I recently recorded sound for one of my friends senior films and ended up enjoying it more than I had expected. I’ve always thought of myself as the type of person who was more interested in the post-production side of media work, but this changed my tune a bit. Apparently on set, audio people are kind of the butt of the joke. I’ve heard this is because it seems like we’re not doing anything. Granted, recording live audio doesn’t typically require much creative thinking as planning / executing shots, but it plays an integral part in bringing life to a narrative.
Audio and video go hand in hand; they work with each other to create meaningful stories. Audio can tell a story without an image to accompany it, but video without audio is like a milkshake without whipped cream or sneakers without socks. Just for a second, imagine sitting in a dark room watching a movie you’ve never seen before, and close your eyes.
This movie is intense, very emotional. You hear two people in an argument, their voices start out calm and then raise a bit. They raise even more and you can perceive the strain in each of their voices. One of them says something that could be construed as unforgivable, and there’s a beat of silence afterwards — a moment where the weight of those words just hang in the air, tangible. One person walks out of the room and the door shuts. Without the sound, you’d think, “what just happened there?”. It could be a million things. Without the visual, it’s easy to understand.
So, with that rant over, maybe I’ll think about considering some audio production jobs with equal weight as I’ve been considering doing post production audio work. I’m looking forward to seeing where this newfound excitement will take me.
