Technique for creating crowd footsteps

I'm working on a machinima film shot in Unreal Tournament 3. At one point there is a large (15 or so) crowd of soldiers walking into an open space. The floor is stone.

I was wondering if there was a good method for creating crowd footsteps from simple left/right boots on stone foley. All of the soldiers were the same shoes.

The shot is a wide one of all of the soldiers walking to a point and then stopping. It lasts about 8-10 seconds.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Ricky

The way I would approach it would be similar to what Guy has described - lots of source material, varying amounts of volume, EQ and reverb, and automate volume / reverb as the crowd moves.

Depending on the visuals available, I would synchronise all footfalls (using a multi-track such as Vegas) in the foreground of the scene - using volume, pan, eq and reverb to make a nice mix. I would then add a sweetener sample or 2 of a 'crowd marching' or something similar.

You can simulate crowds (marching, or for example clapping) using this multi-track technique with pretty good results, but it does require time and effort.
As Guy mentioned, if you want to add webbing / cloth movement as well, this will add further to the crowd effect.

Well, my point was that if the steps are regimental left/right/left/right, then it's quite useful to be able to "play" them into a sequencer to get a natural feel, rather than spotting them in manually (although this would work too of course - it would just take a bit longer to get the feel right). I guess you'd have to pre-mix some of your takes together to create groups of "stomp" sounds, and then map these to individual keys. Then it's just a case of tapping out the steps as you watch the video playback.
Layer this with some of the other sounds I mentioned, and you should get a fairly convincing effect. Hopefully.

This technique will only really work with a long camera shot though. If you want to get in close, then you'd need to consider panning the different elements.

The way I'd do it would depend on whether you wanted a sort of regimental, "soldiers marching" effect, or just a rabble of lots of people coming in.

Firstly, I'd get a LOT of source material together (depends on the length of the sequence though I guess). So: lots and lots of steps. Different footwear, Light/heavy steps, scuffs, etc. I know you said they were wearing the same shoes, but doing this will give the resulting sound more texure and variation. (unless of course, you wanted a more robotic sound).

Also, any foley/cloth movement sounds to support the steps is always good. Canvas bags with zips, key chains, blankets, all can be combined and used to create good "soldiers carrying equipment" noises.

Then, you could use a software sampler to construct a patch that played these different elements together on a range of keys. I find this a much easier and more natural way of producing natural motion type sounds.

If it's just a disorganised crowd, then drop the sounds in randomly, but perhaps pick out a couple of standout members of the crowd to do specific sounds for. (Perhaps one is carrying the biggest gun, and standing at the front?) Otherwise, don't bother with syncing all the steps - it will drive you insane, and wont actually be worth the effort.

If they are particularly mean looking bunch, maybe sweeten the sounds with some low-frequency rumbles to make them more menacing-sounding. If they are marching along, perhaps try automating the rumble volume with the steps.

To create the effect of walking into the open space, you'll need to automate some volume, EQ and reverb (of course, the processing would depend on the perspective of the sound and what sort of environments they are transitioning from/to).

Hope that helps.

Guy