How To Do Sound Design For Film

If you’re a film sound designer, I strongly suggest that you read this first. It’ll be a lot easier to understand the next three articles if you get an understanding of sound design first.

1. How to record audio

There are several ways to record sound for film, each with its own perks. Most film recording software programs are what’s commonly referred to as DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations).

These include Pro Tools, Logic, Cubase, and FL Studio. You’ll want to use some kind of DAW as the sound engineers on a film will have the DAWs as their normal workstations.

Pro Tools is the standard DAW for most audio professionals. It’s a paid DAW that’s used for mixing and engineering music.

It allows you to record all sound sources you want and allows you to edit, compress, and EQ the sound as well. I actually use Logic as my DAW on some projects but mostly Pro Tools for acting.

You can also buy commercial licenses to use MacOSX’s Logic software. Logic’s got an intuitive interface and a simple user interface.

Sound Editing programs include Softube’s ReBirth, Mutable Sound’s Everquest, Screaming 10’s MXR, and many others. They’re used for audio effects, sound manipulation, and remixing.

Sound designers can also create “desktop remixing suites” which essentially allow you to jump into an audio recording program and make all the sounds in your desktop program.

I recommend using a DAW for most, if not all, projects. When mixing a film, the mixer will usually make the transition between sound sources manually and mix things down.

If you can save a mix to a session, this will make your life easier on a day to day basis. With a DAW you can sync up multiple sound sources automatically.

2. The focus ring

This is the main control that’s used to set focus on a shot. The focus ring has more functions and options than the camera settings (remember that).

The focus wheel on a monitor is a linear wheel which puts a lot of emphasis on the center of the circle. This is probably the most valuable control to have in your toolbox.

The image below is of a Sony NEX-5N. You can see that the focusing control, which is the outside edge of the focus ring, is concave.

The concave area is the focus spot. The convex area is the infinity point.

This concave part is an adjustment that affects how the camera focuses. When you’re focusing on something far away, you’ll want to make the whole focus area concave.

But if you’re focused on someone’s face (assuming it’s looking at the camera), you’ll want to make the focus wheel convex so that the focus is in the center of the focus ring.

If you want to lock the focus, make the focus wheel concave again.

The following images are from a Sony a6000. You can see that the focus ring has an audible click when you adjust the focus (the orange area in the example is where the focus control is).

You can actually adjust the audio of the focus wheel (although the clicks may be muted).

I like to have two assistants on my set. One acts as the focus assistant and the other acts as the focus wheel assistant.

Their roles are different. The focus assistant will hit the focus wheel and use their audio feedback to focus the camera.

The focus wheel assistant also has a feedback control. If they get the focus wheel in the wrong place, they’ll hit the feedback button to get it out of the wrong spot.

The feedback control is a button on the camera that holds the focus wheel in the right position. When the audio feedback system for the focus ring isn’t working, the focus wheel assistant will turn on the feedback button in the camera and point the camera at a bright background.

If the feedback control is set to “on” you can watch as the camera focuses without feedback. The feedback on the focus wheel is muted so they can’t know if it’s focused.

The purpose of this is to get the camera focused manually without feedback. This is much more challenging than hitting the focus wheel itself.

The feedback control on a Panasonic GH2 is integrated into the focus ring. If you hit the center button on the body you’ll get feedback on the focus position.

If the focus wheel is selected, the camera will start to focus while the button is pressed.

The following images are of a Sony FS7 with the focus wheel area activated.

3. White balance

While shooting your set you need to set your camera to manual white balance. This is done using the color selector dial on your camera.

I find the white balance controls on the camera are usually confusing. I usually assign different scenes different colors.

This is what you do when you’re working on a green screen stage: White balance usually isn’t used as a control that’s meant to be picked up by the viewer, though.

4. ISO

ISO determines the ISO at which the camera will stop taking a picture. Higher ISO’s take less light, which makes for brighter images.

Higher ISO’s also give you more control in the camera, which is valuable in big cities. I usually have it set to 3200 and above, depending on my needs.

When the light gets really bright, you don’t need to shoot at higher ISOs. But if you’re working in an urban area you’ll need to be a little more