Hi guys, so before I dive into sharing some incredible tips to better/improve your audio I’d like to share an experience that helped me with better sound. Bear with me. Okay, we drove over 70 kilometers away from home for a documentary that we all had been anticipating. For clearer understanding, this video was an outdoor shoot, we got to the location set and did a test run on our cameras, sounds, etc and we began to shoot. Although we noticed that there was an express road about few kilometers away from our location, in this situation we already knew there was nothing we could do to stop the vehicles from passing and disturbing our shoot because of the wave of noise and the sensitivity of our sound recorder. So what did we do? We simply moved our sound recorder closer to the subject which really helped reduce the noise to the lowest minimum and we were able to correct the sound in post-production.
When it comes to videos in general, one key and critical thing amongst everything else is the audio. Audio is the most vital aspect of any video, if the audio is bad the entire video is automatically useless no matter how good the video or the story behind the video might be. Your audio can set you apart from other filmmakers so it’s very vital to have a quality audio in your video.
HERE ARE SOME STEPS TO FOLLOW TO HELP IMPROVE YOUR AUDIO
- PUT THE MIC OVER YOUR SUBJECT: It is advisable that you have your mic closer to your subject. By doing this, you’re reducing the background noise and increasing the voice of your subject. There are instances where we put the mic on top of the camera except this is intentional just to get some environmental noise or there’s a key audio to cover up the noise. Try as much as possible to get the mic closer the sphere of your subject at about 3-5 inches above your subject.
- CHOSE THE RIGHT LOCATION FOR AUDIO: As I mentioned at the beginning, there was an express road few kilometers away which affected our audio recording. Whenever you’re scouting for a location always have external noise whether it’s indoor or outdoor in mind; lookout for vehicles, trains, echos from any possible source. Always test out each location set and avoid using empty rooms, rooms with upper ceiling etc.
- DAMP/TREAT YOUR SOUND: This can be achieved when you find yourself in a very big but empty room to record, you can damp your subject with a very thick blanket from both sides this is like building a mini studio or cover room from losing your main voice to the external noise.
- GET A ROOM TONE: This is actually one of the mistakes we made while we were shooting our documentary. Having to record a room tone will help you in post-production in cases where there’s a kind of noise intruder, the room tone will be used as a layer or to fill up any overlaps in the course of recording.
