Hi, my name is John Loughman and I'm going to be
talking to you about the way in which films produced I will also be revealing the ways in
which special effects are done and also maybe even a few film reviews, I myself have a
great interest in film and have worked on two feature films to date. "Under The
Hawthorn Tree" and "Da' Boyz". John's profile features at the end of the
page along with links to the editing and equipment sections.
Webmasters note: This is John's fourth feature article for Cinemax Online Ireland. In case you missed the other ones, just use your back button to go back to the Feature Articles section and just click on the month you missed. Couldn't be easier!
April Feature Article
This month I'm going to write about Sound.
I
myself have worked as a sound engineer on a number of short films and on one feature
length film. When recording sound for a film you use a portable sound recorder in modern
times people use DAT machines before these people use old 2 1/2 inch tape decks. DAT
stands for Digital Audio Tape This is the highest standard of tape that can be used for
recording, the only thing above this is hard drive 
recording where you can record at any quality
that you want how ever the problem with this method is that it is not really possible to
carry hard drives around with you, as to use hard drive recording you have to use a large
unit which contains components that enable you to use effects and sound editing on
location.
Once the sound is recorded and the film is
edited it is the job of the sound engineer to "clean" up the sound this means
that the engineer listens to the sound very carefully and picks out part of the soundtrack
that needs to
- Have sound effects added to the soundtrack.
- Have voices re-recorded.
- If its a documentary there may need to be a voice-over laid on to the programme.
Voice-overs
are recorded in a studio using a studio system, these days all re-recording is carried out
on computers, such systems include Pro-tools , Sound Scape and many others. The sound is
recorded into the computer where it is then edited and matched up with the moving picture,
this is called syncing the sound to the vision. Once the re-recording of the voices is
complete the music then has to be added to the film.
The music
is recorded by the musician at a venue of his or her choice, if the musician want to
record in the studio the music will be recorded directly into the computer, however if
there is a large band or orchestra involved then the musician might record the music in a
concert hall meaning that the sound will be brought through a mixing desk and recorded on
to a DAT recorder. The music is then brought into the computer back at the studio, and it
is placed in a different parts throughout the film.
The other way to record music is to sample the
music, this means using a keyboard to play in the notes of a song, however the keyboard is
sent through a synthesiser which changes the sound of the notes so that they sound like
different instruments. After the music is played on to the computer, it is laid down in
the same way that the pre-recorded music is.
Well that's it for this month, if you have any
comments or questions, give me a shout at johnloughman@yifm.com
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