AUDIO EDITING

A professional audio editor undertakes audio post-production. The audio editor is responsible for creating the soundtrack that accompanies the picture. An audio editor’s job involves many tasks and goes through an intricate process for each film they work on.

Dialogue Editing and Automated Dialogue Replacement – These could include production dialogue editing, in which the audio editor checks that the audio dialogue track matches with the picture. It might also involve automated dialogue replacement, which allows actors to rerecord lines or do voice-over narrations. The audio editor checks that the new dialogue syncs properly.

Sound Effects and Music – Audio editors are also responsible for sound effects design and editing, adding extra sounds to create the right ambiance for a film. Another responsibility is foley mixing and editing, which are background sounds from everyday life, like footsteps, clothes rustling, or handling objects. Audio editors also take charge of incorporating the music composition and editing, should your film require it.

Mixing – Finally, the audio editor puts all these elements together in the final stage of audio post-production – mixing. Here they ensure that all of the audio components fit, producing the highest quality of film possible.

Professional audio editors employ different techniques to achieve the production value they’re after. Three methods we often use at CoolBox are adjusting gain, smoothing room tone, and adding crossfades.

Adjusting Gain – Gain refers to the input level of your audio clips and volume refers to output. Adjusting gain allows us to control the overall noise of the film. We listen to A-roll audio first, like interviews or on-camera dialogue, modifying the gain levels if necessary. We then match the rest of the audio track levels to our A-roll audio.

Smoothing Room Tone – Tone is the neutral, background noise of a room you’re filming in. Typically, we take some “sample tone” audio of a room before actual filming, so we have clips of the neutral sounds in the room. This way, if a distracting noise cuts in during filming, like an air conditioner kicking on, we can lay our sample tones over them. This guarantees an audio continuity throughout the film.

Crossfades – Another technique we use frequently is adding crossfades. When audio clips cut in or out, there sometimes might be a subtle popping sound. Crossfades cover these pops, making a smooth transition when piecing several soundbites together.

As you can see, audio editing is a complex process! The job of an audio editor isn’t a simple one, with many tasks to complete and several elements to deal with. Unless you’re familiar with this process or have access to sophisticated audio editing software, then you should rely on professionals for your audio editing services. At CoolBox, we have our own recording studio, so we can do all our own audio editing in-house.

An expert audio editor can enhance the quality of your film tenfold. Relying on their experience and industry knowledge saves you time on post-production and gives your film a polished, high-quality aspect. At CoolBox, we offer audio editing as part of our overall post-production package. Having worked on many types of films over the years, from auto-ethnographies to big-budget ads, we’ve had extensive experience mixing audio for a variety of purposes.