Back in January, Mike Thornton considered How A.I Is Changing Audio Post Production. In his article, Mike looked at several aspects of artificial intelligence which are already having an effect on the audio post production industry today. These included:

• Speech to text

• Text to speech

• A.I based music search tools

• Noise reduction

• ADR and foreign language translation with mapped and manipulated lip sync

If you haven’t read the article yet, it’s well worth a look because it provides a very interesting insight into some of the ways in which audio post production as a whole is changing and evolving thanks to the advancement of A.I.

While all of this might be fairly new, the industry has actually been on a course of change for some time already, most notably in the job roles which many of us have to take on day to day. Aside from A.I, there are a number of other factors which have have driven this change. In this article, Paul Maunder highlights what these changes are, and some of the reasons behind them.

Traditional Audio Post Job Roles

Before we get too far into the ways in which the audio post industry has changed, we should first acknowledge the fact that there will, for the foreseeable future at least, continue to be a need for many of the traditional, highly specialised job roles. In particular, I’m talking about higher budget productions. If you’re working at a large facility which specialises in audio post for major motion pictures, then you’re still likely to be working in a team where everyone involved in the process has a very defined role working on a specific aspect of the audio production. To briefly list some of the common roles I’m referring to, they include:

• ADR Supervisor

• ADR Recordist

• ADR Mixer

• ADR Editor

• Assistant Sound Editor

• Composer

• Dialogue Editor

• Dubbing Mixer

• Foley Artist

• Foley Editor

• Foreign Mix Supervisor

• Music Editor

• Music Supervisor

• Post Production Coordinator

• Re-Recording Mixer (also known as Dubbing Mixer)

• Score Mixer

• Sound Designer

• Sound Effects Editor

• Supervising Sound Editor

Even that isn’t an exhaustive list, but I think I’ve covered most of the major roles there. In fact, if you want to read more about what each of these roles involves, check out my article ‘Post Production Job Roles Defined’.

It makes complete sense that on large, complex productions, job roles need to be extremely specific. It’s currently still the most practical way to get through the sheer volume of work necessary to complete everything required for the sound on a high budget movie. Each of the skills listed above takes years, or even decades to completely master to the highest level and this is the reason why such roles have existed for as long as they have. In reality though, looking at the broader audio post production industry as a whole, along with the sheer total number of productions in progress at any given time, the reality is that the vast majority of the industry is actually not working in such highly defined and specialised roles and most of us need to have very diverse skill sets to in order to be able to get through our work on a day to day basis. Let’s look at a number of reasons why job roles have changed across much of our industry.

Reduced Budgets In TV

We’d all love to be working on $100M+ budget movies every day, but of course most productions are much more modest than this. Audio post production spans an extremely wide range of production types from YouTube content to corporate video, training videos, broadcast TV, content for streaming services and feature films. In TV production particularly, budgets have dwindled over the last few years. One of the reasons for this is the increase in the popularity of streaming services. The likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime have seen huge increases in popularity, with viewers moving away from conventional broadcast TV in significant numbers. Consequently, traditional TV broadcasters have seen a reduction in advertising revenue, with advertisers shifting their focus to other mediums, including online. This reduction in ad revenue has brought about a corresponding reduction in spending on programmes. In fact, ITV in the UK announced last year that they need to make £50m in cost savings by 2026.

Naturally, this fall in spending has had an impact on all aspects of TV production, including audio post. Despite the fact that sound should be 50% of any production, it’s rarely regarded by those controlling the purse strings as having equal importance to the pictures. Because of this, budgets for sound have been disproportionately constrained when compared to other areas of production. This reduction in expenditure often means that a smaller number of people are expected to be able to carry out the audio post, and, typically, this means that each member of the team now needs to have a broader skill set. On small productions, the audio post may be entirely down to an individual who may take on multiple roles, acting as Dialogue Editor, Foley Artist, Sound Effects Editor, Dubbing Mixer and any number of other roles which the production might require. While taking on multiple roles like this has been going on for many years, the difference now is that the timeframe in which it’s expected to be done is a lot shorter. As they say, time is money, and if a process can be avoided entirely, it usually is. Another factor affecting this is technology, which brings me nicely on to my next point…

Technological Advancements

We’ve seen huge improvements in audio technology over the last few years. A good example is noise reduction, where A.I has helped to make previously unsalvageable audio perfectly useable. This means that processes such as ADR are less necessary than they previously were. Where noisy dialogue recordings may have meant re-recording lines in an ADR session, in a lot of cases, the location audio can now be cleaned up very effectively using some of the latest noise reduction tools. On some productions, this can negate the need for ADR entirely, which expedites the process, saves money and means that fewer people are needed to complete the sound. Another point to consider here is that the latest noise reduction tools are not only more effective, but also easier to operate than previous ones. Just a few years ago, it took quite a bit of know-how to get the best out of noise reduction tools and often the results were still less than ideal. Today, for dialogue at least, noise reduction has, in many cases, been simplified to a single dial which controls the amount of noise reduction. What’s more, the results are really impressive, often allowing for a large reduction in noise with little or no perceivable artifacts. Once something like this is possible, it quickly becomes expected. A new, quicker way of doing something even more effectively than before naturally supersedes previous practices immediately. 

Other processes, such as foley, have seen technological alternatives come about in recent times. While the ideal scenario would be to take the time to perform and edit foley the traditional way, budgets and time constraints mean that, on lower budget productions, it can’t be done. Tools such as Reformer Pro from Krotos allow foley samples to be triggered in sync with picture either from MIDI or by ‘performing’ trigger sounds vocally using a microphone. Examples of how this works can be seen in my article and accompanying video ‘Creating Sound Design With Krotos Plugins’. Although it may seem like this software is a threat to Foley Artists, in reality, foley still very much has a place where time and money permits. What tools like Reformer Pro actually mean is that foley can now be carried out on a wider range of productions, including quick turnaround, low budget stuff where previously no foley would have been done at all.

Working From Home

There’s been a big move towards working from home. This started to happen many years ago, but it was accelerated during Covid when many of us had no option but to work remotely. In many cases, lots of us remained working this way after Covid. If you’ve got a setup at home which allows you to complete your work effectively, why would you go into a studio? In most cases, you wouldn’t, and remote working has become so common that it’s quite normal now. This rise in operating from home has also meant that we’re less likely to work with a team, and more likely to have to carry out more of the audio post production processes ourselves. At one time, it would have been considered ridiculous for someone to try and carry out the audio post for a TV show or film from a home studio, because the quality of equipment just wasn’t up to scratch. Today, we can have the exact same tools at home that we may use in a large studio facility, and interchange projects between systems if need be. Many of you reading this will be regularly completing mixes from the comfort of your own home studios. It’s nice to have a 5-second commute to work, and it means that you don’t miss any of your Amazon deliveries! Clients are much more accepting of home working now, and usually think nothing of the fact that you’re operating from your converted garage or back bedroom. As long as the quality of work is what they expect, it really doesn’t matter. With everything being file based, and with high speed internet connections, work can be delivered to anywhere in the world quickly.

Pretty much every aspect of audio post is possible from a high quality home studio facility. This includes voiceover recording, which can easily be recorded remotely using a service such as Source Connect. There will still be jobs where it may be preferable to either get the artist to come to you, or for you both to go to a studio. This may be the case where face to face interaction is more practical when, for example, recording something extremely long like an audio book. For most voiceover jobs though, and even a lot of ADR work, Source Connect provides a practical solution, allowing it to be captured remotely, and in sync with picture too. Again, this has become an accepted way of doing things, and it marks a shift away from the previous practice of everyone having to travel to a studio somewhere. Now, the artist can be at home, the client can listen in and direct from their home or office, and the engineer can also be in their own home studio.

Client Expectations

With the gradual advancements in technology, coupled with a trend towards working from home, client expectations have also shifted. They now anticipate a higher level of quality and sophistication in their audio content, even from those working in home studios. Additionally, there's an increased emphasis on quick turnaround times as content creation cycles shorten and competition intensifies. With so many outlets for video content, producers are vying for viewers attention, and the astute ones who recognise the importance of sound often want a one stop shop for audio post. If they can send you an AAF and leave you to get on with everything that audio post entails, that’s ideal from their point of view. They typically don’t want to have to enlist the help of a large number of people to complete their sound. They want you to do it all, so again a broad skillset and capability to get it all done to a high standard is important. Remember, I’m generalising here to highlight a trend.

Wider Skillsets

I’ve mentioned the move towards needing a wider set of skills in audio post. In my opinion, you shouldn’t just limit your skills to sound. There’s an inherent fusion of audio and video in any post production project. The two have to co-exist in the project and, while you might often just work with a compressed video file in your DAW and send the finished audio mix off to the Editor to combine with the full quality video, there’s no disadvantage to knowing a bit about video formats, resolutions, frame rates and colour profiles. On a recent job, I was able to complete the dialogue edit, sound design and mix for a short drama. It’s something which is being sent off to film festivals to be played in cinemas and the film makers didn’t have the knowledge to create the Digital Cinema Package (DCP) file themselves. I mentioned that I was able to do it, so they sent me the Pro Res video master and I combined it with the 7.1 audio mix and created a DCP file suitable for cinema playback. I was able to charge more for this, so having an understanding of this part of the process paid off. Also, by creating the final deliverable files myself, I knew that it was done properly.

Take Our Poll

With the audio post production industry shifting and evolving, we’d love to gain an insight into what proportion of the Production Expert community work in audio post, either completely or in part. For that reason, we’re running a poll. The results of this poll will help us to better tailor the type of content we feature on the site in the future.