Fest Secrets: Part I: Audio Issues
In the always competitive world of film festivals programming directors and movie screeners quickly become adept at watching, identifying and evaluating projects that will play well in a festival environment.
One of the most difficult technical elements to overcome, as an audience member, in a theatrical setting deal with audio. To many, this may seem obvious, but after personally viewing (literally) about 10,000 movies over the life of the festival, audio is an ongoing issue.
I can watch on a television in my office and tell whether or not professional audio equipment was used or if filmmakers simply used the onboard camera microphone. There is no doubt that filmmakers put passion, love, care, and money into movies, but a movie that is on the cusp of acceptance, can be made or broken by the quality of audio.
Even if you are sending in a rough cut with audio tracks that are still in the works, try to have the dialogue as clean as possible, especially in the beginning and make it very clear (on the DVD) that this is a rough cut — just keep in mind that this rough cut may be the only representation you are able to send to the festival. Many festivals do not accept (or at least discourage) additional cuts being sent in — this adds confusion.
I know this is a short one … but it needs to be emphasized, so I’ll finished by simply repeating, audio, audio, audio.