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Smooth Blending of Ambient Sound

Audio can be a real headache in the post production process. Anytime you are taking clips shot at different times (even within the same hour) you will have different sounds in the background that will alert the viewer to the scene's artificiality. Not only that, but there may be an audible "pop" every time you cut to another shot within that same scene. These can be huge issues and must be addressed to make your scene flow and sound professional.

There are two things you can do that will help a lot. The first is while you are at that location record one minute of "room tone" or just the ambient sound around you. You can layer this under everything else in post which may help everything sound uniform. The next is to add a tiny crossfade between every audio clip (2 or 3 frames should be enough). You only need this in the same scene. When changing scenes, leave the audio alone as the abrupt change in sound will make perfect sense with the change of scenery.

If neither of these work, you may have to employ the dreaded ADR (Automatic Dialogue Replacement) in which case you must have some ambient sound, or your actor will sound like they are in a booth (which they are) and not on location. Just plop it under the dialogue and you're good to go.

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