◡◶▿ Room tone

The elephant in the room is about to go "boom" | Summer sound letter #5

When filming on location, the moment that each shot is finished, the sound recordist will tell everyone to “shut up” for five minutes while she records the sound of the room just being a room. !.

This ritual has a purpose. This sound is called “room tone.” Most often, the sound recordist is lucky if her colleagues give her 60 seconds of fidgeting and chewing sounds before somebody makes ‘the big move’ that signals tone time is over.

The sound recordist collects sounds such as a fridge buzzing, the walls breathing, or the way the motor noises from outside the window fill the gaps between these particular walls. She may collect these all in one go, for security. Suck them up all in those 60 seconds because if she stops to take a new recording position, everyone will resume their business.

Like the sound recordist, room tone screams for silence in a scene. Loud room tone makes the other sounds in a scene seem unwelcome. Strong room tone, like an assertive sound recordist, is very useful and very unpopular. You can use room tone to paste over gaps in edited sound or conceptual space. Seamless!

What else might you use all that room tone for?

📹 Unfound Peoples Videotechnic | Cloud-based filmmaking thought. ☁️

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