An introduction...

Whenever I'm at a party and someone asks me, "And what do you do?", my automatic response is "That is a really good question!". Not because I don't know, but because, as every other sound designer or re-recording mixer knows, it's just a hard question to answer satisfactorily, without getting a blank stare in return. 

Sound post-production for film and television has always been an obscure occupation for the average person. We sound post guys get frustrated that everyone thinks that when a movie is shot, everything happens right there. So, obviously, it's hard for them to understand why someone other than maybe the guy who writes the music is needed later on.

Even within the professional audio-visual community, there are many people who confuse the title "sound designer" with the title "composer". Many others call re-recording mixing "audio sweetening". There are a multitude of misconceptions that have been passed over from one person to the next in a viral way, and nowadays sometimes it's really hard to know what some clients are expecting for their money. "But I thought you were doing the sound design!", says the client. "I did," says the sound designer,"but you need a mixer to mix what I did". So we find ourselves in a position of having to educate our clients more often than not, to avoid potential disasters later on.

Hopefully this blog will fill in some of the blanks for those of you who specialize in other areas of filmmaking, or those of you who are taking their first steps in the sound post world, or even those of you who just like to know how we do what we do out of curiosity. I will not pretend to know everything or the best way of doing things, so everyone is more than welcome to debate my points of view here. That is, by the way, a great way for me to learn new things. What I'll post here is stuff that have worked for me over the years and a few humorous anecdotes depicting the sometimes crazy people and situations that we often run into.

So, welcome. Here we go...