A bunch of newbie questions....

Nick Castronuova · January 10, 2008

So I'm new to the field of audio, though I've been more involved in cinematography these past few years at film school. Next semester I will be shooting a short, digital film and was wondering what the best way was to go about recording sound for it.

I assume I'll be getting a mixer, boom/mic, possibly lav mics etc. Should I record directly into the camera or use a DAT system? I would guess DAT, but a recent professor said it could be a bad idea.

What about post-production editing? Should I just keep reading books, etc. or should I go and find a free sound mixer? How would I go about that? I'll be editing in Final Cut Pro, so should I picture edit first? Do I do this with or without the sound? Should I just rough cut the dialogue together and have it mixed, add foley and slug later by a sound mixer or in a sound mixing program?

Also, what about dubbing lines and removing wind noise/ambient noise from dialogue?

Again, I'm pretty new to sound recording and want to gain experience on my next project.

Michael Nash · January 10, 2008

Depending on the camera and recording method, it's usually easiest to record audio straight to the camera, not to a separate deck. As long as you know how to match the levels between the mixer and the camera inputs, and monitor sound from the camera you shouldn't have any problems. It makes post production so much easier.

That said, higher-end HD productions use dual system sound recording so that the sound recordist has more direct control over the recording and the camera can move untethered from sound. Dual system recording requires a synch reference such as a clap or TC slate (or both), and has to be synched with the footage in post.

Wind noise is best avoided by using a "softie" or windscreen on the microphone (depending on the type of mic), and blocking direct wind from hitting the mic as much as possible.

As for looping and sound post, there are lots of ways to do it depending on your workflow. If you're record sound separately, you'll need to synch sound to all your takes before you edit the picture, then edit with sound (if sound is recorded in-camera then the audio is already synched). Once the picture edit is "locked" go back and do an audio pass where you fine-tune the audio edit, mix and EQ.

If this is your first try at sound, don't overcomplicate it. Take the simplest approach that will still give you decent quality.