Section outline

    • If you record outside the studio, in a location that is significant to your story, remember to record the ambient sounds you hear around you. Sometimes called actualities or wild sound, these recordings will help immerse your listener in the time and place of the story. Listen to the following sounds and try to guess what it is your hearing. The images will give you a hint. Close your eyes and imagine you are there.

        

        

    • Keeping your ears open

      When you are in the field, you should be alert to any audio opportunities. You will start to develop an instinct for sound sources that can help tell your story. Make sure you take the time to record them all.

      Look at the following picture. How many possible sound sources do you see?

      A woman stand in a street holding up a microphone. Around her is a dog on a leash, children playing in front of a school with a flag. An airplane flies overhead. Behind her, someone can be seen taking a shower in an upstairs window, while an ice cream truck passes in front. In the foreground, a woodpecker clings to a tree, and in the distance two people are arguing.

      Now do the following activity and listen to the sounds. Did you get them all? 

    • Activity - Street sounds H5P

      In this activity you'll go out into the street with your microphone. Listen to all the sounds you can hear around you. Which ones tell a story?

    • When you record ambient sound, be sure to record enough of it: thirty seconds to a minute as a minimum. This will feel like an eternity at the time - especially as people around you wonder at your obsession with sounds they take for granted - but you will be grateful to have lots of sound to choose from when you get home. 

    • Using ambient sound

      Ambient sound can be played as background to a voice track, or "in the clear", with no voices over it. If the ambient sound is background, the voices over top may have been recorded at the same time. Here is an in interview recorded at a busy intersection.

    • Interview in downtown Casablanca

      Conrad Fox

       

       

    • Background sound can be inserted under the voice in post-production (see the section on mixing below.) Here the background sound was recorded on location, while the narration was recorded later in a studio. 

    • The medina of Rabat

      Conrad Fox

       

       

    • The ambient sound may be continuous, to set a scene or it may be a single event to punctuate your story. Listen to how the scene changes when the cistern cover is dragged. 

    • Dragging a cistern cover

      Conrad Fox

       

       

    • The ambient sound may go from in the clear to the under the narration, like the sound of tea being poured here.

    • Pouring tea

      Conrad Fox

       

       

    • Identify your ambient sounds

      It is tempting to let a really good ambient sound "speak for itself", leaving it in the clear without any explanatory voiceover. Unfortunately, that rarely works and you will just confuse your listener if you don't give them at least a clue about what it is they are hearing.  You could say something like "you're hearing the sound of a train" in your narration, but that is far too clumsy and obvious. Instead, build a description of the sound into your narration. For example: 

      • "With no warning the train starts up..."
      • "It is early evening and Mai's water buffalo are returning across the river."
      • "The women eagerly empty the recycling bin. There must be a thousand lempiras worth of bottles here."
      • "As we push through the brush, a spectacular waterfall comes into sight." 

      You can sometimes play the sound first, and identify it afterwards, but do not leave it unidentified for too long. If a listener is confused about what they are hearing for more than a few seconds, the sense of immersion will be lost... and you may lose your listener!

    • Faking audio

      It is very easy these days to find ambient sounds online or even generate them with AI, and very tempting to do so when you don't have the ambient sound you need. Surely the listener won't know that you didn't actually go to that spectacular waterfall or stand beside the train that they are hearing, (or did go but forgot to press record.)

      Journalism is all about trust with your listener. If you suggest the sound they are hearing is authentic, the listener trusts you. You wouldn't try to fool your listener by making up an interview clip, would you? Once you start eroding the trust with your listener the quality of your work will deteriorate, like a blog post full of bad stock imagery. Or this...

      Purported cell phone image of Donald Trump walking next to a shackled alien.

      Eventually your listener will notice.