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Editing and finishing3 min read

LESSON 121

Sound design and mixing basics

Dialogue, effects, music, then the mix.

IN THIS LESSON

  1. What sound design is
  2. Foley and effects
  3. The mix
  4. Mixing basics
  5. Practice: a first mix

What sound design is

Sound design is the craft of creating the sound of a piece of media: choosing, recording, editing and sometimes synthesising every sound the audience hears. In film it covers dialogue, sound effects, ambience and the way music sits with them. Its roots run back to theatre, where bells, whistles and horns were played off stage on cues written into the script; in the 1910s Luigi Russolo built noise machines to imitate trains and machines. In modern film, the sound designer shapes how a world feels even when the picture is still.

Foley and effects

Foley is the recreation of everyday sounds in post-production, named after the sound-effects artist Jack Foley. Footsteps, rustling clothes, creaking doors and breaking glass are performed in a Foley studio in time with the picture. Props and sets often do not sound like the real thing, so their sounds are replaced; Foley can also cover unwanted noise such as aircraft. The best Foley goes unnoticed. Without it, scenes feel strangely quiet and uncomfortable. Other effects come from libraries or are recorded on location as wild sound.

The mix

The re-recording mixer, called a dubbing mixer in Europe, combines dialogue, effects and music into the final soundtrack. The work often starts with a dialogue premix, where levels are set, joins are cross-faded and background noise picked up on set is reduced. Effects and music premixes follow, and then the final balance, which must match the director's or designer's intentions. For cinema, mixing is done on a full-size dubbing stage so the mixer hears the film as an audience will. Broadcast mixes must also meet loudness rules.

Mixing basics

Audio mixing in general means balancing the levels of many tracks and treating them with tools such as equalisation, which shapes tone, and compression, which narrows the gap between loud and quiet. For film the first rule of working practice is that dialogue comes first: if the audience cannot follow the words, nothing else matters. Effects and music sit around the voices, rising in the gaps and dipping under speech. Room tone fills the cuts between dialogue so the background never drops out.

Practice: a first mix

This is working practice. Put dialogue, effects, ambience and music on separate tracks. Set dialogue to a comfortable level first. Lay room tone or ambience under the whole scene. Add effects for the actions on screen. Bring music in under the voices and let it rise between lines. Listen on good headphones and on a phone speaker, and fix whatever disappears on the phone. Most viewers will hear your film on small speakers or cheap earphones, so a mix that only works on studio monitors is not finished. Leave the loudest moments for the climax, and check the start and end are not much quieter or louder than the middle.

Try it today

  1. 01Take a one-minute scene and strip it to dialogue only.
  2. 02Add a continuous ambience track under it.
  3. 03Record three Foley sounds at home to match actions on screen.
  4. 04Add music and duck it under every line.
  5. 05Listen on headphones and a phone, then adjust.