Sound editor - Citizendia

A sound editor is a creative professional responsible for selecting and assembling sound recordings in preparation for the final sound mixing or mastering of a television program or motion picture. Audio mixing is the process by which a multitude of sound sources are combined into one or more channels Mastering, a form of audio Post-production, is the process of preparing and transferring recorded audio from a source containing the final mix to a Data storage device A television program (US television programme (UK or television show (U Sound editing developed out of the need to fix the incomplete, undramatic, or technically inferior sound recordings of early talkies, and over the decades has become a respected filmmaking craft, with sound editors implementing the aesthetic goals of motion picture sound design. A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image as opposed to a Silent film. A craft is a Skill, especially involving practical arts. It may refer to a Trade or particular art Sound design is a technical/conceptually creative field It covers all non-compositional elements of a film a play a music performance

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognizes the artistic contribution of exceptional sound editing with the Academy Award for Best Sound Editing. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences ( AMPAS) is a professional honorary organization ostensibly dedicated to the advancement of the arts and sciences of Motion The Academy Award of Merit for Best Sound Editing is an Academy Award granted yearly to a film exhibiting the finest or most aesthetic

There are primarily 3 divisions of sound that are combined to create a final mix, these being dialogue, effects, and music. In larger markets such as New York and Los Angeles, sound editors often specialize in only one of these areas, thus a show will have separate dialogue, effects, and music editors. In smaller markets, sound editors are expected to know how to handle it all, often crossing over into the mixing realm as well. Editing effects is likened to creating the sonic world from scratch, while dialogue editing is likened to taking the existing sonic world and fixing it. Dialogue editing is more accurately thought of as "production sound editing", where the editor takes the original sound recorded on the set, and using a variety of techniques, makes the dialogue more understandable, as well as smoother, so the listener doesn't hear the transitions from shot to shot (often the background sounds underneath the words change dramatically from take to take). Among the challenges that effects editors face are creatively adding together various elements to create believable sounds for everything you see on screen, as well as memorizing their sound effects library.

1 Equipment
2 Sound Effects Library
3 History
4 Other Fields
5 See also

Equipment

The essential piece of equipment used in modern sound editing is the digital audio workstation, or DAW. A digital audio workstation (DAW is an electronic system designed to record, edit and play back digital audio A DAW allows sounds, stored as computer files on a host computer, to be placed in timed synchronization with a motion picture, mixed, manipulated, and documented. The standard DAW system in use by the American film industry, as of 2005, is Digidesign's Pro Tools, with the majority running on Macs. United States cinema has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century Digidesign is an American Digital audio technology company It was founded in 1984 by Peter Gotcher and Evan Brooks Pro Tools is a Digital Audio Workstation platform for Mac OS and Microsoft Windows operating systems developed and manufactured by Digidesign Apple Inc, ( formerly Apple Computer Inc, is an American Multinational corporation with a focus on designing and manufacturing Consumer electronics Another system in use presently is Yamaha owned Steinberg's cross platform DAW Nuendo running on Macs using operating system Mac OS X but also on Windows XP. Steinberg is a German Musical equipment and Software company It mainly produces MIDI Music sequencer software Steinberg is a German Musical equipment and Software company It mainly produces MIDI Music sequencer software Apple Inc, ( formerly Apple Computer Inc, is an American Multinational corporation with a focus on designing and manufacturing Consumer electronics An operating system (commonly abbreviated OS and O/S) is the software component of a Computer system that is responsible for the management and coordination Mac OS X (mæk oʊ ɛs tɛn is a line of computer Operating systems developed marketed and sold by Apple Inc, the latest of which is pre-loaded on all currently Windows XP is a family of 32-bit and 64-bit Operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on Personal computers including home and Other systems historically used for sound editing were:

WaveFrame, manufactured by WaveFrame of Emeryville, CA
Several DAWs have been manufactured by Fairlight
SonicSolutions
AMS-Neve Audiofile

The WaveFrame, Fairlights, and Audiofile were of the "integrated" variety of DAW, and required the purchase of expensive proprietary hardware and specialized computers (not standard PCs or Macs). Emeryville is a small city located in Alameda County California, in the United States. California ( is a US state on the West Coast of the United States, along the Pacific Ocean. Fairlight is a digital audio company based in Sydney Australia. Of the two surviving systems, Pro Tools still requires some proprietary hardware (either a low cost portable device such as the "Mbox" or the more expensive multichannel A/D,D/A converters for more professional high end applications), while Nuendo (a successor to Cubase) is of the "host based" variety. Cubase is a computer program for music production/recording The program offers recording producing and mixing of sounds in order to make music production for distribution on CDs or the

Sound Effects Library

Sound effects editors typically use an organized catalog of sound recordings from which sound effects can be easily accessed and used in film soundtracks. There are several commercially distributed sound effects libraries available, the two most well-known publishers being Sound Ideas and The Hollywood Edge. There are also online search engines, such as Sounddogs, which allow users to purchase individual sound effects from a large online database. Sounddogscom is a royalty-free online library of Sound effects freely available for use

Many sound effects editors make their own customized sound recordings which are accumulated into highly-prized personal sound effects libraries. Often, sound effects used in films will be saved and reused in subsequent films. One particular case in point is a recording known as the "Wilhelm Scream" which has become known for its repeated use in many famous films such as The Charge at Feather River (1953), The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), and Reservoir Dogs (1992). The Wilhelm scream is a repeatedly used film and television stock Sound effect first used in 1951 for the film Distant Drums. The Charge at Feather River is a 1953 Western film directed by Gordon Douglas. Star Wars Episode V The Empire Strikes Back is a 1980 Space opera Film directed by Irvin Kershner. Raiders of the Lost Ark (also known as Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark) is a 1981 Adventure film directed by Steven Reservoir Dogs is the 1992 debut Film of director and writer Quentin Tarantino. Sound designer Ben Burtt is credited with naming and popularizing the "Wilhelm Scream. Benjamin Burtt Jr (born July 12, 1948) is a four time Academy Award-winning Sound designer and sound editor for many famous and noteworthy films The Wilhelm scream is a repeatedly used film and television stock Sound effect first used in 1951 for the film Distant Drums. "

History

Early Talkies

The first sound process to substantially displace silent films in the moviegoing market was the Vitaphone process. Vitaphone was a Sound film process used on features and nearly 2000 Short subjects produced by Warner Bros Under the Vitaphone process, a microphone recorded the sound performed on set directly to a phonograph master, which made Vitaphone recordings impossible to cut or resynchronize, as later processes would allow. The phonograph, or gramophone, was the most common device for playing recorded Sound from the 1870s through the 1980s This limited the Vitaphone process to capturing musical acts or one-take action scenes, like Vaudeville routines or other re-creations of stage performances; essentially, scenes that required no editing at all. Vaudeville was a Genre of variety entertainment prevalent on the stage in the United States and Canada, from the early 1880s However, Warner Brothers, even as early as The Jazz Singer, began experimenting with the mixing of multiple phonograph recordings and intercutting between the "master" sync take and coverage of other angles. Warner Bros Entertainment Inc (or Warner Bros, Warner Bros Pictures) is one of the world's largest producers of Film and The Jazz Singer is a 1927 American Musical film. The first feature-length motion picture with synchronized Dialogue The original mixing console used to make the master recording of The Jazz Singer, still viewable in the Warner Bros. Studio Museum, has no more than four or five knobs, but each is still visibly labeled with the basic "groups" that a modern sound designer would recognize: "music", "crowd", and so on. Sound design is a technical/conceptually creative field It covers all non-compositional elements of a film a play a music performance

Warner Bros. developed increasingly sophisticated technology to sequence greater numbers of phonograph sound effects to picture using the Vitaphone system, but these were rendered obsolete with the widespread adoption of sound-on-film processes in the early 1930s. Sound-on-film refers to a class of Sound film processes where the sound accompanying picture is physically recorded onto photographic film usually but not always the same The 1930s were described as an abrupt shift to more radical and conservative lifestyles as countries were struggling to find a solution to the Great Depression.

Mechanical Editing

In a sound-on-film process, a microphone captures sound and converts it into a signal that can be photographed on film. Since the recording is imposed linearly on the medium, and the medium is easily cut and glued, sounds recorded can be easily re-sequenced and separated onto separate tracks, allowing more control in mixing. Options expanded further when optical sound recording processes were replaced with magnetic recording in the 1950s. The 1950s Decade refers to the years of 1950 to 1959 inclusive Magnetic recording offered a better signal-to-noise ratio, allowing more tracks to be played simultaneously without increasing noise on the full mix. Signal-to-noise ratio (often abbreviated SNR or S/N) is an Electrical engineering concept also used in other fields (such as scientific Measurements

The greater number of options available to the editors led to more complex and creative sound tracks, and it was in this period that a set of standard practices became established which continued until the digital era, and many of the notional concepts are still at the core of sound design, computerized or not:

Sounds are assembled together onto tracks. A digital system uses discrete (discontinuous values usually but not always Symbolized Numerically (hence called "digital" to represent information for Many tracks are mixed together (or "dubbed together") to create a final film.
A track will generally contain only one "type" or group of sound. A track that contains dialogue only contains dialogue, a track that contains music should only contain music. Music is an Art form in which the medium is Sound organized in Time. Many tracks may carry all the sound for one group.
Tracks may be mixed a group at a time, in a process called predubbing. All of the tracks containing dialogue may be mixed at one time, and all of the tracks containing foley may be mixed at another time. The Foley artist on a Film crew is the person who creates many of the natural everyday Sound effects in a film which are recorded during a session with a Recording In the process of predubbing, many tracks can be mixed into one.
Predubs are mixed together to create a final dub. On the occasion of the final dub, final decisions about the balance between different groups of sounds are made.

Historically the Dubbing Mixer (UK) or Re-Recording Mixer (US) was the specialist who mixed all the audio tracks supplied by the Dubbing Editor (with the addition of 'live sounds' such as Foley) in a special Dubbing Suite. As well as mixing, he would introduce equalization, compression and filtered sound effects, etc. while seated at a large console. Often two or three mixers would sit alongside, each controlling sections of audio, e. g. , dialogue, music, effects.

In the era of optical sound tracks, it was difficult to mix more than eight tracks at once without accumulating excessive noise. is a one volume manga created by Tsutomu Nihei as a prequel to his ten-volume work Blame!. At the height of magnetic recording, 200 tracks or more could be mixed together, aided by Dolby noise reduction. In the digital era there is no limit. For example, a single predub can exceed a hundred tracks, and the final dub can be the sum of a thousand tracks. Billions were created.

Digital Sound

The mechanical system of sound editing remained unchanged until the early 1990s, when digital audio workstations acquired features sufficient for use in film production, mainly, the ability to synchronize with picture, and the ability to play back many tracks at once with CD-quality fidelity. The 1990s collectively refers to the years between and including 1990 and 1999 A digital audio workstation (DAW is an electronic system designed to record, edit and play back digital audio A Compact Disc (also known as a CD) is an Optical disc used to store digital data, originally developed for storing digital audio Fidelity is a notion that at its most abstract level implies a truthful connection to a source or sources The quality of 16-bit audio at a 48 kHz sampling rate allowed hundreds of tracks to be mixed together with negligible noise. Sampling theorem The Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem states that perfect reconstruction

The physical manifestation of the work became computerized: sound recordings, and the decisions the editors made in assembling them, were now digitized, and could be versioned, done, undone, and archived instantly and compactly. In the magnetic recording era, sound editors owned trucks to ship their tracks to a mixing stage, and transfers to magnetic film were measured in hundreds of thousands of feet. Once the materials arrived at the stage, a dozen recordists and mix technicians required a half an hour to load the three or four dozen tracks a predub might require. In the digital era, 250 hours of stereo sound, edited and ready to mix, can be transported on a single 160 GB hard drive. A hard disk drive ( HDD) commonly referred to as a hard drive, hard disk, or fixed disk drive, is a Non-volatile storage device As well, this 250 hours of material can be copied in four hours or less, as opposed to the old system, which, predictably, would take 250 hours.

Because of these innovations, sound editors, as of 2005, face the same issues as other computerized, "knowledge-based" professionals, including the loss of work due to outsourcing to cheaper labor markets, and the loss of royalties due to ineffective enforcement of intellectual property rights. Year 2005 ( MMV) was a Common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. Outsourcing is Subcontracting a process such as product design or Manufacturing, to a Third-party company Intellectual property ( IP) is a legal field that refers to creations of the mind such as musical literary and artistic works inventions and symbols names

Other Fields

In the production of radio programs and music, persons who manipulate sound recordings are known simply as "editors," in cases where the producers themselves do not perform the task. Radio programming is the content that is broadcast by Radio stations The original inventors of radio such as Nikola Tesla and Guglielmo Music is an Art form in which the medium is Sound organized in Time. In the Music industry, a record producer or music producer has many roles among them controlling the recording sessions coaching and guiding the musicians organizing

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