03.0 Sound

Perhaps the most important part of a film is the quality and clarity of sound. Even "silent" films almost universally have a carefully curated and balanced musical journey. The vocal narrative (that you create) maps out for and othewrise guides your listeners through a new universe in which they will learn to "see" the world in new ways that are sonically illuminated by you. Therefore, be wise and caring in your approach. 

03.1 Recording your Voice (Vocal Narrative)

For your Hope on the Rize film, you will have to decide whether you want to film yourself reading your script, or use an audio recording of your voice to accompany other visuals. Make sure you choose a quiet location to record your audio. You will want to pay attention to the pace and tone of your voice, as these factors contribute to the overall feeling of the film and how well your message can be understood. 

Most importantly, you will want to to record a "clean" voice track that doesn't have background noise (doors closing, people talking, etc).

A dedicated microphone can be helpful in quickly elevating the quality of the sound in your film.

Vocaroo is a useful webbased recording site. If using vocaroo, be sure to complete all 3 steps (record, save and download), so that the voice recording is "downloaded" to the computer. 

Note or slide on splitscreen? 

Alternatively, the voice memos app on a phone or ipad is a great voice recording tool.

03.3 Finding Royalty Free Music Tracks

Other options for obtaining music include searching online for "royalty free" audio tracks. As noted above, music is a key component of creating the theme, tone, and feeling of your film, so we suggest choosing your music very intentionally. It matters that the music harmonizes with the story that you want to share.

Sites like pixabay and bensound provide access to royalty-free music catalogs. 

Editing Apps including imovie, canva and capcut also have music libraries embedded in their ecosystems.

Note: you should keep a record of the author(s), song title, and site from which you get the song so that you can acknowledge them in the credits (see step 7).