Audio can make or break your video.
Audio is often a sleeper component in each and every video. Often overlooked, audio can be the linchpin of your video. You can have the most incredible video captured by the best videographers in the business. But if you have poorly captured or poorly mixed audio, you might as well throw the project in the garbage.
Don't worry! Good audio can be captured on any budget. Before we begin, let me say… when possible, hire a dedicated sound technician. A professional sound technician will ask all the right questions and always get you the best results for your video.
Throughout this article, we will focus on these key areas pertaining to sound for video:
Location audio
Sound design
Musical Score or Soundscape
Location Audio
"We'll fix that in post" -- these words are commonly heard in the production world, but audio is one of the trickiest and often least forgiving elements to fix in post-production. Professional audio technicians have a wide array of plugins and tools to correct mistakes that may have been made on the day the audio was captured. These tools aren't cheap, and they require a specific skill set and expertise to ensure that you don't further ruin the audio you've captured on the day. That being said, get clean audio on that day!
When possible, ALWAYS hire a dedicated sound technician to capture your audio. This technician will keep their ears open, listening for any possible sound 'hits' or disruptions in the audio and communicate with the team if another take is needed. Furthermore, dedicated audio personnel will choose the right mic for the job. Will you need a surface microphone? Maybe lavalier microphones will do the trick? Possibly a boom mic? These questions should be answered before production begins and are often overlooked by a busy production crew who are distracted by lighting, setting up cameras, or reviewing notes before an interview.
Scouting your location is always a good idea. A location scout helps to suss out any problem areas the room or exterior location might have. Air Conditioning, HVAC units, and refrigerators can be a big problem as they tend to turn on and off; this drone or humming under an important interview can be very distracting and hard to fix in the edit.
Sound Design
Sound Design is often overlooked! Taking the time to create a soundscape that matches the feeling and actions of your edit can take your video from here *hand at my knees* to here *hand above my head*. Footsteps in the snow?? The splash of a child jumping into a pool? These sound effects will elevate your video and further enhance the story you are trying to tell. Teamed with ambient room tone, you're sure to draw your viewer into the video and make them feel like they are there in the room. Sound design– like sound in general, is often overlooked but seriously missed when absent.
Let's expand on room tone for a moment… Room tone will be an important capture that will help with three things!
As mentioned before, including the environment's sound or the tone of the room in the audio design will elevate your video.
Help an interview sound natural - Layering the room tone throughout the spaces in the interview will smooth the interview audio, reducing the 'muted' effect that a hard cut in the audio will leave in the sound design.
A noise print for sound cancellation - if a consistent hum or interference takes your attention away from the speech captured on the production day, a noise print can assist in noise cancellation in post-production.
When executed correctly, you will always be pleasantly impressed with what sound design will do in the edit.
Musical Score or Soundscape
The music score or the soundscape will set the mood of the edit. The music genre is crucial to determine at an early stage of the production planning process. Do we want music that sounds hopeful? Or sad? Maybe high energy is your cut of tea? Music is a universal language that can speak when words fail or change the whole mood of the video.
Music should always be selected carefully, and sometimes you can't seem to find that royalty-free track that fits your edit. So, the next best way to take your project to new heights is a custom piece which is why we work closely with musical collaborators who are always excited to work closely with us to make the music and video work seamlessly together.
In some cases, music may seem intrusive to what is happening on screen, and this is where soundscapes enter the fray. Soundscapes walk the line between musical tones and ambient tones. They may be an ethereal tone or a series of techniques that help drive the narrative on screen. Soundscapes are typically less distracting than a musical score but will fill the silence of an empty audio track in a video.
Like video capture, the possibilities for sound are endless. What mic do you use? What genre should we select for the music? Are we shooting next to a busy street? Should we use a soundscape instead of music? This is why we should plan and approve as much as possible in the pre-production phase. Ask all of the critical questions that need to be asked and document the answers.
