Get a new pair of ears to listen to your postproduction work
| Listen to your work in postproduction with sharp 'new' ears. Ask someone else to listen as well. |
| Get a 'new pair of ears' to listen to the product while you are working on it. Do this early on in the process of production. |
| If a student, get another in the class to listen to a scene, as soon as you have got to the first draft. |
|
You will become too familiar with the sound effects choices and balancing by this stage. The 'new pair of ears' freshens your work. |
| GOOD: You will open yourself to comments on details which you have not appreciated before. |
| DIALOGUE AND ATMOS |
| It is difficult to balance the DIALOGUE against the ATMOS bed ('open country', 'street with traffic' etc). You may not achieve the best balance in your first attempt. Use the 'new pair of ears'. Don't expect to get it right in your first draft. |
|
|
| You have to supply for yourself some good quality earphones. You cannot work on post-production without good quality earphones. You will not be able to assess levels accurately. And when you play your work in progress through some good speakers in the Studio, you will realise how you are hindering yourself. |
|
STUDENT EMILY COMMENTS: At times, it wasn't until Alan was listening to the final post produced scenes that I noticed words were slurred or incomprehensible. This was for the first time, even though I had been working in these scenes in POSTPRODUCTION. Why had that happened? Why had this slipped my attention? FURTHER: The chemistry atmosphere (which I recorded on location) had a hum. It was the fans which are used in the lab. That sounded like a 'threatening effect' to Alan. I had not noticed that. And yet, I had heard the scene so many times. I was so familiar with it. I was too close to the piece to appreciate this. It is so important to have others listening to your work as you go, to get a fresher approach to the scene. |
|
|
Learn about radio drama on this site along with my book - Beck, Alan, Radio Acting, London: A & C Black ISBN 0-7136-4631-4 Available on Amazon. CLICK HERE.
To the WELCOME PAGE for Alan Beck's sites. See more of Alan Beck's work.
