It’s easy to imagine that the visuals are the most important part of your promotional film, but when it comes to making the right impression, audio is equally as important if not more so. When shooting a video, a lot of time is spent thinking about and planning things like focus, angles, lighting and such, but sometimes less time is focused on making sure the audio is captured and produced properly.
It’s worth remembering that we tend to be more forgiving of poor quality video than we are of poor quality sound. We’ll happily watch something ‘interesting’ whether it’s in SD or 4K, there might indeed be an artistic or abstract element to a grainy low-resolution picture, whereas sound recording issues such as distortion, excessive background noise, poor voiceovers, hard to comprehend dialogue and wind rumble are distracting and irritating to our sensitive ears. In fact, a less than perfect film sequence can be saved by an excellent soundtrack, conversely, a superbly shot picture can be ruined by poor quality sound. Don’t expect a round of applause for professional quality audio, but do expect a wholly negative response if the sound quality is distracting for the wrong reasons.
When it comes to adding a voiceover to your film, using a suitable professional to do the job gives you the opportunity to add a shiny layer of polish to your film.
As good as digital audio restoration tools are these days, and they are very good, nothing can beat getting the audio recorded properly in the first instance. If you think you can just stick a portable audio recorder near the camera, press record and somehow fix the audio later in post, think again. There are almost always artefacts. A bit of tweaking is possible and definite improvements can be made, but it’s much better to get the audio recorded properly in the first place. Get dialogue recorded up close and personal to make sure it’s crisp and clearly intelligible. There’s nothing more annoying than muffled hard to comprehend speech in a film. Use decent fit for purpose microphones and furry windshields to avoid wind rumble, and monitor the audio carefully on headphones.
When it comes to adding a voiceover to your film, using a suitable professional to do the job gives you the opportunity to add a shiny layer of polish to your film. If you are producing your own films it can be tempting to voice them yourself – after all, how difficult can it be to record yourself reading aloud? Well as it turns out, it’s quite an art and definitely worth investing in a professional. However, make sure your script is well written, edited and finessed so that it reads fluently and easily.
At Sounds Visual we specialise in post-production mixing, sound design and voiceovers. To discuss a project why not give us a call for a friendly chat on 01225 470011 or email jono@soundsvisual.com