A post recently shared on No Film School, containing a video tutorial from The Film Look, explains how some of your favorite movie sounds came about, and how you can create your own, fully customizable library of sound effects. While there may not be a lot of surprises in the knowledge shared, it serves as great inspiration: pitch a tent in your living room, set up your mic and go to town.

After having your gory, stabby, bloody, squishing, cracking way with a variety of fruits and vegetables, go the extra mile and pick up a selection of sounds that you will almost definitely be needing in your edit. Things you may take for granted or simply neglect to include could be sounds like foot steps, jumps, handshakes, the rustle of clothing, cabinets opening and closing, doors creaking … the list goes on. On my latest shoot, we took great care to record clean, on-set sound, but even so, as I was editing the footage, I found that increasing the volume of dialogue sometimes gave the ambient sounds an unnatural presence in the mix. Similarly, in scenes with a rich room tone, like outdoor or group scenes, some of the finer details would get drowned out, giving the mix a feeling of being incomplete – even though the sounds were there. Have those basics (footsteps, movement, clothing) handy.

That said, what really sells these custom-made sound effects in the final mix is the delicate addition of room tone, so be careful to get that while on set.

But say your film is animated. Or set in a dystopian future/past. Or seeks to transport the viewer to unfamiliar places. Is room tone and watermelons gonna cut it? No. Sound effects – or sound design, really – should always support how you want the viewer to relate to your characters and their environment. The perfect example is a film like Wall-E. Take a cue from the greats:

When Heika Burnison and her team at White Light Audio Inc. begin post-production on any given project, they are taking it through what’s been aptly dubbed ‘The Seven Stages of Sound Design.’ Order and approach varies, but all seven will at the very least be carefully considered. So what exactly are these seven stages of sound design?

ADR. Foley. Dialogue Editing. Sound FX. Background Editing. Music – and Final Mixing.

Heika, co-founder of White Light Audio Inc., will take you through the specifics.

White Light Audio Inc. is a new and exciting sound studio specialized in both on-set recording and post-production. For more about their services, check out their website, and enjoy a quick pitch about what sets them apart from other studios.

Jongnic is a Los Angeles-based composer who has worked on anything from feature films to TV episodes to trailers to commercials to short form webseries. And no matter the medium, he approaches the project with the same level of respect, knowing that the music will have a profound impact on the viewer’s connection to the visuals.

We have many more videos with Jongnic on the way, so be sure to check back often. Or even better, subscribe to our newsletter and/or YouTube channel and we’ll let you know when the next one is online.

We recently had the pleasure of speaking with Heika Burnison – an extraordinarily talented woman wearing many proverbial hats – about her sound design company White Light Audio and some of her favorite tools in the field and in the studio. In videos soon to come, we’ll also be talking about exciting stuff like how to run a small company that people want to work with, how to capture audio for 360° virtual reality films, and even her role as producer on million-dollar projects, how to find tax incentives and much more.

Since film is a visual medium, let’s skip the written bio for once and let you instead have a look and a listen for more on Heika and White Light Audio: