Original subtitles

All right, it is officially time to start sound designing the actual video.

This is one of my favorite processes when it comes to putting together the edit

just because sound design brings so much more life to our video. Now,

I'm not gonna be sound designing the entire video,

but I am gonna sound design a good chunk of it.

The purpose of this lesson is so that you guys can see the raw,

authentic way that I would go about sound designing a video like this and how I

use all the different tools and features we learned about in this module in a

real world scenario. So with that being said, let's get right into it.

So the very first thing that I wanna do with this edit here is lower the volume

of the music here. I'm just gonna mute it because right now it's pretty loud,

but we can see that if we look at our bus one here, which is the main output,

we can see that we're peeking, we're hitting that red.

We can also see in tracks one and two, we are in the red there.

So the first thing I'm gonna do is just normalize the music here.

I'm gonna right click normalize audio levels.

And I think a good level for us to hit is negative 12 db.

Normally if this was like background music,

I'd probably aim for about negative 20 decibels,

but since this is more like a music video, there is no dialogue.

The music is really like the main audio in this.

So I don't want it to be too quiet.

I still want it to be pretty prominent in this.

So I think negative 12 is a good target level for us to try to hit within this

video. So I'm just gonna click normalize and we'll let Da Vinci do its thing.

And now we can see that all those audio levels are a lot lower.

So let's just give this a preview.

Cool, that sounds pretty good to me for now.

And of course at any point if I want to raise those levels, I can, um,

later on when we're doing the final mix,

we're gonna be playing with the faders for all the individual tracks.

We'll be able to play around with the faders over here in our mixer to balance

out the entire mix.

So the first thing I wanna do is just create some new tracks. Um,

and I know that there's a bunch of different elements within this edit.

I don't want to combine like all the underwater sound effects with like the dirt

bike sound effects and the longboard sound effects.

I kind of wanna break this video up into different categories. Um,

also I'm gonna close off automation right now cause we don't need to see that.

But, um, I, I'm thinking just to keep things organized,

I wanna break down all the different elements of the video into their own

separate tracks. So with the dirt bike elements,

I wanna make two tracks just for that. So I'm gonna add tracks here.

Let's create two of them. And uh,

for now let's make them stereo and we'll see what kind of dirt bike sound

effects we have within our sound library. If some of them are mono,

I can switch one of the tracks to mono.

But let's add both of those tracks over here.

And let's make all of our dirt bike or all of our sound effects tracks a certain

color. So for these dirt bike tracks,

why don't we call these dirt bike

sfx? I'm just gonna copy that over to here.

We're gonna be running two tracks just for the dirt bike sound effects.

And let's, why don't we make all of the sound effects, uh,

tracks of certain colors. So, um, maybe something that's very vibrant.

Why don't we make them orange in this video?

So we know that all of our sound effects tracks are gonna be orange.

So that's gonna be helpful,

especially when we're looking at our index over here.

We'll be able to see very quickly what tracks are wet.

So I'm just gonna hide the index for now.

Let's open up the sound library and start looking for some sound effects.

So I'll type in dirt bike over here and let's see what we got.

Sorry if that's a little bit loud. These are pretty loud.

These are actual recordings that I recorded on the set, um,

at the location of where we shot, uh, these dirt bikers.

And I'm really happy that I did because I was looking for dirt bike sound

effects later on in post on the internet. And uh,

it's hard to find some good ones.

So it can always be very helpful to film sounds on set.

One thing I wish I did in this case was actually record the audio of these, uh,

longboarders riding their boards down the mountain. Um, cuz I,

I tried to find sound effects for that as well. It's,

it's actually really hard to find good longboarding sound effects. I,

I found a ton of skateboard sound effects, but they don't really work.

These guys are going like really fast down the mountain.

So I had to kind of compromise.

I found some other sound effects like wind and stuff that work well, but um,

it would be nice to have some actual wheels on concrete.

I mean I have one sound, it's not the greatest. So in that situation,

I wish that I could go back and actually record the audio of them riding over

there. But let's, let's focus on the dirt bike sound effects for now.

And now let's actually go back into the index.

Let's hide the music tracks because those just take up space. Um,

and for now let's hide the video tracks as well.

So we have all this space right here just to focus on our dirt bike sound

effects. So let's go back to the sound library.

Let's find these moments that might work well for our video here.

I think that sounds pretty cool.

It's a little bit loud. Let's bring it in. So in and out points selected,

I'm just gonna drag.

I think that that could be a good moment for when the dirt bike first comes into

the frame. I'm just gonna lower the volume here so it's not incredibly loud.

That works pretty well. Cool.

Cool. That actually works really well because this second sound here, it's kind,

it kind of goes quieter here and then as he hits, Picks up.

Cool. So I like that.

One thing I wanna do with this sound is actually panist to go from left to right

or actually from right to left. So let's do that.

Let's open up the inspectors shift tab.

We have our pans sitting over here and at this first point right here,

uh, let's have it be fully to the right and then let's move forwards in time.

And about here it's gonna pan all the way left.

Cool, that sounds really good to me. Just by panning it right to left,

we've made it a lot more dynamic.

It makes it feel like it was actually in that environment even though the sound

was recorded in this environment.

We've adapted it to work really well for this specific shot just by panning the

audio from right to left.

Awesome. So I really like that.

Let's try to find something that's gonna work well for this closeup over here.

Um,

ideally I'd want it to be a little bit louder or just something that feels like

it's closer to the actual microphone. So let's go back to the sound library.

Let's go through some of these other dirt bike sound effects.

Okay, that part right there. That sounds pretty good.

Sounds loud. Probably too loud. We,

we wanna make sure that we're looking at these levels too.

Let's play it over here. Let's see where these levels are at.

They're bouncing around about the negative 10 DB point. That's pretty good.

Now obviously we don't want it to start abruptly like that,

so let's fade it in here. Cool, let's start it a little bit later.

Let's turn snapping off. Cool.

And why don't we actually just

pan this as well because why not?

I think it'll make it feel like it's more in that environment.

So we'll start it off to the left at the beginning.

We'll go full full to the left

and about here we will pan it to the right a bit more, not all the way.

Cool. And I think we're gonna have to fade that

now. We can see this shot. It slows down a lot.

So I'm definitely gonna wanna add some kind of slow motion sound effects or

something to go with this.

But I'm also gonna want to change up the actual song as well.

I feel like I'd want to add like a low pass effect to it.

So why don't we open up the index.

Why don't we turn on our music layers over here And why don't we do some

automation to this audio clip right here. So let's take a look at this.

So at that point I'd want the music to like quiet down to

not necessarily decrease in volume,

but I'd wanna have a low pass effect applied to it.

So we're only letting the low frequencies pass through.

We're gonna cut off all the high frequencies just to make it feel more like the

song is part of the video. It's gonna make it feel more dynamic.

The way that we're gonna wanna do that is first to enable automation of course.

And let's go down to this track layer over here.

And what we're gonna wanna do is play with the eq.

So let's do EQ band six just because I know that that's the one that I'm gonna

want to be messing around with. We will uh,

select frequency over here so we can see the frequency.

Let's go to a two in our mixer. So a two is right here.

Let's double click the eq.

Let's enable band six because we know that with the equalizer,

if we're trying to do a low pass filter,

basically what we're gonna wanna do is allow the lower frequencies to pass

through. But we're gonna wanna cut off the high frequencies.

So these six over here,

this is the furthest band to the right and if we push it all the way to the

left, then we're basically eliminating all of these high frequencies over here.

So why don't we just take a listen to this.

So I'm gonna use the range tool R to make a selection over here.

So we're gonna loop that.

So that's what I want it to sound like. And then I want it to go back up

So we can practice this a couple times lower back out.

So now that we know what we want to happen at that point I've kind of like

experimented with it right there. Let's give it a try.

We're not gonna record the uh, automation with the pencil tool.

We're gonna record it live.

So we'll start the playhead over here and we have EQ enabled here.

Let's disable plugins cuz the only thing that we want to be automating right now

is the eq uh, touch. I'm gonna leave it to latch and the unstop,

I'm gonna leave it on return.

Those are the settings that I use most of the time when I'm doing this kind of

work.

They are non-destructive to the other automation that I've already done on the

track. So for now,

this is what I'm gonna be working with for most of the automation we're gonna be

doing in this edit. Okay, so as soon as I press play,

I just wanna be ready to start making these adjustments.

I'm gonna be watching the preview over here. So let's give this a go.

Let's press play.

Cool. And we can see that the automation for that was recorded.

Let's give it a listen, see if we like it. If we don't,

we can just hit command Z and retry it.

Okay, I think I might have dipped it a little bit too low,

so I'm just gonna hit command Z. Let's try that again.

Cool.

I'm gonna try it one more time.

I think that that did a pretty good job. Listen,

Cool. I'm happy with that.

And I know at this point I'm gonna be adding a bunch of sound effects too.

The low pass effect is basically going to allow us to hear all the other sound

effects a lot better because the music isn't gonna be taking as much space in

the mix here, which is nice. So, um,

at this point we can start adding some sound effects for this section here.

Again,

I'm gonna turn off the music layers because we don't want to have them taking up

space.

Let's keep automation on so that we can actually hear the automation that's

going on.

Let's open up the sound library and let's look for some slow motion sound

effects. So let's see what we got over here.

Not the biggest fan of that one.

That

Sounds interesting.

That one's decent. Doesn't look like I have too many,

that one's pretty cool. Let's give it a try. Four, five, let's bring it in here.

Um, and this is not really like a dirt bike sound effect.

I would consider this more like a whoosh.

So maybe we just create this as the whoosh

um, Track.

I already know that I'm gonna be adding lots of whooshes all over this edit.

That's something that I do with every edit. So I think, uh,

the whoosh sound effects can have their own track for this. Um,

it's not super important but I guess this is the way that I find myself working

recently is just, uh,

creating more tracks and that just makes it easier for later on in the mix.

If I want to very quickly make fader adjustment to one sound,

it's gonna be easier for me to do it like this because I know that that type of

sound is just within one track and I'm not gonna be playing with like, you know,

a track that has dirt bike sound effects and whoosh sound effects and water

sound effects and and all that. Um, but you know, to each their own, uh,

find out what works best for you.

I know a lot of sound designers will actually just, you know,

consolidate all of their sound effects into like three,

four tracks and mix them all around and stuff.

And that's fine cuz you can also get that to work. Uh, I just want to stay, uh,

a bit more organized and I'm okay with having a bunch more tracks.

So that works with me. Let's play around with this.

Cool. That works really well. We're just gonna wanna fade that in.

Cool. That sounds great and I'm probably gonna want some,

some woosh or something. And I'm also gonna want, uh,

the dirt bike sound effect as well coming out of that. So it sounds like it's,

you know, um, going from quiet to loud, it's, it's,

it's coming out of that slow motion effect. So let's play with this.

Cool. That actually works pretty well.

That works pretty good. I actually really like that. Cool.

Yeah,

that's actually perfect because you see that bike speed up there at the end and

then the, the sound effect just really sells it. Nice.

Why don't we find some whoosh or something to go with that.

There's

Tons of whooshes here.

Sometimes. Sometimes it's not the best to have millions of sound effects.

That one is dope.

Pretty sure this one is from Brynn Sound effects pack.

Um, which is awesome. There's so many good sound effects, uh,

in there. The flight edition one. I really like that one. This is, um,

visual tone. My friend Brynn, his company, uh,

they put out a bunch of cool sound effects.

They've been doing lots of packs and um, I really,

really like their flight edition one.

Why don't we raise that volume here.

So we could see that, uh, six, we have, uh, track six here. It's,

it's peaking at one point

and that is this rock crumble here. Uh,

I believe that the levels are going up so high because this is a very like basey

sound. Uh, there's,

I think that there's a lot more audio here in the low end. So, uh,

why don't we grab the frequency analyzer,

add it to this track over here and let's just take a look at this sound.

We've got it soloed. Why don't we use the range tool, um,

to mark that in and out point and let's just play this back. So let's do that.

So you can see that there's a ton of low end on this clip here.

So why don't we actually just try to lower that with our equalizer band one.

Let's bring that down

so it's not taking up as much space in the low end just cause I think the low

end of this sound effect plus the actual track they're adding up and causing

things to peak. So

maybe I cut off a little bit too much of that low end,

so might might have been too much.

Also this dirt bike sound effect might be a little too loud. Cool.

But I like that. I love it. It that,

that sound just makes things feel so much more real. Like we're actually there.

It's so much more immersive. I love it.

Cool. And you know,

we could probably add some sound effects to the actual like dirt flying around

too. Um, for that, you know, like what sound would this sand make?

Like what sounds would we hear if things were actually slow motion here,

like I don't really know. So that's where we can start, you know,

getting a bit experimental.

But at first I was thinking maybe we could like slow down one of the dirt bike

clips, but I'm not sure.

Let's just take a look at like slow motion sound effects. Um,

slow motion.

That one sounds pretty cool. Maybe we can throw that in.

Um, when we're going like back out when we're speeding back up to normal speed.

So, uh, where we this go? Dirt bike sound effects or whoosh sound effects?

I'm not sure. Let's throw into the dirt bike for now.

Now obviously we've like fully peaked there. This is a really loud sound.

It's an interesting one.

Cool. I like that.

Now I feel like we could probably have some kind of better sound effect for when

we initially slow down. And also I'm feeling like this one's too loud now.

Let's fade this out. Yeah,

there should definitely be some kind of sound here at the beginning.

I feel like it feels a bit empty. Let's go back to our dirt bike sound effects.

See what we can find

very loud. We'll have to quiet, make that a lot quieter.

It's really blasting in my ears. Sorry about that. Let's make this a bit quieter

and maybe we can,

what we're gonna wanna do is actually turn on layered audio editing,

make sure we have that turned on so that way when we overlap like this,

we're not actually overlapping, we're not overwriting anything

And we're gonna wanna slow down sound effect.

Now obviously these sound effects are pretty loud right now.

They sound good. Uh, they are overpowering the music a little bit,

a little more than I would want them to, but that's exactly where, you know,

the mixing side of things comes into play.

So we'll play around with that stuff later on with mixing,

but for now I'm really liking the way that we are, you know,

constructing the sound design,

mixing together all these different sounds to work well with the visuals.

I think that this is looking pretty good so far.

And of course this process just requires constant repetition.

This is something that, you know, just like anything,

whether I'm putting together a complex transition or um,

not necessarily color grading, but you know, sound designing,

I'll find myself just constantly watching something over and over and over and

over again. Uh,

because that's just like how you see the little imperfections

and kind of just like massage things through.

You work through it to make it exactly how you want it and that requires you to

watch things over and over again. So that is just part of the process.

You're seeing the real process of how I sound design right now.