Production Sound Effects - Collaboration with Post Production

[VASI]

I don't have done a project with high amount of production sound effects like rifle guns, explosions etc. I am always curious about the collaboration between production sound department and post production sound department for this. Not only for feature films, but also for television series which the time for editing, mixing etc it's more tight.

[Philip Perkins]

In USA features the recording of SFX like guns, explosions etc is a specialty craft--there is a small group of people who do pretty much just that and have specialized equipment, methods, locations, deep experience with ordinance and a lot of contacts about where to get specific weapons and equipment.   For more general SFX and ambiances often sound editorial will send a recordist to the set to grab sounds that seem useful, sometimes after consulting with the production mixer and the director.  In my experience doing this sort of work the production sound people and the director are usually too busy making the movie and getting the dialog recorded to spend much time on sfx recording, usually the sfx recordist has a wish list from editorial and does the best they can to work around the rest of the crew.  Depending on the sort of film that is being made, there might be very elaborate SFX recording sessions on location separate from the camera units, maybe involving vehicles, aircraft and so on etc..   Production mixers often try to grab sfx when they can while recording the film's dialog--esp things that might not be repeatable or available later, but generally they are too busy to do a whole lot of this.  For lower-budget projects, TV and etc there is more reliance on SFX libraries, which have hugely increased in number, variety and quality in the last few years.

 

philp