On the Importance of… Room Tone
It’s a misnomer, but you need it - lots of it
What is room tone? Why is it a misnomer? And why is it so important…?
The answers to the first two questions are quite straightforward; firstly, room tone refers to the ambient sound of a location. Secondly, it’s a bit of a misnomer as not every location is an interior room, of course, so for this reason it’s also referred to - more correctly - as wild track.
The third question is a little harder to answer, but here goes: you need room tone, and plenty of it, to make the sound design of your edit as smooth as possible. When you make cuts to a clip and splice others into it, you can create jarring jumps in the background sound, so it makes sense to have a constant stream of clean wild track, or room tone, to smooth over the joins.
Technically, the wild track sits below your dialogue clips (and sound effects, should there be any), but above any music tracks.
Remember the video of Rich bowling from the previous post...?
In order to get the shots I wanted, I had to reposition the camera and film from a different angle. You could probably hear the difference that made to the background sound.
Here’s the solution - a large audio transition between the two clips with the wild track mixed underneath to cover any gaps:
Here’s the finished video:
One final thing to say: you need absolute silence from the crew when recording them, plus I’m going to stick my neck out and say that you need at least one full minute of wild track of every location you record in. Don’t be afraid to stand your ground, as wild track and room tone will become invaluable to you in the future.
Copyright © 2021 Chris Nelthorpe/Gasworks Films Ltd
