Soundtrack worksheet 3

If a soundtrack needed to be made the first person to go to is the director as it is their choice of how they want it to sound like. Then you would have to consult the sound team which would consist of editor, audio mixer, Foley artist etc. The audio mixer would decide what level everything is, the editor will know which point to put everything. A composer would need to be told what you want from a score they are to create. Firstly, spotting would have to be done on the film. This means someone would sit through and watch all the footage to check for any mistakes or continuity issues. When this process has finished the director will put a picture lock in place, this is when the editor has finished the final cut so all the images are in the right place at the right time, ready for the soundtrack to be edited over it. Recording sound securely is something that would be needed to be planned out too. Sound teams need to have a plan B in case it doesn't work, like for example adding an extra mic to a shot to catch a certain noise that just one mic wasn't getting on its own. The use of a clapper board is very helpful in terms of the sound too, it gives the sound editor a pointer as to where to match up the audio with the visuals timing wise.

Door closing http://freesound.org/people/JarredGibb/sounds/219495/
Knife http://freesound.org/people/Mixedupmoviestuff/sounds/179222/
Pouring water http://freesound.org/people/runirasmussen/sounds/172377/

I used my colleagues house for this film. When I tested the sound there was no other sounds. It was really quiet and the only way to have background sound was to make it.

I chose to use a stereo videomic because it produces good quality sound and is very portable. I could've used a zoom but I would have to match up the audio which is quite risky if you do it for the first time. I could've used a boom pole with a rode shotgun but I had noone to hold the boom pole on set.

MP3 - This format is a compressed sound file. As they are compressed, the files are also smaller so easily transferred.

AIFF - AIFF is short for Audio Interchange File Format. It is standard format for Macs and was created by Apple, it is basically the Mac version of WAV files. These files are uncompressed so therefore much larger in size but keep a good audio quality.

WAV -  Waveform Audio File Format is completely uncompressed, meaning they keep the best possible quality. A downside to this is that they are very large file sizes however they are the most flexible out of the three file types.


Both AIFF and WAV files are very flexibly when it comes to editing and post-production due to their superior sound quality and the fact they remain uncompressed.

There were no copyright issues because all of the music and sounds were either created by me or are on creative commons.