Want a career in audio post production? In this article, post production engineer Paul Maunder shares his advice about the technical and non-technical skills that will help you to get a head start in the industry.

As a freelance audio post-production engineer and part time lecturer in the subject, one of the questions I often get asked by students is ‘How do I go about getting work in the post-production industry?’. Of course, there’s no single answer to that question but there are certain skills and aptitudes which will be of great benefit to anyone seeking work in this sector.

Technical Skills

I don’t want to dwell too much on the technical skills in this article because post-production is as much about your attitude and approach to the job as it is about the actual technicalities of doing the work. Any job in audio production will of course require you to have a decent understanding of key principles such as microphones types, digital recording, sample rate, bit depth, audio levels, Digital Audio Workstations, compression and EQ. Those are the absolute fundamental basics but on top of that, here’s a short list of skills which are essential in the audio post-production process.

• Foley recording and editing

• ADR recording

• Dialogue and ADR editing

• Noise reduction

• Crafting and layering background atmos

• Sound design

• Music editing

• A solid understanding of current loudness standards and the ability to mix to them

• Surround mixing

It’s possible that, further down the line, you may choose to specialise in one particular aspect of audio post but when first starting out it’s a good idea to keep your skillset broad in order to stand a better chance of being able to complete a wider variety of jobs. The skills mentioned above can be acquired in numerous different ways.

College courses and degree courses are a decent place to start in order to attain these skills but it’s extremely important that any course you do is supplemented by practice in your own time. Lots of practice! A qualification on a piece of paper is one thing, but an employer or client is only really interested in the quality of work you do and the efficiency with which you achieve it. In my experience of teaching degree students, the ones who go on to do the best in the long run are the ones who are always in the studio in their own time.

Of course, practicing in a studio on your own is all well and good but a large part of the actual job of working in audio post-production is the soft skills. These are the non-technical skills which relate to how you work. Let’s consider some of these.

Time Keeping

This might seem obvious, but work has to be done on time! This includes meeting deadlines and prioritising which jobs are the most important. If you’re just completing your education and are about to embark on a career in professional audio, it may come as a shock that turnaround times can be very quick. A project which you might be given 3 months to complete as a student will have to be done in 2 days in the real world.

There will be several occasions when you have to work outside of typical working hours in order to get things done. I do some freelance work at a voiceover studio and I noticed that they started using me more often than one of the other freelancers. It turned out that a large part of the reason for this was because as soon as 5:30pm arrived, he’d shut the computer down and go home, whether the job was complete or not. I always finish the job and send the audio to the client, even if that means I go home a little later. Consider this, but also make sure you allow for sufficient time out in between jobs. Rest and recovery is important if you want to avoid burn out and maintain your focus long-term. Don’t try and work 7 days a week. It doesn’t work.

Ability To Work Efficiently

An area which ties in somewhat with timekeeping is efficiency. By efficiency I mean being able to successfully carry out tasks in the shortest reasonable time frame without unnecessary steps along the way. A big part of being able to do this comes back to what I mentioned earlier about practice. You will naturally refine your workflows over time and find better ways of achieving tasks quickly. However, something else you can do to actively improve the efficiency of your workflow in post-production is to learn the shortcuts for your DAW. I know I mentioned that this was the non-technical part of the article but once shortcuts are ingrained in your brain, you won’t need to actively think about them and will be able to focus on the creative aspects of the job unimpeded by the sluggishness of trawling through menus.

Reliability

If you’re turning up late for jobs, forgetting to reply to emails, being off sick all the time or constantly making excuses about why things can’t be done, that does not bode well to any employer. Part of being professional is being reliable. If you agree to do something or meet someone at a certain time, stick to it. Of course, there will be occasions when things happen which are out of your control or when you are legitimately unwell, meaning that you can’t work. Most clients or employers will be understanding of this if it’s very occasional. If you prove to be reliable, it stands you in good stead for future work.

Communication

Communicating with colleagues and clients is something you’ll be doing every single day. This includes a mixture of emails, video calls, face to face meetings and in-person studio sessions. Everyone has their own style and preferences for how they communicate but keeping people informed about things and responding to questions or requests is critical as it keeps everyone in the loop about what’s happening and how jobs are progressing.

If you’re in the studio recording voiceover or ADR and the artist is in the booth, use the talkback to keep them informed on what’s going on. If you need to hold a conversation with a producer in the control room, either keep the talkback open so the artist can hear it or speak to them to let them know you’ll be back with them very shortly. If, for whatever reason, something needs to be resolved which will take a bit longer, invite the artist back into the control room so they’re not left sitting on their own in the booth for an extended period. For remote sessions where the producer and artist are both in another location, make sure your audio is routed so that they can hear each other and you.

Going back to what I mentioned earlier about taking time out to rest, consider having certain times of day when you don’t respond to emails. I probably have a bad habit of replying to emails at any time of the day or night but it can be good practice to give yourself time when you’re not in work mode. Balance this against the previously mentioned point about replying to people promptly!

Problem Solving

Sometimes things go wrong. Quite often this can be beyond your control. Software might crash, your internet connection could go down or a piece of equipment could fail in the middle of a project. Consider ahead of time the things which are most likely to go wrong and have measures in place to mitigate them. For example, don’t just keep one copy of a project on a single drive. Make regular backups. Keep spare batteries for your wireless mouse if you use one. This sounds obvious but I know someone who had to stop mid-session to go out and get some AA batteries! Not good. If your internet connection stops working, there will be certain things you’ll struggle to do but you can still make video calls from your phone and you can send moderately sized files by tethering your computer to your phone and using the cellular data connection. Find ways to work around issues as best you can.

Diplomacy

This is an interesting one. Sometimes you will need to find ways to manage relations between two or more other people. One example I can think of recently was when a composer submitted a piece of music for a short film and the director heard it and told me that it was crap and that it needed changing entirely. Of course, I couldn’t say that to the composer in those terms so I said something along the lines of ‘The director feels that this scene might work even better with a quicker, more energetic piece of music’.

Another example was during a voice over session for a TV commercial and the client asked the artist to emphasise a certain word, to which the artist replied, ‘Well, that doesn’t make any sense but if that’s what you want, I suppose we can record it’. Sensing that perhaps the client was not very experienced in directing voiceovers and was now feeling uncomfortable, I stepped in with some suggestions and managed to diffuse the situation by finding a middle ground which included aspects of how each of them thought it should be read and then allowing the artist to do a take their way. This kind of stuff happens and it can be down to you to mediate the situation, all while operating the equipment, following the script and managing tracks and playlists in your DAW!

Personal Responsibility

In order to achieve your goals on a day to day basis and longer term, you need to take personal responsibility. This basically means taking accountability for your decisions and actions and it encompasses everything mentioned previously in this article. If you want to be successful at something, including audio post-production, it’s down to you to make it happen. Getting started is the most difficult part but if you put the effort in from the very beginning, you stand a good chance of being successful in the industry. Nobody will hand it to you on a plate but if you’re willing to put the work in and meet and exceed client expectations, it won’t be long before word spreads and you start getting a steady stream of work.

Finding Work

One thing I haven’t touched on yet is how to go about actually finding work. Go to film festivals, start talking to directors and film makers, take a look at industry jobs websites and get some short films under your belt. Approach post-production facilities and ask if they will allow you to shadow someone for a while or if they have any internships available. And of course, keep an eye out for entry level jobs. Whilst it’s possible to jump straight into a job at a major film studio, it’s much more likely that you’ll be working at a smaller facility to begin with. Be realistic and don’t wait for jobs to come to you. Actively seek them out. Also, if you get a job interview, research the company before attending the interview. It helps a lot if you know what the company actually does and a little bit of their history before you go there.

Summary

Getting started and being successful working in audio post-production involves a combination of both technical and soft skills. Of all the people I’ve seen who have had a go at audio post, the most successful ones were those who were willing to invest the time and effort into making it happen. Get a good grounding in the technical execution of the job while always working to be good at the soft skills and things should fall into place for you. And remember, it takes years to be really good at something so treat every day as a learning experience and treat the mistakes you make along the way as valuable lessons. Finally, have fun!

Main photo courtesy of iZotope.