basics of good sounding audio for your flim/video

[Andrew Todd]

Here's some basic tips that i have learnt and put into practice for basic sound recording. When i first started i was trying to capture every single sound at the same time leading to a terrible headache in post production..
Trail and error and lots of reading on the net helped me to better my techiniques.

The trick to good audio in my opinion is seperating different aspects of your audio from each other so that you have full control over the final product in post.

AMBIANCE
If you try to capture the ambiance of the location at the same time as the dialogue you are going to have problems in post. even with two mics the talking and the ambiance will not be able to be seperated. A good thing to always do is to record about a minute of room noise (or outdoor noise) with noone talking or moving everytime you shoot in a new location. When editing you should loop this minute of room noise throughout the scene on a different audio track and adjust it as you see fit.

DIALOGUE
When recording dialogue you want JUST dialogue, nothing else. Dont try to get footsteps or movement sounds .. you are trying to isolate it from everything else that might be audible during the scene.

So in the end you have two different aspects already recorded: DIALOGUE and AMBIANCE. On two or more seperate tracks you can control them independantly and find the balance you want.

so now you have dialogue seperated from ambiance and you have found a nice balance.

FOLEY
Incorporate foley into a part of your sound production if you are doing filmmaking... for weddings or event videorgraphy i wouldnt waste my time. Once you have the film edited you're going to set up shop in someones garage with some mics and a mixer and recording device. You want some wood, some sand , gravel , pretty much any sound making materials you can find. Youre going to play your video on a monitor scene by scene "acting" out the sounds that you worked so hard not to pick up during the production. "footsteps, doors, clothing sounds etc..." Add this track to your video after you have mixed it. That is just part of seperating the sounds once again and having full control over the end result of your audio.

Thats how i do my audio.. if anyone has any additional tips or corrections to the way i do audio production please let me know as i am always trying to improve on my methods.