audio production

Listen Up!

Overview

One of the most neglected parts of media production is audio. People tend to think that a great media production consists of video or stills consisting of many shots assembled in a cool way with special effects galore. That simply is not the case! Audio is a necessity in video and it must be as good quality as the stills or video themselves.

Like images, sounds are a non-digital form of information. The variations in volume and frequency of sounds produced by musical instruments, human voices and even highway traffic vary continuously over wide ranges. Such variations cannot be captured exactly in digital form. Anyone who has a cheap radio with a digital volume control knows this. The volume level you really want always seems to be between two of the settings on such digital volume controls. Accordingly, as with images, the digital encoding of sound will always involve some approximation. In fact, our goal in this section will be to understand that the types of approximations made are very similar to those made when encoding digital images.

Objectives

  1. Select appropriate options for creating digital audio
  2. Apply appropriate techniques for capturing good quality audio recordings
  3. Edit, mix, and export multi-track recordings using audio editing software
  4. Select an appropriate option for delivering online audio content
  5. Apply learned skills using Audacity

Topics

  • audio recording jargon
  • recording equipment & techniques
    • shotgun
    • boom
    • lapel/lavelier
    • vocal/handheld
    • deadcat/wind sock
  • audio file formats
  • Audacity
  • multi-track
  • audio mixing
  • soundtrack
  • sound fx

Embedded Readings/Media

Sound Production

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CC0 via pexels.com

Sound Post-Production

CC) via Pexels.com
CC) via Pexels.com