Common sound problems with low budget films

There's nothing that turns off an audience faster than bad sound. An image can be a bit soft in focus or a bit shaky, and the audience is accepting, but when the sound is bad, they're often intolerant. So, in filmmaking, it is said that the eye forgives and the ear does not. Those are some of the introductory words of an excellent book written by Patrick Winters called Sound Design for Low and No Budget Films.

The basic sound mistakes you should avoid in your low-budget film are not that difficult to fix. In fact, you just need to know a little about the subject and make the right choices.

Let's start with a problem that often causes the experience to deteriorate beyond repair when watching a movie or series: the volume of the dialogue is noticeably lower than that of the sound effects and soundtrack. It happens more than we would like: dialogues have a moderate sound pressure level that forces us to turn up the TV volume beyond what is reasonable, so that, when a sound effect comes up, which has been expressly recorded at a higher level, we have to turn the volume down again if we want to protect our ears. The viewer should never have to hold the remote control in his or her hand waiting for these abrupt sound changes. Everything should flow naturally, with organic transitions.

Of course, it is possible to face unexpected challenges. Let's say you need to translate the sound of a movie that has been designed to be played in a theater to a home broadcast format. Well, even if the budget is low, it's important to do the best to make the experience for the viewer who’s watching the movie at home as close as possible to what they enjoy in theaters, despite having fewer channels. 

No one said it was easy, but it is a necessary effort.

If we reproduce the sound in a home multichannel equipment of certain quality, our experience can be very similar to the one proposed by the movie theaters, but if we use the speakers of our TV or any other sound equipment with stereo topology or with a lower number of channels than the audio of the movie, it is likely that the voices may be somewhat masked by the sound effects and music. This should not happen. Many of the people who consume what they devise use their TV speakers, and usually both series and movies incorporate a stereo mix that should give us a sound at least correct on a TV. The problem is that this stereo mix is not always careful enough, which can cause an unpleasant imbalance between the sound pressure level of the voices and the effects.

Another problem is improper sound editing. Leaving things as they were recorded; sometimes with the deliberate excuse that a fake horror documentary is being filmed, like The Blair Witch, or thanks to the influence of Dogme 95 and its apparent naturalness. Not eliminating background noises, echoes, or interference; not highlighting certain voices or sound effects, or not creating contrasts and silences, is equivalent to mixing the ingredients of a pizza in a bowl, throwing them in the oven, and expecting a fantastic result at the end of cooking. It is necessary to design the sound, to make creative decisions that are in harmony with the content of the production. Acting direction has a reason for being, the art direction has a reason for being, and sound is no slouch.

Some problems seem obvious but most amateur filmmakers do not take them into account. Bad microphone technique create problems like catching wind distortion, or the scratching of an actor’s clothing.

So, there are no excuses: low budget does not always mean poor quality. Filmmaking is not easy. Stanley Kubrick used to say that making a film is like reading War and Peace in the bumper cars. While it is true that one of the difficulties of filmmaking is to pay attention to too many things at the same time, some fundamental aspects cannot be neglected. The script, the actors, and, of course, the sound. 

To get the best sound mix for your next film, contact us.

*The images used on this post are taken from Pexels.com