Last week, the team over at RocketJump Film School released this awesome video about sound production in film. Sound production is probably the most overlooked aspect of filmmaking, mainly because you don't notice great sound design; it seamlessly helps you submit to the willing suspension of disbelief. Check out RJFS's experiment to see how much sound actually does affect the audience.
RJFS asks these seemingly simple questions:
- How much does good-quality production audio really affect the audience's experience and immersion into the film?
- Is good production audio necessary, when you are going to "fix it in post" anyway?
- Is sound or picture more impactful than the other when it comes to the audience's experience of the film?
You can't fix bad sound in post; I repeat, you can't fix bad sound in post. Believe me, I am speaking from experience. My senior year of film school I hired a friend to record audio for my senior thesis. He assured me he had used the Zoom H4N Audio Recorder before. Rolling. Speed. Get back to dump footage from the interview. No sound. "I thought it was recording, the light was on!" Needless to say, I cried a little bit, but c'est la vie. Lesson learned. Still went on to be screened at a few film festivals.
Learn from others mistakes, always hire a good sound guy, or if it's just you, really educate yourself on the best ways to record audio. Do you have any sound production nightmares to share?
I just don;t think a lot of today's film makers know very much about the art of sound or lighting. So they just go with what they have. I see a lot of small productions with no reflectors or lighting gear and a small Rode mic on the top of a 7D or A7s. They can get away with cranking up the ISO but crappy sound is crappy sound. Like many people, I too have had to use the scratch track form the camera mic when the Zoom recorder wasn't recording properly :^0
I shot a wedding video not too long ago and my one lav died on me before the wedding so I was stuck putting a recorder in the grooms inner pocket and using the built in mics ... SO MUCH CLOTH NOISE!!!
I ended up spending like 3 hours layering audio from my 3 cameras and another recorder that was set to record the musicians to clean up the audio as best I could. It's still pretty horrible but it is leagues better than it was originally.
Is the ZOOM H4 like the Tascam DR-40 where you press one to get a view to set your levels and then you press record again to actually start recording? I just purchased a Tascam DR-40 (after that wedding debacle mentioned above) and that's how it works. did the guy not read the manual before the shoot?
I'm ordering a few more lav mics ... I hate not having backup gear for everything.
yes exactly like the DR-40 when it comes to recording. We use DR-40s when I teach for IWasThereFilm.org - cheap and get the job done, but you have to actually know how to record!
My friend was studying music and had worked audio on other films, but apparently he forgot about that, and as the director I should have double checked...
One thing I love about the DR-40 is the "safety track" option where if you are using only 2 of the 4 tracks it can record a second track at a lower gain! That was the main deciding factor for me for the purchase of the DR-40 over the H4n.
OK I didn't know about that... Thanks for the tip!!
DUAL MODE .
Page 52 of the manual.
Another bad audio experience:
I shot a interview segment for a client. A photographer who was having an event for the end of an exhibit of her work. I showed up at the start of the event to get establishing shots and insters to help with transitions and to cover cutting my own voice out of the interview (as I prompted her with questions to move the interview forward).
We had agreed to 40 minutes to shoot but when it came time to do the shoot, I only got 15 so I made a bunch of mistakes I would have caught had I had the time to set everything. It wasn't HORRIBLE but I ran a lav behind her and over her shoulder and hid it under her hair. ... no problem there except that I didn't notice that she was wearing several jangly metal bracelets ... she talks with her hands a lot and her hand were tight next to the lav.
Like a lot of things, it is better to get it right the first time and avoid going back to fix it later.