SOUND PRODUCTION

PRODUCTION SOUND

Getting great sound on location is just as important as getting a great picture. If a film does not have clean, crisp dialogue, the audience will quickly dismiss it as “low budget” and may lose interest altogether. On small footprint documentary projects, there is not always a budget or space for a dedicated sound person, so the task often falls in my lap. I have come up with a few strategies to manage sound while also operating a camera or directing and while it is not as good as having a dedicated sound person, it works pretty well.

HAVING THE RIGHT GEAR

Whenever possible, I will position a Sennheiser MKH50 microphone on a stand above the subject, especially for long interviews. With added wind protection, it sounds great indoors and outdoors, better than most shotgun mics, due to no phase cancellation indoors. I mount this directly to my camera for run-and-gun situations, unless the weather is really bad and then I will go for a smaller profile video mic.

Whenever the subject is on the move, even if dialogue is not planned, I will put a lavalier mic and pack on them and hide the mic using tape, clips, etc. I use the Deity Theos system, which allows me to record directly to the pack in 32-bit float, which means I can basically set and forget the mic for hours, so I don’t miss anything spoken. I can also jam timecode to the pack and monitor it on my phone, so keeping it synced to my camera is easy.

USING 32-BIT FLOAT

32-bit float audio is like capturing audio data in RAW. You can essentially record the audio at any level and it will not clip, so even if things get really loud unexpectedly, chances are your audio will be fine. Setting proper audio levels is still best practice, but 32-bit float really saves the day when there is no one to continually monitor incoming levels to maximize loudness.

I use a Zoom F3 audio capture device that utilizes 32-bit float recording and plug my Sennheiser MKH50 into it, and then feed an output line into the camera for redundancy. The Deity lavalier mic also records in 32-bit float.

POST-PRODUCTION SOUND

Just like with camera footage that needs to be color graded, captured audio needs to be processed before it is ready for the big screen. Here is my process:

MATCH EQ

Dialogue captured on different mics, in different locations, is equalized and balanced so it all sounds as consistent as possible. It is incredible what a difference this makes, especially when matching a high end mic to a cheaper one, that have two completely different sound profiles.

NOISE REDUCTION

Sometimes the noise is very obvious – wind, air conditioning, boat motor, etc. Other times, it is more subtle such as too much reverb in a room. Either way, almost all audio can use a little noise reduction. There are many tools to do this and it is important to understand what tool is right for which situation, as the wrong tool or the incorrect settings can make your audio sound overly processed or outright fake.

LEVELING / COMPRESSION

Once the quality of the audio sounds good, I then move on to getting the overall loudness of the dialogue within a consistent range. For feature films and tv, this generally means just under -24 LUFS for max loudness and then the rest is to taste. There needs to be some range of loudness dynamics for the dialogue to sound natural and emotive, but we also want it be reasonably loud for listening clarity. I use FabFilter Pro-C 3 compressors and Pro-L 2 limiters for this, as well as Davinci Resolve’s built in dialogue leveler tool.

SOUND DESIGN

Once dialogue is where we want it, I add sound design into the mix – ambience and foley. Since the noise reduction process likely stripped out the sounds of the forest, ocean, city scape, etc., we can add that back in to give the footage audio life again. A very often overlooked step here is to automate sound effects with panning, so they actually follow the movement on screen. If someone walks left to right, the step sounds should surely follow!

MUSIC

I am also a music composer so this especially rings true to me, but the right music is absolutely essential to delivering the right emotional impact to your viewers, based on where the story is taking you at any given moment. But beyond making the right musical choices for your film, it also needs to be mixed in appropriately so it does not overpower your dialogue or steal the scene.

FINAL MIX / MASTERING

Once all the audio pieces are in place, the film as a whole needs to be considered for overall audio balance throughout. There are many rules regarding maximum loudness measured in decibels and LUFS and if your project does not follow them, it will either be rejected by quality control or they will compress your audio for you, which pretty much never sounds the way you want it to. There are a few other small filters and tweaks to EQ often added at this stage to give the overall piece the feeling of being “glued” together.