Elements of Audio Post Production

Welcome back! Hope you had/are having a great spring break and are ready to get deeper into the incredible, magical world of audio!

Starting today, we're going to spend the next few weeks working with audio post-production. What exactly is audio post, you ask? Well, before we talk about that, let's first get some concepts down...

"Production" is everything that is happening while a film/video is being shot. This includes the camera work, the lighting, costumes, and recording the sound on the set.

"Post-production" is the work that happens after the shooting has finished. This includes the editing, CGI effects, color correction, titles, and most of the sound work. The post-production phase usually takes longer than the actual shooting!.

Audio post-production is all the work that is done on a movie's sound after the shooting has finished. Most people don't realize just how important sound is to making a good film, or how much work is involved in making this happen. But we, as audio people, need to really understand the whole process and know how we can use our skills and tools to make a film come to life.

The sounds that go into a video or film can be broken down into 4 main categories:

1. Dialog - the MOST important part of the soundtrack. Includes anything being said by characters on or off screen. In many cases, the dialog you hear in a movie is actually NOT what was recorded at the time of filming; it is rerecorded in a studio by the actors who say their lines while watching the video of their performances. This is called ADR (Automatic Dialog Replacement). When the dialog is being spoken by someone who is not on the screen, it is called Voice Over, or VO.

2. Foley sounds - sounds made by the characters as they move around in the scene (footsteps, clothing rustling, picking things up, etc.). These sounds are performed by foley artists who specialize in making sounds that realistically match the actions on the screen (even though the sounds may actually be made using all kinds of crazy materials).

3. Sound effects (FX) - sounds not made by the characters. These can include realistic sounds (cars, animals, everyday things), ambience, bigger-than-life sounds (explosions), and imaginary sounds (lightsabers).

4. Music - there are four main types of music you might hear in a film/video...

• Score - Music composed specifically for a film or video
• Jingle - Music composed for a commercial
• Environmental music - music that is actually part of the background of a scene (from a radio, playing in a bar, etc.)
• Soundtrack music - any music where the music is the main audio focus (a music video, the end credits of a movie)

Today we're going to start working with one of these areas and learning for ourselves how sound can bring a picture on the screen to life.