Sound Design

Sound Design

A movie comes to life when the sound has been designed within the finest details and has been well balanced. Sound design is the creation of sound elements that support the narration of a movie. By adding and placing sounds or by removing them, you can change the focus of the viewer. Sound design is the art of choosing. Very consciously by the creator, with a mostly unconscious effect for the viewer.

The process

The sound designer invents how the sound design can support the narration of the film, of course together with the director. With a team of sound editors he subsequently creates the several sound elements. The dialogues are edited and shaped to get an optimal audibility. Sound effects and atmospheres are created, foley is recorded and music is selected. After a few pre-mix sessions with the director, the sound design comes to life in the re-recording mix.

The right balance

Bringing together all the sound elements into a whole happens in the mix. The re-recording mixer decides the right balance together with the director. Decisions are made about volume levels, placement (stereo/5.1/7.1) and dynamics. After this phase the final-mix of the movie can be judged in a bigger movie theatre.

Mastering

During the mastering the final mix is technically checked and delivered for cinema release or broadcasting. We do mastering in several formats, with fitting dynamics:

  • Blu-ray en VOD 7.1/5.1
  • Broadcast 5.1/Stereo (R-128)
  • DCP 7.1/5.1

Mixing & Mastering

ADR / Foley

Foley

The expression for all the extra sounds we make in post production is Foley. The sound engineer on the set concentrates on recording clean dialogues. But we need more to make a film come to life. Sounds like footsteps, the rustling of clothes, breaking glass and creacking floors are made synchronously with the image by a foley artist. Without foley a movie sounds empty and void. The right use of foley creates depth and detailing in the sound design. We closely work together with the best foley studios and artists in Europe. For smaller productions we create the foley in house.

ADR

ADR stands for ‘Automated Dialogue Replacement’, but is simply called ‘dubbing’ or ‘looping’. During the ADR recordings, rejected dialogues are recorded again by the actors. Sometimes for technical, sometimes for artistic reasons. Our ‘floating’ ADR studio is equipped with a large projection screen and air-conditioning.

Inhouse music production

Music influences the emotion of the viewer. We spend a lot of attention to this crucial element of a soundtrack. Next to advising on musical selection we also produce music in house for films and TV-shows. Driving force behind our music production is Jan Willem van den Brink. He was active in several ensembles as a jazz pianist. In the 90s he composed for TV-shows such as ‘Spangen’, ‘Het Jeugdjournaal’, ‘NOS jaaroverzicht’, ‘Ontbijt-tv’ en ‘Vermist’. Since 2012 he has composed and produced the score for popular TV-series as ‘Dr. Tinus’ and ‘Heer en Meester’ together with Hugo Kruijswijk.

Music studio

Mix 4 is the ‘hybrid’ studio, fully designed for music production and mixing, also in 5.1. The studio is also available for composers and producers who like to do analogue mixes themselves. For these high quality acoustic music recordings we work together with ‘The house of Eustachius’ in Hilversum

Music