Sound for picture – Documentary
Pre-Production
A lot of documentaries include little or none location recordings. Some of them don’t even have any original video recordings. Because of this, there is lots of pre-production work involved.
A paper edit is made so that the director, editors and producers can sort out what they want, and where it should go.This would include finding music.
Production
The production phase in creating a documentary involves mainly recording any location sounds. This could mean anything from recording an interview between two or more people, to Steve Irwin yelling about crocodiles in the middle of the outback. Interviews and such would normally be recorded with a shotgun mic, either above or below the frame, moving from person to person. Lapel mics could be used, but it’s not really necessary. In Steve Irwin’s case, radio mics might be used, especially if the film crew wants to stay well back from danger. If the scene is outside a few minutes of ambience might also be recorded at each location to use in post-production.
Post–Production
Once all of the production work is finished, the off-line edit takes place. This is where the video is roughly cut. (The original film isn’t edited here; it’s just a low-resolution copy.) Once the offline edit is done, the Edit Decision List (EDL) is provided and an online edit occurs. These edits are mainly focused on getting the right shots/sequences for the video, and the audio cuts will probably be bad. Lots of times the editors will cut off ends of words etc. After the video editing is complete, the audio is offlayed into a DAW where the editing and mixing can begin.
Spot effects and Foley are created/sourced if they haven’t already been found. For example, if it’s a nature documentary, sounds of animals running etc. could be spot effects.
Then atmosphere layers are added. This would be any continuous sound in the background, such as birds chirping, the wind, and rain and traffic noise.