Tips for sound editing

[miker]

sound is 50% of your movie. a movie with a great soundtrack will get attention.

i take as much care editing my soundtrack as i do the pictures.

in a perfect world my rushes would comprise of the visuals and only the actor's close-mic'd dialogue and the rest would be manufactured and mixed into a nice 5.1 surround :-)

but that's not always practical. so i do my best to eliminate background noise and use foley/fx to enhance what is already there.

always remember, the dialogue must be audible or ppl will quickly lose concentration. always use the best audio playback equipment you can find (good quality headphones are a good compromise) and cover up all those cracks the best you can ...

[Kigo]

Sound is tough!!
Try to get as clean a sound as you can when on set so you have less to do in post production.

Like everything in films, it has to be believable. If the sound isn't right then the film isn't going to sit well with the audience.

Like miker says, sound is 50% of the film. On our last film sound editing took almost three times as long as video editing (we spent at least an hour trying to find the correct telephone ring tone we wanted!). We also had to cut out the sound out of complete scenes (no speach thankfully) because the natural sound was terrible (wind and seaguls), replacing it with ambient noise and fake footsteps. For one of these scenes it meant that because the character was walking away from the shot and from left to right the sound had to reflect this by passing across the speaker and diminish as he got further away.

It doesn't sound too difficult but it's easy to mess it up and end up with hours of wasted time and a bad sound track.

The more preparation you have for the on stage sound the easier it's gonna be when you start playing with it afterwards.

[nate_dog]

Do most of you use only the sound you get during shooting? Or do you spend a lot of time mixing in sound effects and ambient noises in post from sound recorded afterwards or from a sound library?

I just finished shooting a short horror movie and a lot of my audio from production has unwanted sounds in the background and therefor unusable. Because sound is so important in horror movies, should I re-record all my sounds (ie. footsteps on hardwood floor, empty room ambient) myself at home?

How accesible are sound libraries? How much are they? Should I try and find good free sound effect websites?

How long does it take everyone else to edit their sound?

[MatJimMood]

i've found the best way to check the sound during editing is to close your eyes or turn off the visuals.

not having the images distract you makes a huge difference and you'll notice all the little errors that maybe aren't that obvious but make a huge difference when corrected

[nate_dog]

who here dowloads and uses sounds from those free sound effect websites? I've just been on a few and I can get a wide selection of campfire noises but the quality sucks.

Am I better off recording my own sounds? Anyone recommend good quality and free sound effect websites?

[miker]

I'd prefer to always record my own sounds but it's not always possible. For those times you can head over to Hollywood Edge and sample their free sound effects before you realise you can't afford to buy a library :-(

Just don't forget Wilhelm

[Kigo]

Try www.sounddogs.com

For camp fire you could always use scrumpled paper and give it a muffled or echoed effect!!
Then snap some twigs for that louder crackle!

No matter if you download it or do it your self a good sound editing package will always improve the effect you have.

[Vlad the Impaler]

A sound recordist's job is to record the best dialogue they can without any other sound interupting. As a sound editor you need to be able to control any sound you like, which is why people use foley.


For example... people walking and talking on gravel stones... you may want to hear the gravel stones at first, but when they are talking they need to fade out... this is why all this is done.

check out

http://www.findsounds.com/ISAPI/search.dll

for a good sound file search engine... also I have a copy of a warner bros. sound FX cd if anyone needs some cartoony sounds for comedy effects [img]smile.gif[/img] pm me and I'll send it to you..


Anyways sorry for spelling mistakes.. a bit too much alcomohol.. byeee

[Jass Films]

I record most whilst shooting, and add a few extra afterwards, but what u do is really up to u. Personal preference.

[joepiechura]

A good tip is to overlap your soundtracks and fade them out, especially if you've got a lot of background noise. If you don't do this, the difference in noise from one shot to the other will draw attention to the cut rather than having it flow naturally.
Say, for example, you have an establishing shot of a house in the city with traffic noise, followed by a shot inside the house. In this case, start to fade down the traffic noise soundtrack when it cuts to the interior shot, rather than just cutting it.