Few
groups of people have a bigger rift between them than
video guys and audio guys. Everything from pre-assumed
importance to the way we talk is different between us.
As a video guy, I tend to look at a new HDV camera and
be impressed by the overall video quality that's available.
Then my audio guy has to point out that the idiots who
made the camera compress all their audio to sub-mp3 quality.
This means that if you ever happen to shoot a sequence
that needs any audio touch-up afterwards, you're pretty
much screwed, because the compressed audio tends to shatter
like sugar candy in a deep freeze if you try to fix it
after the fact.
Video
guys tend to think that people will remember a film based
on the visuals alone, whereas the audio guys know that
70% of any film is its audio. In fact, you can actually
have crappy camera work combined with poor lighting and
awful editing, and people will still watch a film if your
audio is clean and clear. (How else can we explain why
more than three people watched the migraine-inducing The
Bourne Supremacy?)
These
are just the things that pop to the forefront during the
production phase of any relationship between video and
audio people. When it gets to post-production, things
really get nuts, because, in addition to our differing
priorities, audio and video guys don't even speak the
same language. By the time you get to the scoring stage
of your film, all the video and audio guys have headaches
from having to try to translate ideas to one another and
everyone just wants to get the film finished. This is
obviously not the mindset we want to go into during one
of the most connecting elements of filmmaking, yet we've
all been there.
