An Open Letter to Picture Editors
Dear Editor(s):
I am looking forward to handling the post-production sound for your project. I’ll be cleaning up dialogue, adding sound effects, and generally getting the soundtrack to sound as good as the picture edit looks.
Could you do me a favor?
Dump that room tone that goes with EACH and EVERY scene on an open audio track at the bottom of the editing timeline and mute it. You will save your dialogue editor – me! – so much time and trouble. I won’t have to go through and find that necessary tone when it’s tucked away somewhere in the raw footage.
So, as you are capturing, make a note to keep the tone part. If an intern or assistant does the digitizing for you, make sure they know to keep the room tone and name it accordingly. Here’s a possible naming convention:
- RT Cafe day
- RT Park location night
And make sure 30-60 seconds is captured. Put that tone on an audio track and line it up with the first shot of the scene it goes with then mute the track. Don’t do anything with it. If you could just include this with all the other audio you give me when you hand your project over for the sound work, that will be really fantastic.
By your taking this little step you will save time, money, frustration, and generally all this little extra effort will lead to smoother, cleaner dialogue and a better overall soundtrack.
Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
Regards,
Your Sound Supervisor
2 Comments
Everything dynamic and very positively!
[...] If you are really generous, put the room tone that goes with each scene on tracks 9/10 and mute them. You will save me hours, perhaps days, of having to find the room tone myself. And it’s easier for the picture editor to do this ‘cos they captured the footage and can find it easier. I wrote about this here. [...]