5 SECRETS to Cinematic Sound Design (Premiere Pro Tutorial)

Published on July 7, 2021

Premiere Pro Tutorials

audio hacks, hollyland, Sound design

What is Sound Design?

Sound in films is more than just a recording. It’s a carefully edited timeline of recorded audio and sound effects, mixed together.

Just like you would add color grading and visuals to your video track, your audio needs some work too. Even basic adjustments like equalizing, pitching or adding reverb can make a huge difference.

The whole process of mixing different sound clips together and creating these effects is called sound design.

Good vs Bad Audio

One common mistake is to forget about the audio mix. This is the balance in volume between the different sounds. Image having 4 tracks with different sounds on. If all of them have the same volume, there will be no depth. The sound is flat and feels out of proportion.

Therefore it’s important to get the mix right. Imagine which sounds are in the background and should be lower in volume. Which sounds are close to the action? Make them louder.

Is your actor whispering? Then don’t mix that dialogue down to 0db. Keep the whispering sound subtle as well.

Volume Hack

There’s a nice little hack to keep the volume of your sounds high, but make them seem quiet. Higher tones always seems louder than lower tones. So if you make use of a lowpass filter (removing the higher tones), your sound will keep the same volume, but appear a lot more quiet.

Hollyland Lark 150

Big thanks to Hollyland and their Lark 150 wireless microphone system for their support on this video. Like mentioned, I believe it’s a great microphone with some unique features!

Make sure to also enter the Feel my City Sounds contest and win up to $50,000 in cash and film gear.