the wind barrier doesn't sag under the weight of the wool, creating bumps in the decorative fabric.
Ten centimeters of sound-absorbing material for the ceiling is pretty minimal for a room like this. Really, it won't solve low-frequency resonance issues at all. I thought about adding additional panels in the ceiling to target specific frequency ranges and critical zones. Covering the whole ceiling with 10 cm thick absorber is just the basic acoustic finish.
All in all, it looks good and sounds good!
September 2022: Acoustic wall finishing — 20 days to the deadline
The walls were finished using a similar acoustic treatment to the ceiling. However, this time we used 120 mm boards directly attached to the wall. By screwing the boards directly into the wall with long self-tapping screws instead of metal corners, I hoped to prevent the wood frame from deforming over time.
The boards surprisingly turned out to be straight and correctly shaped.
You don't need to be a construction expert to secure boards straight. But the builders did the work by eye, trying to maintain the plane and sizes of the frame. Well, during installation, I discovered that the walls themselves were not built smoothly, and as a result, the board did not fit tightly to them everywhere. Oh, boy, really?!
Fortunately, from the point of view of acoustics and sound insulation, this did not have any consequences. And by that time, I had already gotten used to the idea that aesthetically everything would look different than I expected.
After a while, the builders gave up on even trying to attach the boards to the wall with the right alignment and distance. I couldn't take it and went to the nearest big construction store. I came back with a laser level, which the builders initially didn't want to use. But I insisted, and eventually they got into it and started to enjoy using the device.
Finally, the frame was ready. I filled it with 10 cm mineral wool and added the wind barrier, just like the ceiling.
I had just twenty days left before I was supposed to start working on a feature film in this studio. Luckily, my work as a Foley artist was only recording the footsteps for this project, with the rest of the work being taken care of by my team in Russia.
Now I had to focus on designing the important surfaces: the concrete texture, the tiles, and a surface filled with dirt. I planned to work out other textures for the film as I progressed. And yeah, I still didn’t have a single pair of shoes to record my footsteps. It was necessary to go to Istanbul to the market to bring back two large bags of second-hand shoes.
Time was running out. It was urgent to start building textures, but first...
What the buzz? 250hz
In the first soundproofing test, I could hear an annoying hum at a frequency of 250 Hz. After soundproofing the columns, the unpleasant sound almost disappeared.
Almost.
So I tested the sound isolation with a microphone at our standard gain level. It was evident from the waveform that some noise was still seeping into the room, similar to the sound of a small motor. I aimed to completely eliminate any noise from the roomtone.
I checked out all the walls around the building and figured out that the annoying hum was coming from the air conditioning unit of a fridge upstairs. The noise was traveling right through the walls and ceiling thanks to the unit being firmly connected to the building. The holes in the wall for the air conditioning pipes were also letting in more air noise.
To solve the problem, my landlord, Fayik, helped me build a standalone concrete support for the unit, completely detached from the building. We mounted the air conditioner onto this new structure using vibration-reducing elements. I also sealed up all the holes in the walls with mineral wool and concrete. I even added some mineral wool between the air conditioner and the building's wall to dampen the sound.
After all this, the annoying 250 Hz hum completely disappeared. But, as luck would have it, I soon discovered another, more serious problem!
Problems at 90-110hz
It's not uncommon for an acoustic engineer to feel a bit stressed if they encounter a problem in the 100 Hz range after completing soundproofing in a studio. Having a heart attack is really easy, haha.
Once the 250 hz buzz was gone, the next obvious issue that stood out in the microphone signal was a 90 Hz hum in the room, which was visible on the spectrum analyzer. Depending on the microphone's position, the hum would either get louder or quieter. By essentially playing a game of “warmer/cooler” using the microphone, I found the main source of the noise seemed to be at the center of the room, and it closely resembled the sound of a refrigerator compressor. Upon closer inspection, recordings also revealed a low-frequency hum from passing buses on the road above.
I was faced with two possibilities: either I overlooked something that could still be fixed, or… there was a fundamental flaw in the room's soundproofing design, requiring a significant overhaul of the studio. I really hoped for the first.
Due to time constraints when choosing the room, I didn't pay much attention to the fact that there was a small store directly above me. Although I did notice several refrigerators there, I didn't think they would cause much trouble. I already knew the store's owner, and he kindly agreed to temporarily turn off all the refrigeration equipment at my request. This allowed me to take additional measurements to try to confirm that the hum was indeed coming from the refrigerators.
As it turned out, I was right! Once all the equipment was shut off, the irritating low-frequency buzz in the studio completely disappeared. But I couldn't do much about the low-frequency pressure from passing buses, which became a more pressing issue.
Refrigerators decoupling
So, picture an imaginary line running from the store’s big refrigerators down straight down into the studio. The imaginary line came down right into the middle of the Foley studio. These units were just sitting directly on the store's floor, with no isolation from any vibrations, right above the center of the studio. When you put your hand on the floor next to the refrigerators, you could easily feel all the vibrations coming from the equipment and hear the low-frequency hum from the compressor. I focused on the structural noise instead of worrying about the air noise.
I needed to place a vibration decoupling element between the refrigerator and the floor to dampen the vibrations, or even go as far as putting the refrigerators on springs. I couldn't find suitable springs in the city, so despite the heavy weight of the refrigerators, I opted to try using rubber, which had successfully dampened the vibrations of the air conditioner on the building's wall. To prevent the refrigerator legs from pressing through the vibration-damping material, I used an additional 20 mm thick piece of wood between the refrigerators and the rubber.
To implement my idea, I asked the store owner to help lift the refrigerator, but man, I seriously underestimated how heavy those things were, haha! The store owner called a friend, who called another friend, and with the help of a car jack and four people, we finally got it done. It was actually pretty fun!
After sorting out the vibrating noises from the refrigerators and from the air conditioning unit, I felt like I had solved about 70% of the problem. But that wasn't good enough for me.
Still, remembering all the issues I have had with the floor and soil, I decided to hold off on any more soundproofing improvements for now and focus on building Foley pits instead. I needed to see if any problems would pop up in this area, and I needed to get an idea of how much time the remaining work would take since the deadline was just a couple of weeks away.
Partial dismantling of the floors and pouring of Foley pits
As you already know, the floor in the studio was basically a thin, uneven concrete slab that didn't fit snugly to the ground. When you walked on it, the whole floor made low-frequency drum-like sounds.
Creating the three Foley surfaces — concrete, tile, and dirt — was impossible on such a floor. No matter what surface the Foley artist was working with, the sound would always have the floor's resonance. The solution was to remove the concrete slab bit by bit, reach the ground, and then install new surfaces on it.
I liked the idea of placing the concrete and tile surfaces in the center of the Foley room. It seemed like the room had the best acoustics in that spot, with the sound bouncing around nicely and being easy to control. This was way better than putting the surfaces near the wall or, even worse, in the corner, where the sound is boxy, dry, and full of low-frequency resonances.
So we partially removed the floor to see if it made sense. Unfortunately, the situation didn't improve.
Just stepping on the ground made it vibrate and generate a sound in the 70-160 Hz range that spread throughout the room. It felt like the same amount of vibration from my step on the soil transferred to the concrete floor. The ground looked like a solid slab of compacted sand with air pockets inside. That was not cool…
What are we going to build?
Alright, let's figure this out.
I decided to make the concrete texture surface 120 x 150 centimeters. It needed to be big enough for the Foley artist to work comfortably. This surface isn't just for recording steps on concrete or asphalt; I can also use it to create other textures used in movies on top of it, like wood, metal, or gravel. If the concrete base in the studio is really solid, then all the textures I place on it will sound solid too, without any extra resonances from the concrete. It's like a one-size-fits-all base. I often use these tricks so I don't take up the whole room and always have the best acoustic position.
The next surface was supposed to be a tile texture. Basically, it's the same concrete structure but with ceramic tiles installed on it. I decided the dimensions of the concrete base should be 120 x 120 centimeters.
To lower the resonant frequency, we had to make both designs heavier than average. Here, this meant digging a 35-centimeter-deep hole and preparing it for cement pouring. Before pouring the cement, we put a metal frame inside to strengthen the structure, just like we did with the wall foundations.
The third surface was going to be the dirt texture. To make that happen, we removed part of the floor to get to the soil. Then, we made a small depression and filled it with dirt instead of the existing sandy soil.
I made sure that the concrete structures being put up weren't rigidly connected to the surrounding soil or the existing floor. It needed to be like a separate mini-foundation. I found that using polystyrene foam was the best way to isolate this foundation from soil and floor. Once the concrete had set, the foam was removed, creating air cavities that I filled with soft mineral wool.
In a nutshell, the main goal was to create two independent concrete structures with a large mass, isolated from the floor, and not directly touching the ground on the sides, but standing on it.
Pouring concrete
I've experimented a lot with the proportions of concrete, sand, and water while building basic surfaces in our Foley First studios in the past. In my home country, I found that using ready-mix concrete (a mixture of sand and concrete), and adding 30% pure cement and some small crushed stone results in a super solid structure that doesn't crack or resonate over time. Although the resulting surface doesn't always benefit sound for films (the shoes sound tiny — if I wear big boots it sounds like sneakers), it's better to have a surface like this than hollow concrete. I've also found that using a vibrating machine when pouring concrete is crucial, as it helps displace air and some moisture from the mixture, reducing the chance of air cavities forming and causing overtones in the concrete surface.
Having experience, I knew what I should do, how I should do it, and what result I would get. However, I ran into a problem when I couldn't find ready-mix concrete in the local market. That meant I had to figure out the right proportions and mix it up myself. I spent a good half-day digging into this online, and I found some instructions that seemed reasonable. After that, I reached out to my buddy in Istanbul who speaks English and Turkish, and asked him to explain to my Turkish builders what technology should be used (I definitely didn't want to rely on Google Translate for that conversation!). They got all the materials, made the mix, set up the reinforcement, and were ready to start pouring the surfaces.
When the workers were mixing sand and cement, I noticed that the finished mixture contained a lot of sand and seemed too loose. It wasn't right, but I didn't want to interfere, so I just watched and let the pros do their job.
Everything was done by hand and took about eight hours. We spent most of the time using the vibration machine. After pouring, the builders used a "polishing" machine (they called it a "helicopter") to make the concrete smoother and get rid of any rough edges.
Has it gotten better?
After a couple of days, the concrete gained basic strength, and I was excited to see how well it was working and whether I had eliminated resonances.
The first thing that caught my eye when I tried to interact with the surface was that it crumbled easily! My worries about the mix having too much sand and too little cement were right. I could only guess who messed up and why, or who didn't understand the instructions. But be that as it may, the result was frankly bad.
On the third day after pouring the concrete, I put on a woman's heels and tried to work on it in a less gentle mode. It ended up leaving dents on the concrete. I didn’t think that the cement would become harder even after a week, or that any amount of extra curing time would correct the situation since, in these climatic conditions, the cement mixture gains its basic strength in the first two days.
As for the sound, it seemed like the structure was just slightly harder than the existing floor, but not quite hard enough. Maybe it was because of the high sand content, making the concrete too soft and resulting in a hollow sound. I didn't think that changing the proportions of concrete, sand, and water and redoing the entire structure would give me the desired result, though. The problem lay somewhere deeper. Literally and figuratively.
Something had to be done, but I’d done so much already. The last thing I could think to do that could be quickly implemented was to completely remove the entire existing floor, and I wasn't entirely convinced that it would fix the low-frequency resonances problem. But I needed to check in order to calm my doubts.
Just a week before the scheduled start for work on the feature film, I increasingly felt that I couldn't launch the Foley studio on time. Getting to Plan B now was absolutely necessary. (Spoiler: I managed to figure it out, and we got the feature film recorded and delivered on time.)
September 2022: Complete dismantling of floors — 6 days out
So the team that had previously worked on removing a section of the floor came back to take out the entire existing floor. They assured me it would only take two days, which sounded good to me.
I emphasized multiple times during the discussion that the section of the floor where the soundproof shell of the columns was located should not be removed. I made it extremely clear that they should carefully cut the floor around the columns approximately 20 cm from them, leaving that part untouched. Then I left.
In the evening of the first day, I came to check their work. At that moment, the builders reached one of the columns, and I found that one of the sides of the soundproof shell of one of the columns was hanging in the air! I had to repeat once again, "You guys don’t need to do this!"
"Please, just don't!"
To which I received a clear and understandable confirmation. Leaving the builders alone with the hammer drill again, I arrived the next day as soon as I got a message from them that all the work had been completed.
Are you seriously kidding me?!
Hey, remember when I told you that the aluminum and plasterboard structure we built to soundproof the columns looked solid? Well, look at this thing of beauty which is just hanging there in the air, barely held up by four self-tapping screws attached to the ceiling. Quite the sight, huh?
Total bummer
As for the ground, after removing the floor, the compressed sand continued to produce a booming sound at around 100 Hz when interacted with as if nothing had changed — and spreading the room with a long decay. In the corners, there was a high concentration of sound pressure at a frequency of 50-100 Hz, indicating that the room couldn't absorb low frequencies. I’d need to add a lot of absorbers to address this issue in low frequencies!
But it was puzzling why the floor was generating sound.
Stopping
This project was a total nightmare and really messed with my head. I was frustrated with everyone and everything because I kept running into unexpected problems and obstacles at every turn.
Plus, I was running low on funds, so rushing to finish the project and feeling mentally drained didn't seem like a good idea. Pushing forward in that state would have likely resulted in more mistakes and even more financial loss. I knew I needed to take a break, recharge, organize my thoughts, and approach the problem from a different perspective. Right then, though, I couldn’t see a solution that would allow me to launch the studio in the next few days.
So, I grabbed a bottle of wine, turned everything off, and went home, dripping wet from the indoor humidity.
What's wrong with you, Turkish climate??
How To Build a Foley Studio. Chapter III
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Thanks for reading!
Text edited by Rebecca Wilson Jones
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Yuri Pridachin
Own and operate at Foley First. Foley Artist / Foley Supervisor