Sound Design what is it I hear you cry! Well what
most people think it is, is the creation of great sounds, in theory that is
only part of the story. Sound design is not simply about attaching
sound effects to existing structures, it is working with directors
throughout production and post-production to help tell the story in
the best way it can possibly be told, linking sound and the visuals
in ways that sound shapes the picture just as much as picture shapes
the sound.
So this raises a question, a friend asked me a while back, he said to me. "I do not want to sound stupid but what is the difference between production and post-production," I replied "thats not a stupid question its actually a very good one."
Until I went to study at the Vancouver Film School I will admit I did not know either so here is the answer:
Production - Is whatever happens during filming. So in sound design we have the production dialogue that is recorded by a boom operator (the person who holds the microphone capturing the dialogue spoken by the actors) and a production sound mixer who is the head os the sound team and mixes the dialogue being recorded.
Post-Production - is whatever happens after the programme or film has been recorded. The easiest way to describe post-production sound is think of your favourite film, as an example one of my favourites and probably the best example is Star Wars. Not many people know that nearly all of the sound apart from the dialogue and even that is edited and manipulated, is either recorded or created and added to the film after wards. Hence the name post-production, the name sound design or sound designer was coined by the legendary Ben
Burtt.
Ben Burtt is a true sound designer as he not only functions as a production recordist, sound editor or sound mixer. If we take the example of the film mentioned above Star Wars, he was
involved
from the very
start of the project in pre-production, through production and
finally post-production and
although a very rare opportunity it was him who co-ordinated all that
was heard in the soundtrack
for Star Wars.
