How to record audio for a short film: a complete beginner workflow

A short film usually has no budget for ADR and no time for sound repair. That means the location recording has to be right. The following workflow is designed for one sound person, or even a director who has to handle sound alone, and it scales up if you have help.

Before the shoot: test your signal chain

Record a one minute test with each microphone, each cable and each recorder you plan to use. Listen back on headphones, not on laptop speakers. A bad cable or a dirty input will show up now, not on set.

• Set the recorder to 48 kHz, 24 bit, WAV.
• Format the card in the recorder, not on a computer.
• Write a naming convention: project abbreviation, scene, take, mic, date.
• Charge everything, including spare batteries and a phone power bank for the recorder.

On set: one good source beats three bad ones

Do not split your attention across too many microphones. Start with one boom on the main speaker and add lavs only when you are confident the boom is already good. A bad lav with clothing rustle will be harder to fix than no lav at all.

Slap the slate at the head of every take, even if you are not using it for picture. The clap gives you a failsafe sync point and a clear marker in the waveform.

Record wild sound and room tone

Wild sound is any sound you need but cannot capture during the take: a door closing cleanly, a car starting, a specific footstep. Record it right after the scene, on the same gear, in the same space. Room tone is thirty seconds of silence from the set with everyone holding still. Both save hours in post.

Back at the edit station: copy and inspect first

Before you open the NLE, copy the card to two places, verify the copy, and inspect a few files. Check sample rate, bit depth, timecode and track names with a tool that does not require a DAW. Our audio inspector reads BWF metadata locally in the browser.

Split poly files before the edit

If your recorder delivered poly WAVs, split them into named mono stems before importing. An editor opening a timeline with channels named Boom, Lav Marie and Room is much faster than one opening eight files named scene_01_take_01_1 through scene_01_take_01_8. The poly WAV splitter here does this in the browser, preserving sample rate and bit depth.

Sync and replace

Import the clean audio and the camera files, sync by clap or waveform, then disable the camera audio. Spot check three takes across the day. If one take drifts, check that the camera and recorder frame rates match before you blame the equipment.