Sound Effect Sources

Once you start editing, you’ll need a number of different audio sources at your disposal. In addition to your original production audio files, you’ll probably end up recording extra sounds on your own (called wild sounds). You might also want to invest in a sound effects library. Companies such as Sound Ideas provide vast, detailed collections of high-quality prerecorded sounds. These can be essential tools for adding effects and ambience to your audio tracks. If you’re editing in a studio or postproduction facility, they might have a sound effects library you can use. More and more of these libraries are available online, as single track downloads, which is a great option if you just need a couple of effects and don’t have the time or budget to invest in a full library.

Foley is the process of recording special ambient effects in real-time while watching your movie play on a screen. Door slams, footsteps, pouring water, clinking dinnerware, and all sorts of other “everyday” sounds that might not have been recorded during your shoot can be added by a foley artist. Foley work is usually done on a special stage equipped with props, cars, floor surfaces, and other materials.

Your mic might have picked up many ambient sounds while you were recording. Depending on the nature of your mic, though, these sounds can have varying degrees of quality, tone, and presence. If you used a directional mic to shoot footage of a woman getting out of a car, dropping her keys, picking them up, and closing the car door, some of the sounds might sound too far away or muffled since they were out of the primary field of the microphone. Foley sounds are an easy way to bring these sounds forward to increase the audience’s involvement in the scene.

The advantage of adding sound effects with foley work (rather than editing sounds from a sound effects library) is that a good foley artist can often do all of the sounds for a shot (or even a scene) in a single take. In addition to being much faster than editing sounds separately, foley sounds will use fewer tracks in your mix.

With a good mic and a lot of care, you can do simple foley work on your own, although if a scene is very dependent on good foley sounds, you’ll probably want to go to a professional foley studio. Experienced foley artists can do a decent pass on a feature film in one day.

Music

Music is one of the most powerful tools at your disposal. In films, music tells the audience how they should feel about a scene, and it can be used for everything from helping to establish a sense of location, to setting a mood, to embellishing an atmosphere. You’ll probably spend a lot of time considering and tweaking the music in your production, and the nature of the tweaking will depend largely on the source of your music.

Typically, there are two types of music used in a feature: the music that underscores the action, and the source music that is meant to sound like it’s coming from a source in your scene (radio, television, singer, and so on).

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Many movies use a combination of original music composed specifically for the project, and prerecorded music that is licensed from an artist and publisher. Determining how much of each to use will depend on your project, budget, and the nature of the mood you are trying to create.

An original score can serve to bind themes and characters together throughout your feature. Through the use of repeating motifs and recurring melodies, a well-written score can provide a lot of narrative structure and continuity.

There are a number of reasons why you might choose to use prerecorded material. Your characters might be listening to a piece of music, for example, or perhaps you’ve found a song that simply serves the scene better than your original score does. Finally, certain songs, particularly music from a particular period, can do a great job of enhancing the authenticity of your scene.

Such prerecorded material can also be mixed and layered on top of your original score. In addition to creating an interesting “soundscape,” pulling a song out of the scene and into the score can be an effective way to move a scene forward and join one character’s action to something else in the movie.

For more about music for films, read the interview with a music supervisor on the companion Web site, in the Chapter 15 folder, “Interview with a MusicSuper.pdf.”

WHAT TO WATCH

Easy A is a comedy that exclusively uses lyrics-driven pop songs as a musical score. This is a very unusual choice on the part of the filmmakers, but they somehow manage to make it work. When you watch the film, pay particular attention to how the music starts and stops and also how they mix the music to favor the in-scene dialogue.

Editing Music

Editing music can be a lot of fun, but it’s a lot of hard work too, especially if you need your music to sound perfect. Feature films often hire a special music editor to edit all the music in the film. Why would you need a music editor if you already have a composer? Many projects do not have big enough budgets to hire a composer to score a project from start to finish. Instead, the composer will score key scenes and sequences, and then provide a selection of tracks for the editor to use as needed. Because these tracks are not composed to the timing of the video or film, someone needs to edit them to time. The same goes for prerecorded or library music.

At the most basic level, editing music means placing the tracks in the edited sequence and deciding where each cut of music needs to start and end. The start is easy—some songs have an introduction, or a “lead-in,” to the main part of the song. Often, editors decide to cut out the “lead-in” and start with the main part of the song. Pop songs are usually structured with verses and choruses. Often, you’ll decide to jump in with the chorus rather than the first verse.

Other songs have musical interludes, or “breaks.” Since lyrics can be distracting under dialogue, starting with the “break” can be a good choice. No matter where you start the song, you can usually find a spot to make the first edit so that you don’t need a dissolve to smooth it out. Each section of a song—the lead-in or intro, the verse, the chorus, the break, and the “outro” or ending—usually has a hard start. You can use the scrub tools in your editing software to find the first frame of that hard sound, whether it’s a voice, a drum, or another musical instrument. As long as you avoid clipping the note, you’ll be surprised to find that you can often start a piece of music in the middle of a song and the edit will sound good.

Editing the end of a piece of music is a little more challenging. The easiest way is to simply let the song end, but usually songs are too long for this to work. The next easiest way out is to put a long dissolve on the end to sneak the music out of your mix. A one-second dissolve is a really long dissolve for other types of sound, but for music it’s very short. To successfully sneak a piece of music out so that no one really notices that it’s gone, you’ll need at minimum a three-second dissolve. Last, but not least, you can “pull up” the ending of the song by cutting the end of the song onto the middle of the song so that it “ends” where you want. This will take a little practice and an ear for music, but once you’ve done it successfully a few times, it will quickly become second nature and is an important skill in every editor’s toolbox.

Can’t Resolve It, Dissolve It?

This adage refers to the fact that dissolves are used as a bandage to solve every sort of problem in sound editing, from clipped dialogue to bad music edits to taking the edge off sound effects. But some people think they have to add a dissolve to every single edit that they make, no matter how it sounds. The fact is that if you can’t hear a sound edit, it’s “seamless,” so you don’t need to smooth it further by adding a dissolve. And often if an edit sounds bad, and you feel it needs a dissolve to improve it, it may simply mean that a small adjustment of the edit—a frame or two—will make it sound good without a dissolve. Dissolves are an extremely useful tool, but they shouldn’t become a crutch.

Music Libraries

Just as there are tons of stock footage houses and sound effects libraries out there, there are many companies that specialize in selling music libraries. With some, you pay a large sum for access to the whole library and that purchase includes the license to use any tracks in the collection. Others charge per track and per minute. The quality and variety of music available on library collections has improved greatly over the last 10 years, and many tracks are available for purchase and download from the Internet.

License to Play

When licensing music for use in a film, you’ll most likely have to pay a hefty fee. You’ll also need to secure the rights, both to the music and to the particular recording that you want to use. Often, the cheapest solution is to acquire the “performing rights,” which allows you to hire a band to replicate the song. Whatever your needs, it’s really best to consult an entertainment lawyer before you decide to use a copyrighted song. Be sure to do so early on in your production; otherwise, you could very easily end up with a movie that can’t be distributed.

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Most movies have two people involved in selecting and arranging music. A composer writes the original music, while the music supervisor selects any prerecorded material. Often, the music supervisor will select a composer and help guide that person through the creation of the music.

When you’ve finished editing your picture, you’ll want to sit down and have a screening with your music supervisor or composer to discuss any ideas that you might have about appropriate music. In some cases, you might simply discuss what type of feeling or emotion you’re hoping to convey.

You might have already chosen some music to use as “scratch audio” during your editing process. You can use this to suggest music that you feel is appropriate. However, it’s often better to simply give your music supervisor some direction and see what he can come up with. Your music supervisor might arrive at ideas that you had never considered but that work perfectly. One problem with using scratch audio is that it’s very easy to get attached to it. Be careful not to get too enamored of a piece of music that you can’t afford to license!

In addition, don’t use scratch music that you would never be able to afford to produce. In other words, if you can’t afford to pay for a full orchestra (or to license an orchestral recording), don’t use orchestral music in your scratch audio.

In addition to ideas about mood and tone, you might need to give your music supervisor or composer a cue list showing exactly what pieces of music are needed and whether or not they have specific timings. If there are musical events that need to happen at particular times (a dramatic organ sting when the villain enters, for example), then these will be listed on your cue sheet.

Your music supervisor and composer will usually present you with a number of options for each section of music in your project. You can take these to your editor and see how they work. At this point, your editor or sound designer might have suggestions for how to mix different pieces of music together, or how to mix music with natural sound, or how to apply reverb or other atmospheric effects to better fit the music to the action and mood.

The Sound of Silence

Don’t forget about the power of silence. Not only is silence sometimes more effective than music, but it often makes the preceding and following music more powerful. Don’t feel pressured to fill every moment with sound and music. Do as much experimenting with no music as with music.

Finding a Composer

There are a number of resources for contacting and auditioning composers and music supervisors. You can see a list of these resources in the Chapter 15 folder on the companion Web site called “Finding a mus sup or compos.pdf.”