ACADEMY
GET THE BEST OUT OF YOURMIC
SOUND ADVICE ACE AUDIO
Most videographers get into shooting for the visuals, but sound is 50%of good filmmaking. Here, we look at how to get better results from your mic
WORDS KINGSLEY SINGLETON
W hen it comes to filmmaking, people’s thoughts naturally turn first to cameras and lenses, composition, lighting and camera movement. Audio? Well, that’s often an afterthought. However, sound is just as important to the final production as vision. If anything, bad sound is even more off-putting than mistakes made in filming. It immediately feels like you’ve lost one of your senses – breaking the viewer’s
In terms of general sound quality, you’re looking for the same things you are in the image. It’s all about signal-to-noise ratio. For example, when the exposure is too light or too dark, and needs correction after the event, it loses quality. If the sound also needs correcting, you can lose quality there, too. Here, we’ll lay out some of the quickest and most important things you can do to improve audio in your work.
connection with the story you’re trying to tell, whatever the subject. So, what do we mean by bad sound? It could be too low or too high, or both at the same time; it could be distorted; there could be distracting elements in the recording; or it could be out of sync with the footage. When it comes to narration or subjects speaking to camera, bad sound even pushes into the area of sense-checking – is the subject even making sense?
25
AUTUMN 2019 PRO MOVIEMAKER
Powered by FlippingBook