Book about sound?

There's no forum on here for sound, so I'll try posting here.

I'm far from an expert on sound, but I'd like to know more. If I was going to get one book to give me a really good overview of both production and post-production audio, for someone who's not at all technical-minded about this stuff, what would it be?

Tomlinson Holman's?
Jay Rose's?

Or some other?

Holman is obviously a huge name in sound, but I'm worried that his book might go over my head.

Both excellent but I suspect that Jay Rose's 2 books will serve you best.

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Great! Thanks muchly, Shaughan.

Any other suggestions for books on sound in filmmaking?

Definitely a beginner in this area so I'm looking to start from the ground up. I have FCS2, a Rode NTG2 with 10 foot boom pole, and I'm probably going to be picking up some wireless lavs and a mixer soon. The majority of my work is spent on short films. Any thoughts on some good books?

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Other than the Jay Rose books, your best teacher is experience. Get the gear and load it up and test, test, test. Once you do ADR, you will have a much greater appreciation of good location sound. Test booming people indoors and out. Take the sound into your audio app and play with it. Try different things with capturing the sound on location. Minimize the surprises you will have after a shoot when you listen to the sound. My wife recently had to edit a low budget talk show and they manually boomed the sound for the guests and had a lav on the host. The boomed sound was terrible - Tons of rumble. When she went back and shot the next episode for them she knew there was no reason to boom the talent like that and she setup mic booms on C stands over the guests and the sound was stellar. Knowing to do that came from experimenting and trying things when she was NOT on a set.

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Pontificatious Ramblings

shaughan wrote:

Other than the Jay Rose books, your best teacher is experience. Get the gear and load it up and test, test, test. Once you do ADR, you will have a much greater appreciation of good location sound. Test booming people indoors and out. Take the sound into your audio app and play with it. Try different things with capturing the sound on location. Minimize the surprises you will have after a shoot when you listen to the sound. My wife recently had to edit a low budget talk show and they manually boomed the sound for the guests and had a lav on the host. The boomed sound was terrible - Tons of rumble. When she went back and shot the next episode for them she knew there was no reason to boom the talent like that and she setup mic booms on C stands over the guests and the sound was stellar. Knowing to do that came from experimenting and trying things when she was NOT on a set.

Thanks, Shaughn.

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TV

Before diving into the sound work on your movie, read:

SOUND DESIGN: THE EXPRESSIVE POWER OF MUSIC, VOICE, AND SOUND EFFECTS IN CINEMA by David Sonnenschein (pub: Michael Weise Productions)

I wish I'd read this before beginning the sound work on my feature. This book has no fat. After reading it, you'll have a better understanding of what it is *you* are looking for, and how to get it.

You also need great sound software. As I have said before, Logic Pro beats the Final Cut Studio sound editing program, largely because of the huge collection of sound modifying plug-ins. You need to understand *equalization*, *compression*, and ambient reverberation ("convolution"). Consider that five years ago, the facilities provided by these programs would have cost tens of thousands of dollars. And of course, they're great for making music....

Learn what you want, learn how to use the tools, THEN dive in. You'll be glad you did.

-- Paul

Clinco wrote:

Before diving into the sound work on your movie, read:

SOUND DESIGN: THE EXPRESSIVE POWER OF MUSIC, VOICE, AND SOUND EFFECTS IN CINEMA by David Sonnenschein (pub: Michael Weise Productions)

I wish I'd read this before beginning the sound work on my feature. This book has no fat. After reading it, you'll have a better understanding of what it is *you* are looking for, and how to get it.

You also need great sound software. As I have said before, Logic Pro beats the Final Cut Studio sound editing program, largely because of the huge collection of sound modifying plug-ins. You need to understand *equalization*, *compression*, and ambient reverberation ("convolution"). Consider that five years ago, the facilities provided by these programs would have cost tens of thousands of dollars. And of course, they're great for making music....

Learn what you want, learn how to use the tools, THEN dive in. You'll be glad you did.

-- Paul

Word up, Paul.

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	Quote:
	Word up, Paul.

Is that good or bad?

-- Paul

Clinco wrote:

	Quote:
	Word up, Paul.

Is that good or bad?

-- Paul

It's like saying... right on, Paul.

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TV

	Quote:
	It's like saying... right on, Paul.

My apologies. Sometimes I'm so dense I surprise myself. But not my children.

-- Paul

Clinco wrote:

	Quote:
	It's like saying... right on, Paul.

My apologies. Sometimes I'm so dense I surprise myself. But not my children.

-- Paul

No problemo, Senor.

I just ordered the latest version of Jay Rose's book mentioned here in this thread. I've heard a lot of good stuff about it in regards to audio for film and video...

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