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hello@mwsmedia.co.uk
hello@mwsmedia.co.uk
Sound is more important than vision in a video production (at least, that is what our sound engineers tell us ;-)
It is definitely important and probably where most video productions fall short.
Making sure your video sounds as good as it looks is crucial and our audio experts have all the skills necessary to make that happen.
On-set sound recording
Live events, or projects that contain one-off moments that you capture on video can look amazing, but if they don’t sound very good, a lot of the impact is lost, and never to be captured again! We’ve had a lot of experience in making sure the sound recordist is ready and waiting alongside our camera operators to make sure nothing gets missed.
Perhaps the ultimate in capturing “audio that may never happen again” is filmmaking. Sure you get to do take after take, but what if the Director loved one take in particular, and the audio wasn’t captured well enough? MWS Media have produced two feature films over the past few years. The day-to-day pressures of being on set or on location can be immense under gruelling schedules, and budgets do not always stretch to being able to ADR scenes in post-production. It’s imperative everything an actor says is captured on every single take. We used our two in-house sound recordists to capture the audio for both the films, the first of which, Nuryan, was a split screen feature. Being split screen provided us with some very tricky scenes with which to capture the audio. Essentially we had two cameras filming every shot, sometimes at large open locations, with actors spread across the set. This means we had to use two boom operators to capture the dialogue from the various actors in the shot, but that also meant we had two boom operators to try and hide! This example video comprises clips from Nuryan, showcasing some of the trickier shots and scenes we had to film. All the dialogue you can hear was recorded on location as you see it in the clips, there is no ADR being used. It was a bit of a mission, but we managed to still do a great job!
Original soundtracks
We’ve written, recorded and produced numerous pieces of music for videos at the request of clients. It’s one of our in-house capabilities that we should probably shout about a bit more than we actually do! There are two composers/musicians working at MWS Media, each with an individual style, but both equally capable of turning their musical hands to whatever a client, or project may require.
If ever there was a good example of music being written specifically for a project it is The Sweet Shop. The film we made in 2010 features a successful rock star that goes home to the village he grew up with unexpected circumstances arising from his homecoming. Throughout the film we hear many of the pieces of music the lead character has written and is known for. Phil White, one of our in-house songwriters, wrote all the tracks in the film. The video on this page is the trailer for the film and it showcases some of those pieces of music. It’s easy to see how they bring emotion to the scenes and how a certain style was created for the character in the film throughout the music featured.
Sound dubbing / voice-overs
One of our clients, Intuit, wanted a visually complex video. While we relished the opportunity to push ourselves and create it for them, the audio live on set had to be replaced entirely due to the noisy environment the video demanded we shoot in.
There was a lot going on during the Quickbooks Online video, as you can see here in the final video we produced. However, what you may not notice is that everything you can hear in the video has been recorded separately and dubbed on in post-production, including the main actors dialogue!
This is a process called ADR, where dialogue is recorded, synced with the on set recorded material, tweaked to make it sound right, then replaces the original recording altogether.
This is a very common process but involves a lot of skill from both the actor, who has to reproduce his lines as accurately as possible, and the audio editor, who then has to sync the new recordings so that no one notices it isn’t the original recording.
The sound effects you can hear happening around the main actor are called foley, which is the same process as ADR but for everything except dialogue. So for example the paper falling on his head, and guitar strums were also all recorded separately and then synced up in post-production.
The trick is to then using mixing techniques to help both the new dialogue and new sound effects sound like they happened on set, while also keeping the balance between them big enough to enable the viewer to maintain focused on the dialogue – the main message of the video. Take a look at the video on this page to see just how noisy the location sound recording is and how it would have been very difficult to have used it in the final video.