When creating a commercial, film or documentary there are many options when it comes to the sound design. Do I create my own Foley in the studio, should I just use a sound effects library or am I better off using the location sound that was recorded during filming? My thoughts – use all of them, but consider which is best for the certain situation.
For example, an animated piece is most likely going to be using a combination of Foley and SFX library audio. Why? Well most of these productions are set in environments we are not familiar with, and if we are unfamiliar with them then we don’t know what they should sound like. With this situation the sound can be created from scratch. Using Foley and a SFX library is a great way to manage this.
What about a documentary? Well this one seems pretty self-explanatory doesn’t it? If I am recording a documentary then obviously I would use the location sound to give it a realistic feel and place the shot in the right environment. Documentaries actually tend to use a combination of location sound as well as Foley, most of the time due to unforeseen circumstances. The audio recorded during filming may not be useable – this could be due to a plane flying overhead, a storm passing through, or in the case of nature documentaries, most of the shots are filmed hundreds of metres away from particular animals so the sound can’t be recorded anyway. Check out this short clip to see what I mean (you may never look at David Attenborough the same way) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Li6TSwybqjU .
So sound isn’t necessarily always what it seems, and this is due to the fact that we can use such a wide range of methods for creating the sound experience for the viewers, and to create the experience a mixture of all methods of sound needs to be used depending on the situation. There are some great sound design documentaries online, have a listen and you’ll be surprised what you are actually hearing.