Rain Computers

So many outstanding movies don't get the attention or recognition they deserve because sound was either ignored, or only thought of in passing. The best films are always aided by someone with an ear for things.

I just had a conversation the other day with a young friend of mine looking to go into the film industry. He was concerned that there wasn't a career in "making movies", that his parents weren't sure he could making a living out of it. Knowing how genuinely intelligent and motivated he was, I challenged him. "Do you know what jobs go into making a movie?". He responded, "Well, I know there's the director, writer, cameraguy... to be honest, not sure what else." When I went through the quick list of roles I could pull out of my head on a modest shoot, then started diving into the post-production roles, his eyes widened - and breath exhaled. Phew - he thought he had to come up with a genius screenplay to get a job in the biz!

Truth is, I couldn't recognize a great screenplay if David Seidler handed me "The King's Speech" in draft form and said, "Hey, can you work this out for me?" While I may have had other aspirations years ago, I ended up in audio after a short-lived attempt at being a legitimate musician - and it's what I can speak about. Being involved in production and post-production helped me go through the various options for starting out in sound for film with my young friend... and gave him plenty to arm himself with in his quest to convince his parents he wasn't crazy for wanting to make movies.

Sound on the Shoot

(Shoot recordist, boom operator)

On a production set, you can have any number of general production types from writing to lighting to recording to coffee-pickingupping. In audio, these folks are most commonly the recordists and boom operators. For simplification, let's look at an interview situation: what can be a simple one-camera, two-mic shoot.

Audio-wise, you're generally looking at a lavalier mic clipped to the interviewee's collar. A lavalier (commonly known as "lav") mic is generally a very small diaphragm condenser mic powered either wired or wirelessly by a battery-powered pack clipped to their belt or resting in their pocket. In conjunction with this is often a boom microphone either held or mounted above the camera (out of sight) a few feet away, and aimed directly at the interviewee's mouth - and operated by the boom operator. Having these two options is crucial in the event you have wind or other environmental issues, or an interviewee who can't sit still. Mic placement, just as with recording music, is key - you just may not have the time to do it as specifically as you may be accustomed to with studio stuff.

These mics are generally run through a limiter before they hit the recording deck (tape or digital). This is where things can get tricky. As a post-production mixer, I have received a lot of badly recorded audio in my day. Yes, sometimes it is result of extenuating circumstances related to location or weather — particularly when dealing with documentaries where the heat of the moment action can prevent the perfect take. Other times, it's not setting the darn limiter in a way so that it either a) isn't hitting the incoming audio's threshold so low or ratio so hard that everything distorts always, or b) not hitting it at all so that the loud stuff always distorts, but the soft stuff is so low it's laden with noisy ambience. See my article Basics of Compression on adjusting compressor/limiter specs.

The trick is: know the equipment and run as many tests as possible - either in a rough take on location, or at least somewhere in the general vicinity where you can get a sense of how the environment is affecting things. I've probably said it in every article I've written: "Get good sounds!!!" This is particularly crucial on a job where you may not have the opportunity to replace sounds in post with sound design and ADR (automated dialogue replacement - more on that later). This awareness of your shoot audio is particularly important in documentary-style filmmaking. Clean audio on any film can make the difference between a mediocre movie and a great movie.

The Production Wrap

(Assistant editor)

It's not always feasible to keep track of every little detail on a hectic shoot, and sometimes there will be a person on a shoot or set to handle logging. That said, it is the responsibility of the recordist to know what they have and where they have it. This becomes crucial after a shoot, when everyone is going from the production mindset to the post-production mindset.

As the shoot recordist it's imperative to have a clean log of what was captured when (in conjunction with the people on the video side of the shoot). However, unless you're on a very small production team, you may not have to be responsible for getting the audio digitized and/or transferred for the editor. If you are that person (generally an assistant editor): God bless you.

These folks are the unsung heroes of filmmaking. These are the people who know more about the footage than anyone in the production process. Logging, transferring, and prepping for the edit can be mundane on the best of days - and boarding catastrophic on a few others. Between multiple overnights, crashing hard drives, overtaxed computers, and overdoses on caffeine and pretzels, when all is said and done, they will responsible for getting anywhere from hours to hundreds of hours of footage from the haphazard labeling of shoot logs to a paired down, sussed through, orderly edit session for the editor to then take over. Many times the director, editor, and others will be involved in this process — fishing through takes and shots and compiling the scenes they ultimately want available for fine tuning.

Assistant editors are oftentimes so close to the process that they become integral in not only the prep work, but in the edit itself. This awareness and knowledge of the footage is extremely important during the edit process, and can be a real savior in the event no one else has the answer to a shot or sound need in the edit. Coming through with that key piece of information can be quite rewarding, and truly create a scene.

Time for Post

(audio editor, sound designer/foley artist; re-recording and post mixers)

Once the edit is done - or you have some incarnation of a film in sight — the audio side of post-production comes into play. In many instances, this is the last major step before the finality of the movie. Sometimes in bigger budget movies, more work is done on titling and color correcting the picture before it goes to the big screen. In smaller films though, much of this is done by the editor. However you shake it, once you're in post audio, you're in the home stretch.

First, the audio editor gets to the nitty gritty: cutting dialogue, building environmental sounds and backgrounds, and smoothing out the various ambiences in between. The audio editor may also have to add or swap out audio from the shoot, thus they may have access to the digitized footage and logs. In many instances, the audio editor is close to the editor and assistant editor as they need to be able to access things efficiently, which oftentimes the editors can do for you.

The sound designer and foley artists are responsible for fine tuning the sound environment. The foley artists create sounds heard on screen by recording themselves banging, stomping, running, thumping, pedaling, swinging... whatever the scene requires. A hammer thwacking a watermelon could be the sound of a guy throwing a punch, a smack of a metallic aluminum sheet could enhance a thunderclap - whatever the scene entails, the foley artist comes up with creative (or surprisingly literal) ways of making a sound in a scene work.

The sound designer, on the other hand, compiles the sounds from the foley artists along with importing their own sounds from sound libraries studios often have in-house. It's their job to piece all of these together and create the soundscape of the film. It's a big task: their work can set the entire setting and mood, create believability in worlds relatable or fantastic. If it's done well, oftentimes no one will notice. If it's done poorly, though, it can come across as too over-the-top, underwhelming and skimped, or just plain inaccurate in relation to what's being presented visually. The goal first and foremost: support the visuals.

Re-recording mixers do what their name implies: re-record dialogue in the studio to replace audio recorded on a shoot. As mentioned before, this is much less common in documentary-style filmmaking, but is very common in major films. Because of the limitations of shoot recording, sometimes its necessary to get a re-do to really make sure a line comes out cleanly in the mix. The re-recording mixer's job is to record an accurately synced take and mix it into the rest of the dialogue in such a way that it sounds like it was recorded on set. This requires a solid handle on the intention of the ADR and the technology used to process it.

The re-recording and post mixers work together to put the final brushwork on the film. These are often split up into a few sub-roles: dialogue, sound effects, and music mixers. On smaller films, however, these can all be consolidated into a single role. In any event, they put the final stamp on the piece. They compile all that has been brought to them and use volume, effects, and their ears to build a beautiful juxtaposition of audio elements.

Off to the Show

Sound for visuals isn't often as simple as it seems. In fact, it's generally a lot messier! That said, the process can be incredibly rewarding. So many outstanding movies don't get the attention or recognition they deserve because sound was either ignored, or only thought of in passing. The best films are always aided by someone with an ear for things.

Working in sound is a great way for people that, like myself, want to make a big impact on a production without necessarily being front and center. In that sense, sound is only a slice of the production pie as hundreds of people can contribute behind-the-scenes in their own meaningful ways. Whatever your interest is, I hope you learned one thing: when it comes to audio for visuals, there's more than meets the eye.

I should note briefly: I ignored composers and scoring in this article only because I wanted to strictly introduce the capturing and prepping of shoot-related sound. The music in a film plays an equally critical role in a film's effectivity, and presents another host of options for audio people looking to get involved in motion picture or television!

Copyright 2011 Justin Matley and licensed to Rain Computers, Inc. All rights reserved.

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