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Hi, I’m John Burkhart, and today on Videomakers Tips & Techniques segment we’re gonna learn a little bit about recording sound effects. Having a nice sound effects track will really enhance the production value of your finished video, and having an in-depth sound effects track really sells the emotional content of your scene to the audience.

Now, it’s not that difficult to do. The best time to go and get your sound effects is just after you’ve finished shooting your scene. You can go back in there with your microphone and pick out small individual elements that help sell the entire soundscape.

When recording sound effects, you’re gonna want to use a microphone that’s very directional. Now, here sort of on the top end we have a nice shotgun microphone with a Zeppelin and a wind screen around it, and it’s on a boom pole. And this is nice, because you can get very precise, accurate sound recording from it.

Now, if you don’t have something like this, you can actually use the internal microphone on just your camcorder. Because you’re not actually going to be using the video of this, just the audio, you can actually put this little camcorder microphone in lots of different places and get a very accurate sound reproduction. In both cases, you’re gonna want to wear headphones so you can hear the exact sound that you’re recording.

The first sound we’re gonna record are the tires crunching gravel as they go by. Then we’re gonna record the car door opening and closing. Next, we’ll record footsteps of me walking away. Then we’re gonna record the sound of the seatbelt being unbuckled, and, finally, we’re gonna get some ambient sound of birds and park noises.

The first scene we’re gonna show you is the complete scene without sound effects.

Hi, I’m John Burkhart, and today on Videomakers Tips & Techniques segment we’re gonna learn a little bit about recording sound effects.

Now we’re gonna show you the finished scene with all the sound effects added.

Hi, I’m John Burkhart, and today on Videomakers Tips & Techniques segment we’re gonna learn a little bit about recording sound effects.

As you can hear, adding even the simplest of sound effects really adds a lot of production value to your video. I’m John Burkhart for Videomakers Presents, and this was Tips & Techniques.

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