Editing and mixing sound for a documentary

For a documentary produced in another module, I took the job of sound editor/mixer and part-sound recordist (I operated camera on the first interview conducted, and so wasn't able to record sound, and I wasn't able to attend the second interview, but I did record atmoses and music).

This was a relatively straightforward process, as the documentary was constructed purely of interviews, and little space was left in the edit in which there wasn't speech, meaning my job was mainly to tidy up the interview recordings, balance the levels and do as good a job as I could to make the two interviews consistent in how they sounded (the first was recorded with a tie-clip microphone and the second with a shotgun - and both were recorded by different people).

This meant I had a lot of work to do in automating the levels of each track containing audio that would end up in the final mix. This mostly meant crossfading between the two interviews and the atmos tracks I "attached" to each.

I was asked by my director to either find or write and record some music that would be appropriate for the film. I began tweaking a piece of music I wrote some time ago, but was told it sounded "too sci-fi" as it was synthesised and the director wanted music that would fit the picture more naturally. In the end - as I was asked to do this whilst in university on the Friday afternoon (and the deadline was Monday morning), and I also had to sit with the editor to give a second opinion when needed - I didn't have time to write or to record new music that fit the requirements I was given, so instead I re-used a piece of music I recorded for a project I was involved in over Summer (embedded below).

I had recorded the music on an acoustic guitar and then recorded a counter-melody on an unplugged electric guitar, which resulted in a "tinny"-sounding effect. This presented a problem for the documentary, as the music was most resonant around the 900Hz-6Hz frequency range, which is shared by the human voice, meaning the music clashed with the dialogue.

I was also asked to make the music sound as though it could be a busker in the background of the recordings, which led to my decision to process the music as such:

...and to keep the music at a very low volume in the mix.

The last piece of interview sound used in the documentary was of a homeless man telling the story of his attempted suicide. For this part, I felt the sound needed to reflect the delicate subject matter, and so I made the decision to fade out any unnecessary sound (atmos tracks and music) and leave only the interview recording playing. For this I took inspiration from a scene David Lynch's 'Lost Highway', in which all diegetic sound is either reduced or removed completely to pull the viewer's attention to a conversation between two men. The effect of doing so adds an uneasy level of intimacy to a film, and in the case of my documentary, hopefully had the effect of  drawing the audience's attention subtly but very firmly towards the seriousness of what's being said.

This then provided a nice transition to the last thing we see on-screen in the film:

To accompany this and hopefully end the film on a poignant note, I reintroduced an atmos track of city traffic and faded in the ending bars of the music, letting the final chord fade out as the film ends.


The scene from 'Lost Highway' which inspired my decision: