March 12 we held a workshop on "Sound and Music in the movies"

March 12 we held a workshop on "Sound and Music in the movies. The work of sound designer. The work of the composer". Experts were Sergey Stepansky and Nikita Moiseev.

Here are main theses:

• In the movie, there are sound components: replicas, background noises, music, foley, special effects.
• Foley includes: steps, points (final movement of a person, such as put a cup on the table, hung up the phone, etc.) and rustling. Background noises are not connected with the actions of the actor. 
• Sound Department begins its work in the preproduction period, works during the production and post-production stages.
• Sound recording requires the fullest support and assistance of the whole team. The result of the whole process depends not only on the work of the sound designer and his assistants, but also on the discipline and organization on site.
• Sound designer also discusses some of the shooting days with lighters. When shooting on location light electricians can use generators with a high level of noise that would interfere with the recording of sound. Quieter generators are more expensive, but allow us to make a quality product.
• During the shooting light electricians should  warn about additionally installed lighting devices.
• In the documentary film, there is unpredictability and fixation of sound is important as such. In feature films scenes, frames, actors' points are marked  in each mise en scene, and preparation of the sound should also be explicit.
• Shooting period. For big pictures in addition to sound designer, two more boom operators are invited. For small pictures: + one assistant sound engineer. In the documentary film sometimes sound engineer can work on his own, and act as a boom operator as well.
• In noisy scenes sound designer has to monitor the signal/noise ratio.
• The main task of on-site sound recording - recording of dialogues.
• Benefits of toning: the ability to change the role, voice it with another actor, make replicas more or less emotional, additional work with actors-performers.