We love good audio at Compass Video and when talking to our clients, we stress how good audio is equally as important as good video.
If you do not put the effort into your audio, your gorgeous shots and mesmerising lighting set-ups could be rendered useless. So we thought, being the nice people we are, we’d share some of our best tips for capturing clear, considered audio to help raise your overall production.
Here are our quick top tips for great audio
- Make sure anything that could create potential disruptions or more noise, is turned off. Computer fans or air conditioning might sound silent but a microphone WILL hear them. If you are in a kitchen, switch off the fridge.
- Turn off your phone! Mute is not good enough, as incoming messages can cause interference the human ear won’t hear at the time … and your text alert will cause an interference we all hear.
- Run a few test recordings to ensure you’re happy with the setup. Time permitting, one or two test runs can help you identify any problems before they ruin your recording.
- Check the direction of your microphone. You’ll be annoyed if your interview has you as the loudest, clearest voice and your subject as distanced and muffled. Also, you can find out if there is any echo or background noise that can be removed/improved.
- If you are filming at home, draw the curtains too! It might feel weird drawing the curtains for an audio record, but they’ll help keep outside noise outside. Like the blankets, the fabric absorbs and dampens the noise.
Extra tip: Edit
While this might sound intimidating, basic audio editing is simple but effective. Whether it’s cutting out blank spaces, removing mistakes, or changing the volume levels – Don’t waste your hard work in preparing and recording by falling at the last hurdle. There is plenty of open-source (free) audio editing software available to help you with this.
Training!
We offer training on Smart Phone Filmmaking or Typical training schedule – Compass Video (compass-video.com) to Make Videos. Audio is a big part of this and if you want to improve your videos or learn to make your own videos, fill out the form below or contact us today.