Sound editing notes
I attended a short sound meeting with our main sound lecturer recently and I would like to talk about a few of the things that we were alerted to when working with a sound designer in post production.
The first thing that caught my attention was that we actually don’t work with the sound editors until picture lock, which makes sense now that I think about it as what would they do while the picture is being moved around. Which moves me on to the fact you really need a solid picture lock otherwise if the sound editors converge their project into yours it will be dramatically out of sync.
To the end I also now see that the post group needs to not only agree to a workflow but then stick to it resolutely to allow for enough time for both sound and picture editors to finish their jobs before out theoretical broadcasts.
Lastly it is very obvious but the director has to be kept in the loop at all times. If you changed something and then the director didn’t like it after a picture lock then the fallout reaches the entire post production team, which when sound is involved ends up being about twice as large in most cases.
There was also a lot about rushes/timeline management and export rules when going to a sound engineer which fell into “Don’t change anything to do with audio and keep it synced up at all times.” Before I would just do my own sound editing in timeline but I look forward to seeing the results of a third party sound edit on a polished picture edit.