Importance of Great Sound

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Lesson Info

Importance of Great Sound

I think that this was a part of the video experience and learning curve that for me was really difficult and I was very resistant to it. I'm this total visual storyteller. I got into visual journalism because I'm a photographer and so I'm really interested by what's happening kind of through the lens, and I wasn't really interested in using my ears at all in that process. And I totally went into it with this belief that, like, if the visuals were strong enough, that that would kind of transcend anything, and that is really not true, and many, many people have said it. Very important documentarians have said it. Michael Moore famously says it, that, you know, absolutely audio trumps visuals. It's so much more important. And this means that if you have this gorgeous set of material and your mic is all messed up or your sound is completely off, you can basically throw that material away. Now, the flip side is that if you have crappy visuals or if you have stuff that's completely not worki...

ng but your audio is super clean, chances are if you needed that material, you could get it in. So there's this real, like, kind of two different scenario situation that goes on. You could have incredible visuals of an important scene to you, and if that audio doesn't work, most likely you won't be able to use it unless it's something totally based on the looks of something that you don't need vis-, that you don't need audio for at all. So, like, a fight, even. You know, like, let's say two people are, get into some fight, and you've got it all on camera, but you don't have the audio for it, even something like that, you think, wow, if I took that audio out of that situation, would the visuals stand up? Now, the flip side is, like, let's say you've got a fight, and you've got all of the audio for it, and the camera's literally on the ground pointing at a soda can, if you have the audio of that, a mother and daughter screaming at each other, saying what the problem is, setting up the fight, all of that, you can use it. You all have probably seen movies, you've seen documentaries where this happens. There's a scarf over a lens because they don't wanna use, you know, they wanna hide the camera, but you still hear it. The camera has tipped over, but you still hear the audio. And no one minds that they're watching literally nothing as long as their ears are kind of engaged. So I definitely learned this the hard way. I didn't take audio as seriously as I should in the beginning, and I would shoot this great stuff and feel like I had these great scenes, and then I would go back and play back and realize that my audio was totally messed up and I would have to kind of throw some of that stuff away. So I want you all to not go through that pain and tragedy and get educated about sound, but also get excited about sound, because sound is this whole other experience in video, and once you start doing video and opening your ears up, it's not only that it's a necessary tool. It's that it can totally change the experience for your audience of what they're seeing and what they're feeling. There's so much emotion that is tied into sound that once you start kind of embracing it, you realize that it will enhance your visuals, it will make your material more powerful, more poignant, you know, more accurate, all of these great things.

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