The Practical Guide to Documentary Editing

4Sound Editing

Working with Sound Design and Music

“Films are 50 percent visual and 50 percent sound. Sometimes sound even overplays the visual.”

—David Lynch¹

So far we have discussed picture editing. There is of course a whole other side to editing, which is as important—perhaps even more important—and that is sound.

We rely on sound for so much of our storytelling. We need sound to deliver dialogue and voiceover (the fundamental narrative components of our film), for the musical score, and just as importantly, we depend on sound for creating the atmosphere of our scenes.

This atmosphere is created through a process of sourcing, selecting and manipulating or generating audio elements, to create a desired effect or mood, and is commonly referred ...