Production Sound
Film sets are noisy places.
The producer is talking to the director. The director is talking to the cinematographer. The cinematographer is talking to the gaffer. Lights are being moved. Dolly track is being laid. Cast members are rehearsing lines. Everyone is doing their job and making lots and lots of noise.
And then, when it’s time to roll camera, everything goes quiet.
It’s at this point that the production sound crew had better be ready, because recording good production sound is foundational for all the sound work that must be done later.
So, what exactly is recorded on set?
Despite how your film may wind up sounding, the goal of production sound is to record very specific elements as cleanly as possible—in other words, without any interference from background sound.
These elements include:
Dialogue
The dialogue should be as clean as possible. Special microphones are used to isolate the dialogue as much as possible from the background sound.
Wild Lines
These may include additional lines of dialogue that aren’t seen on screen but should be recorded in the same setting as everything else. That way, they will match the rest of the production sound and be easier to cut into the picture believably.
Wild Sound
This includes any additional elements that are key to the location and for which it may be hard to find a sound effect later.
Room Tone
The room tone is the sound of the physical space that a scene is shot in, minus any dialogue. This is often shot at the end of a scene and calls for the cast and crew to be quiet for up to a minute.
And that’s it! If the production sound crew has done their work correctly, they have provided the postproduction sound team with all the essential pieces needed to craft a believable soundscape.
Recording excellent production sound depends on the following chain of components working together effectively. The quality of your sound is only as good as the quality of each link in this chain.
