Pro Tools is a digital audio workstation by Digidesign for music production and digital audio editing. It’s widely used to create audio for film, television, and music and is considered to be the industry standard.

I recently did a post-production module in sound, which involved taking a short clip and creating a soundtrack for it using Pro Tools. We covered the components that comprise of a soundtrack including:

  • dialogue
  • spot fx
  • atmospheres
  • foley
  • music.
For the short film and documentary I’m producing I plan to have people assist who are experienced in sound design, recording and editing. However, the module was useful to gain an understanding of the elements of sound for my own projects.

My short film will be shot on location and the scenes set at the beach will be vulnerable to interference from atmospheric sounds such as wind. I plan to have two sound recordists on set one who concentrates on capturing the dialogue for the scenes and the other focusing on capturing the atmospheric sounds such as wind, waves crashing, bird noises, the tide rushing through pebbles or over rocks. Both tracks can then be mixed into the sound track using Pro Tools.

I will follow the same process for the scenes set at the house, however, many of the sounds will be captured in the studio by the foley artist such as the sound of a teapot breaking or a dial-up modem connecting to the Internet. Spot fx will be used to layer additional sounds into the final mix.

Developing a score for the music will be the most difficult part of the soundtrack because I’ve had no experience in music production. I’m planning to consult with a person who has experience in music composition as well as working with sound recordists and an editor who can mix using Pro Tools.