Award Sounds Music, Photography and Consultancy

Memory was the first production for Spinneyhead Presents. I was able to predict some of the lessons that the team would learn (e.g. spend time sorting the audio out on location before taking it back for mixing), some of them I missed as well. This is the first in a series of Lessons Learnt.

1) The Audio component of a video is as important if not more important than the video.

Think about watching tv, you should be able to follow the thread and plot of a movie while doing something else, e.g. looking for your remote, checking your email, looking at your watch. However, try watching a movie with the sound off - what's the plot now? In a standard video including people, the speech is paramount. Oddly enough, I recently saw Shrek the Third in an old picture-house type cinema (remember them?). The screen was small and far away because I was up on the upper rows of the circle, however I could follow the movie because I could hear it and specifically, I could hear what was being said.

Lesson Learned

So what was learnt from Memory?

Bear in mind that this was a budget production, if you're spending some money on equipment like digicams, then think about spending the equivalent on audio recording. That may seem extreme when you can buy a digicam for £600 with a "perfectly good" microphone and preamp built-in, but they tend to underperform in less than ideal conditions such as wind, electrical/radio interference, background noise, i.e. those conditions we generally find ourselves in. By preparation and use of more appropriate audio recording equipment, the overall process would be smoothed out. Better still, hire/find/cajole somebody who actually knows how to use it as well.

Spend right, spend once

It's really a case of spend money now or spend more later. If you're shooting outside, make sure the windshield is sufficient. If you don't spend the time and effort now, then you'll either spend it later in dubbing/looping or have to put up with less than perfect audio, perhaps resulting in the audience straining to listen or just giving up. 

Ok, this doesn't apply to silent films.

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