Do you ever wonder why your favorite movies or TV shows sound so good? Or why TV commercials are so much louder than your favorite movies or TV shows? Or why some internet videos sound so bad?
In this mini-series we’re going to discuss the creation of soundtracks for video and film, also known as audio post-production. Mixing audio for video is a fairly deep subject, so you get four articles instead of one. Covering all the bases would take a book (or books) and would need to be revised every 15 minutes, due to the ever-changing nature of business and technology.
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This first article, “Getting Started,” covers the basics, a little background, some terminology, and hopefully gets you interested in diving deeper. Subsequent articles will address workflow, standards, deliverables, and careers in audio post. Read on, and stay with us for the whole series, if you can tear yourself away from YouTube.
Way back in the dark ages of the 20th century, budding recording engineers often had to make a career choice between producing music or producing audio for visuals, like film or TV soundtracks. Specialized tasks meant using specialized tools to get the job done, and about the only thing in common between the two gigs was the use of tape machines and synchronizers.
The introduction of computerized digital audio editing systems in the late 1980s made it easier to use the same recording and editing tools to produce both music and soundtracks. I’m talking about nonlinear editing systems like AVID AudioVision, AMS Audiofile, NED PostPro, and early Pro Tools. That era was the first time I heard the term “convergence,” in this case referring to the blurring of lines between the worlds of audio and video production. As a result of this convergence, engineers at my recording studios had to learn to do post sessions by day and music sessions at night in order to take advantage of all the work opportunities. Music was (and is) fun, but post paid the bills.
The process has evolved a great deal in the intervening years, so, for those just getting started, let’s take a look at the modern process for audio post-production.
We should make a distinction here between audio post and other soundtracks, like podcasts, radio commercials, or audio books. When we talk about audio post, we are referring to audio created for a visual component. Such as…
TV
Television shows can be nearly any length, but most US broadcast programs are designed for the 30 or 60 minute format.
Many TV shows are produced by highly experienced TV studio production teams in LA. Reality TV can be shot just about anywhere, but requires a good deal of post-production (both audio and video) in order to create a professional result.
Film
Short films can run a few minutes, long form films can run a couple of hours—or even many hours, if we’re talking Gone With The Wind, clocking in a hair short of 4 hours. This category includes productions for HBO, Netflix, and Amazon, as well as the traditional major film studios.
At the other end of the financial spectrum, independent film makers producing a small or no budget project still need audio post, and working on these films can be a great way to get some on-the-job training.
Commercial
Commercial projects can include TV commercials, infomercials, PSAs, promos for other programming, and political ads. Commercials run in very short formats, ranging from :05, :10, :15, :30, and :60 in length. There are longer commercials, but it tends to get expensive buying airtime for a 2:00 commercial.
These can run on TV, at movie theaters, before your favorite kitten videos on YouTube, and just about anyplace that features streaming video content, and are usually created by advertising agencies and top notch video production teams using a dedicated audio person or persons.
Corporate
When some big company needs to train its employees or customers how to do something, they make a video. Likewise, if they’re rolling out a new product, talking about HR policies, crowing about quarterly financial performance, etc.
These are supposed to be shot by professional videographers, but often, in the effort to save shekels, they will neglect to hire a professional audio person for field recordings. This can result in good looking video with unusable audio. Unless they hire an audio post professional to salvage their noisy, distant, boomy, reverby, lip smacky, skype-y, drop out-y, -60 dB, horrible audio captured with a camera mic next to a cement mixer. You think I’m kidding.
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Games
Games are fun. Well, game audio is fun…in moderation. Most AAA games have a dedicated audio team to create and capture sounds, which will be absolutely unique to the game they’re building. It can also be a tremendous amount of work, requiring thousands of audio files authored into a game engine using middleware like Wwise, Unity, or FMOD.
Creating soundtracks in different languages multiplies the number of files to be managed and increases the time it takes to create game audio assets.
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Because of the specialized workflow, we’re not going to discuss game audio in detail here. But if you want to learn more about some of the top trends for creating sounds and music for virtual reality and game applications, check out this interview with game industry veteran Brian Schmidt.