How A Pro Editor Sound Designs A Video

The quickest way to level up as a video editor is to level up as a sound designer.

In this week's YouTube video, I invite you into my edit suite to show you my full process for sound designing a scene.  Read to the end for a sound editing tip I haven't seen anywhere else.

The scenes I use in the video are taken from a public service announcement (PSA) that I edited. The PSA demonstrates the impact of a car crash without wearing a seatbelt. Pretty powerful stuff. And the shots gives us the opportunity for some really cool sound design.

The first tip I'd like to share is a lot of time it makes sense to create two distinct versions simultaneously. To do this, I simply copy and paste the scene.  The end result is that instead of trying to find the perfect sound for one version, I can cut in my two favorite sounds.

 I like to use ArtList (affiliate link) to find sound effects, and on my monitor I open two finder windows—one for downloads, and the other is my SFX folder so I can quickly get the effects into my project.

I often start with adding in a background ambience to give some life to the overall scene, asking myself the following question: What is the sound of this scene? 

In my sample scene we're downtown, so the background ambience may be city traffic or perhaps just a light wind with some birds chirping.  Each version I create would then elicit a different emotion.  In ArtList I can easily search for "city traffic ambience", "city wind", and "birds chirping".

In the video I share other examples of sounds which may be heard as the crash-test dummies are ejected from a seat at the top of a downtown building, sending them falling (and subsequently crashing) to the ground.

This leads me to my next tip: get creative with your search terms when you get into more specific sounds. Sometimes the sound you’d least expect to work is the best for the shot.

Below is a list of the search terms I used to find effects for the two different versions.  You will see that though a couple of the searches are straightforward, sometimes you do have to get creative with the search terms used.

Button press sounds: "button"; "switch"

Ejection sounds: "machine"; "object moving"; "gears"; "hydraulics"

Falling sounds: "wind gust"; "flag" (for fabric flapping in the wind)

Crashing sounds: "crash"; "debris"; "impact"; "body fall"; "glass shatter"

In the scene there is a part where we see the same shot twice from a different angle. Since we have two different versions, we can always experiment in one of the versions with hearing a different sound from each hit.

Check out the video to see the final sounds I added in, and how I lined everything up and leveled things out.

My last tip—and one I haven’t seen much online—is to go into sub-frame mode on your video editor to line up your sounds.

For example, I might want to move a sound effect less than a single frame to get it exactly where I want it. If I go into sub-frame mode I can now move it exactly where I want.

These details can make a big difference.

Lastly, I want to give a huge shout-out to executive producer/director Scott Rice, who graciously allowed me to use the PSA footage for this lesson.