Digital Filmmaking For Kids For Dummies

PROJECT 3

Making Your Film Sound Good

To your audience, the quality of your film’s sound is as important as the quality of the picture. Poor sound can be distracting and deflect your audience’s attention away from your story.

To record sound when filming, you must use a microphone. A microphone is a device that recognizes noises and sounds and converts the sound into data and information that is recorded onto the media card with the video footage from your camera. You can either use the microphone built into the camera or plug an external microphone into your camera.

When filming, it’s important you spend as much time getting your movie’s sound right as you do getting its picture right. When it all comes together, your film may turn out twice as good.

By taking the time to record good sound you’ll save time editing the film later. Fixing badly recorded sound in an editing tool is very difficult and in some cases impossible. If the sound is poorly recorded or if there is a noise that is impossible to remove, the sound often must be re-recorded and replaced in the editing tool. I have had to do this a few times due to noises that I didn’t notice when filming. It’s very hard to re-record dialogue because you have to get the actors to say the lines in the same way as they did during the original filming so that their filmed mouth movements fit the re-recorded audio. This is why it’s best to try and get it right when filming.

For mainstream movies, the sound is recorded separately ...