What you didn’t know about sound in online video
- Blog, Sound
- Berlin, online video, Sound, video production
- March 2, 2020
Did you ever watch a video and turned it off because you couldn’t understand what they were saying? Even if the quality of the video was good? With this article we hope you finally realise why sound is so important. Our sound technician Chris Everts tells you all about sound. Keep reading to get all the tips you need and to get more insights on audio in online video.
The importance of sound
There are millions, even billions of videos online, so why would someone choose to watch a particular video? Even your video?
Because it gives them a feeling, it lets their emotions run. Wether it makes them laugh or educates them, they watch it because it peaks their interest and they feel good about watching that particular video.
Of course it is important to have a good visual. The viewer needs to choose to watch that video based on a title or a visual of that video. But to be able to catch a viewers attention and retain it to really get your message across, the videos’ sound needs to be good! And that is why sound is so important, even if you never thought of it that way, it is never too late to learn.
Meeting rooms are terrible for interviews (and what it does to the sound).
I interviewed a man who has so much love for sound, Chris Everts. Chris is sound technician and perfects DitzTV’s sound on many videos. Last year, DitzTV had a filming in Berlin for Flexport. They had to film experiences of customers. But when they started filming in a meeting room to focus on one particular person, the sound was so hollow, that Chris insisted on changing the location because it would not be good for the overall quality of the film. So please try to avoid meeting rooms, it was like filming in a bathroom.
The focus for this film was a close-up on the customer, meaning the surrounding was not as important, so it was easy to change the location for the sound to be better. For this reason the person in charge of sound and the camera man should be very close involved.
Camera and sound should work together
Chris says that the partnership between sound and camera is a very important dynamic that should work well together to accomplish perfection. It can even be seen as a marriage, both parties have to compromise depending on what the film needs to get the message across. In some cases image is more important, but in other cases, sound is.
“The partnership between sound and camera is a forever changing dynamic, and it is very important for these to work together”
Must follow tips for your video
The next and most important tip, and one you should revisit every single time, is to always listen to what you are recording! Is it as you envisioned it to sound and does it get your message across? If there is just the slightest thing off about the sound, adjust it and do it again, and go back and listen to it again until it is perfect.
The third tip is to always hold the microphone as close to the sound as possible. You want to record it in a way that sound is focused only on that.
If you are recording sound and film from the same device, such as a cellphone, make sure the camera is only 40 cm away from the sound, else background sound might interfere. This also means zoom out, rather than zoom-in to capture as much of the image you need while staying a maximum of 40 cm from the sound.
The last tip is, if you want to be able to record in a certain way, try to get a microphone that is not attached to the camera to be able to record the image as well as the sound to its full potential.
It is better to have a bad quality video, then bad sound!
