Sound for film in Zimbabwe

This is one area that need drastic improvement.
Many a situation, camera folk are the editors,  sound editors, color graders etc they basically do everything. I watched Michael Bay making of the transformers and i wished all film makers would watch it.

I was invited once invited to do sound for a local tv show called Battle of The Chefs, a great opportunity for me to show what I was made of….
Let me be honest the team was made up of amazing people, geniuses in the fields myself included. To cut the long story short, there was one particular editor who seemed not to like me, l will reserve the name. Each episode had approximately 14 days of editing but the surprising thing was that many of the episodes he was editing he made sure I got the audio to score, balance and edit barely a few hours before the deadline. and l pulled off some of the work, staying up all night because for me at this stage it was not about the money any more but having something to show as part of my CV.

This was the worst work schedule ever in my life, trust me l would never work under such conditions ever. Why i shared the story is because that’s how most people treat each other during a production. It compromises the work greatly and the production.

I wish l could have another chance to do battle of the chefs and do something better than what i did then, coz l know i can.

There are a few things to note when doing sound for film especially in pre/post production:

• Choosing the right gear, including lavalier and boom mics
• Syncing offline devices
• Working with audio in the video editor
• Moving files to Audition
• Choosing sources
• Cleaning up and getting the most out of nonideal audio
• Reducing noise
• Adding sound effects
• Mixing and adjusting levels
• Exporting and managing final files

We will talk about all these aspects in a later blog for now cheers.

Written by Mbaki Nleya