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9 years, 7 months ago - Timo Saila

This is a reminder / advice for filmmakers, directors, producers out there.

This might sound biased coming from a sound engineer, but then again, who else would know more about the topic!

Okay, having worked in London as a sound recordist / sound editor for the last three years and being active in many of these internet forums and discussions I have noticed an alarming trend in jobs boards productions seeking sound recordists/engineers etc. LAST MINUTE for jobs.

"A sound recordist needed for a short film shoot for two days starting tomorrow. Needs to bring own equipment: a shotgun mic and three sets of radio mics. Expenses paid."

This is a made-up ad I wrote but could easily be found on the various jobs boards.

Even though sound recordists are known to be astute individuals with unrivaled problem-solving skills, they cannot solve problems that are caused by bad pre-production. If a director wants great production sound in their film (hence avoiding the costly process of ADR) they should include a sound recordist in the pre-production stage. Having a sound professional in the recce and pre-prod meetings can be of huge advantage to the project. Every location has it´s own acoustic characteristics which has an impact on the microphone selection. The camera angles, different lenses and lighting is going to affect sound recordist´s job and she/he needs to know that stuff in advance.

Sometimes the shotgun mic is not going to sound good / be of use because of a wide angle, tight location or noisy environment and a sound recordist needs to use radio mics to get the dialogue recorded. What if the talent is wearing something that creates a lot of noise to the radio mics? All this could be avoided with proper pre-planning. The sound people will have a solution to most problems as long as they get a bit of time to figure things out.

Also, having the permission to turn off A/C units, refridgerators, lights with noisy dimmers, neighbor´s dog etc. at the location is all part of soundie´s duties. They are the people who hear the minute details that will come haunting you in the post-production stage if not taken care of at the time of shooting.

So just to wrap this up and keep it simple, remember one rule: If you are producing a short film (or any other film) contact a sound recordist as early on as possible and keep her/him on the loop and include them in the production planning. There are things that have to do with sound that you´d never even think of. The beauty of film making is in collaboration between different departments. Let´s keep that culture of collaboration alive.


Thanks for reading and have happy holidays!



For further reading on the subject:

Here is a great little article on Indiewire page on the subject:
http://www.indiewire.com/article/dont-let-amateur-sound-crush-your-film-festival-dreams-20151201

And here is a great post from one of the London´s top recordists Richard Thomas explaining and expanding a bit more on the subject:
http://rtsound.net/?p=424