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Reddit mentions of The Sound Effects Bible: How to Create and Record Hollywood Style Sound Effects
Sentiment score: 11
Reddit mentions: 15
We found 15 Reddit mentions of The Sound Effects Bible: How to Create and Record Hollywood Style Sound Effects. Here are the top ones.
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- Michael Wiese Productions
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Whoosh.....
It's like if you asked a musician how to write a song and they responded...play notes.
There is a lot to post audio. Here are the broadest strokes...
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Dialogue Editing - Use fades to smooth out transitions from one clip to the next. This helps with room tone shifts and hard edits. If there is a gap in audio between two lines of dialogue...add room tone that matches both sides to fill the space. Clean out clicks/pops and any unwanted sounds...cloth rustling, mic hits, radio mic breakup, director talking.
Sound Effects Editing - Add sounds that you either record or find in a sound effects library. These can be broken down into a few categories.
Music/Score:
This is usually handled by a composer but an editor may need to smooth edits between music transitions.
After all of the audio has been editing to your liking it's time to mix.
Mixing (just a few bullet points) -
This is a very basic look at what post audio entails. I suggest you use this to look up how each of these things is done individually. There are many different techniques and everyone has their own way of doing things. People spend their entire lives mastering this craft. It's really not something that can be summed up in a single post.
Resources that have helped me over the years....
There is in fact a book called The Sound Effects Bible
Start with Marshall McGee: He's one of the Sound Designer who worked on Just Cause 4 among other things, and he makes a lot of bite-sized, info-rich videos that are just fantastic.
Then of course, you should read the works of some of the professionals in this field: The Sound Design Bible by Ric Viers and Sound Design by David Sonnenschein would both be good places to start.
Obviously, you should also get out there and record, as soon as possible :) You'll need a portable recorder, and one or two mics. Obviously, it's entirely possible to do sound design using nothing but samples, but you'll be skipping one of the key steps of making great sounds. Great sound design begins by great sound recording, and knowing how to get your very own, unique, high quality sounds is not only a key step in this process, it's also a lot of fun. I started with a Zoom F4 for my recorder, and it works like a charm for its price. For microphones, you'll want either a shotgun microphone (particularly if you're doing Foley), or a pair of mics capable of handling various tasks. My first microphones ever were a pair of Oktava mk-012, and they're great, reliable microphones.
For DAWs, as always, there is no right answer, and whichever DAW you're comfortable using is the right DAW. I'd recommend Reaper, as it's dirt cheap and is just as good if not better than many, more expensive "studio standards" like ProTools, but, again, whichever DAW you're comfortable with is the right DAW.
And finally, welcome ! It's always nice to see new people interested in Sound Design.
Interaction Design
Interior Design
Landscape Architecture
Lighting Design
Product Design
Product Design
Sound Design
Urban Design
* Cities for People by Jan Gehl
Web Design
For headphones, recording (often quiet) sound effects, headphones with good isolation is important. The Sennheiser HD280's work quite well for that, better than say, Sony MDR7506's.
The H4n is probably your best choice around that price level, it's the only one of those three that offers XLR input. It also has pretty decent stereo mics, and can be plugged into a computer as a audio interface. It doesn't have the best/quietest preamps, but that's as good as you'll get near that price.
I see you want a mono mic. For recording sound effects, a shotgun mic is probably what you want most of the time. The RØde NTG-1 or NTG-2 are both good options (mostly the same, but the 2 has battery power). You may want to supplement that with another fairly inexpensive cardioid mic, possibly even hyper/supercardioid (Avantone CK-1 for example).
For wind protection, you can go with a softie-type mount, where the windjammer goes directly on the mic, but they're not much cheaper than Rycote's S-series, which is awesome... I use the S-330 on my NTG-2, and it sounds great even in fairly high wind.
Don't forget batteries and a charger for whatever you're using- Sanyo's Eneloop (pre-charged NiMH) batteries are awesome.
Get some kind of sturdy bag to carry your gear in, and some way to hold your recorder when you're recording. I've seen either bags/harnesses or strapping the recorder to your arm work.
Something for cable management is smart, like these carabiners
The pistol grips for most wind protection will be for a 3/8" mount for a boom pole, so if you plan on putting that on a mic stand, you might need an adapter like this
Lastly, if you haven't already, get The Sound Effects Bible, and read it. It's a fantastic resource for all things SFX related.
These are the two I recommend:
Sound for Film and Television
This one is heavy on the technical side. (Probably the one you want based on your request)
[Producing Great Sound for Film and Video: Expert Tips from Preproduction to Final Mix] (http://www.amazon.com/Producing-Great-Sound-Film-Video/dp/0415722071/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1452707884&sr=8-4&keywords=sound+for+film)
This one has a higher focus on practical advice.
Those two should cover almost everything. There's also The Sound Effects Bible that is a real crash-course over the same information. In my opinion though it's way too sparse to be of actual use outside of someone wanting to just know the basic terminology and workflow. Maybe that's all you actually want though.
Sites:
Books:
Alternatively get someone with experience in sound design to work on your projects, there's a lot of us budding sound designers out there, myself included who are looking for work on projects.
It's almost 3 am where I am. I promise to find something for you in the morning. Bookmark these, it's how I retrieved them for you.Here's a few for now (in no particular order):
Reddit thread about sound effects libraries:
http://www.reddit.com/r/audioengineering/comments/h2nxm/hey_raudioengineering_i_was_wondering_if_there/
Synthesizer research (reviews with sound samples!):
http://www.vintagesynth.com
http://www.vintagesynth.com
Gear reviews:
http://ronansrecordingshow.com/
A cool article about bi-neural sound recording:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13645_3-20026650-47.html
Tips on tightening the low end of your mix:
http://passivepromotion.com/tighten-the-low-end-of-your-mix-with-a-frequency-analyzer
Audio Engineer's Handbook:
http://books.google.com/books?id=y0d9VA0lkogC&lpg=PA1321&ots=APvb9Cd9vK&dq=audio%20ballou&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=audio%20ballou&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=y0d9VA0lkogC&lpg=PA1321&ots=APvb9Cd9vK&dq=audio%20ballou&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=audio%20ballou&f=false
Reddit's musician database:
http://code.reddit.com/wiki/help/faqs/ProductionLounge
A good book regarding recording sound effects:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1932907483/ref=cm_sw_su_dp
Audio product reviews:
http://www.tapeop.com/reviews/category/23/
Test tones:
http://quiztones.net/
Website dedicated to recording tips and tricks:
http://recordinghacks.com/
Microphone techniques:
http://theproaudiofiles.com/microphone-tips-from-recording-hacks/
Some good general mixing tips:
http://theproaudiofiles.com/top-25-a-ha-moments-in-learning-to-record-mix/
Mixing rap vocals:
http://theproaudiofiles.com/mixing-rap-vocals/
Compression tips:
http://theproaudiofiles.com/dynamics-processing/
Getting that internship:
http://theproaudiofiles.com/tips-how-to-get-that-recording-studio-internship/
A cool site I frequent (reviews and tips):
http://thedspproject.com/
Here's a little cheat-sheet for EQing:
http://www.recordingwebsite.com/articles/eqfreq.php
Pro Tools 100%. Standard in any post studio. You can get a massive discount if you're a student, £200 in the UK instead of retail which is £699. studica.com sells it
Check out: Pro Tools is Awesome, a load of great tips working with dialogue in Pro Tools.
Books:
Any questions you have id be happy to answer, I'm a location sound guy now but at one point I was going down the post audio career route(mixed a few shorts, web-series and a feature).
I can recommend two books:
The Sound Effects Bible which is excellent for giving you tips on how to listen to sound, not just hear it, not just hear sounds. and Sound Design by David Sonnenschein
which is more theory andform based, but is excellent for giving you ideas in terms of narrative structure and flow through a story using sound design.
If you're interest is more than a little serious, I would also strongly recommend buying a stereo field recorder, like a Zoom H4n or something similar. it's completely self contained so all you need to do is point and record. It's really good for recording sounds and ambiences on the spot and impromptu recordings. (You'll need an SD card, get a big one, you'll want to record everything!!!)
This is how I got started and I've certainly not regretted it, even from a hobbyist point of view it's not a bad thing to be spending your life doing in my opinion.
Hope this was useful.
Edit: link code fail.
Each book approaches sound design from different angles. Sonnenschein and Chion talk more about sound design theory than technique, while Yewdall covers more of the post-production process in Hollywood (though is becoming sightly dated since technology and working conditions are still shifting).
They're all good books, and there are others as well (see http://amzn.com/1932907483), but I'm inclined to recommend Sonnenschein's book - besides giving a peek into the minds of some excellent sound designers, it does a good job of explaining a lot of the "why of sound design" that you may be looking for.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Sound-Effects-Bible-Hollywood/dp/1932907483
This is a great book that will really help you out, megabuster.
You can hear audio samples of different recorders here: http://www.wingfieldaudio.com/portable-recorder-noise.html
It's an amazing resource.
Read books, websites, PRACTICE.
http://designingsound.org/
http://www.amazon.com/The-Sound-Effects-Bible-Hollywood/dp/1932907483
http://www.amazon.com/Sound-Design-Expressive-Effects-Cinema/dp/0941188264
https://vimeo.com/45587080#at=0
The Sound Effects Bible is really well put together, it has a lot of great references to the most used sound effects and how to make them, as well as home studio tips and other equipment guides.
Well I started by taking a class in college and finding it so much more interesting than other audio work, but you're probably looking for something more economical. haha
There are a ton of great open source programs you can get to mess around with things that have to do with sound design. Stuff like Audicity (editing software), bfxr (sound generator), or even just messing around with FMOD in Unity (both have free versions.)
I would also suggest you read Rick Viers's, The Sound Effect Bible. It's mostly about sound recording techniques, film sound, and it's a bit out of date, but there's a lot of great information in that book.
You could also hop into /r/gameaudio for more information!