The first thing we demand when a film lands in our inbox is clarity. An AAF, properly exported, with handle lengths generous enough to give us breathing room. We’re not interested in clipped audio, or the laziness of baked-in effects we can’t remove. Rushes, too — the raw, unfiltered production recordings. Every cough, every chair squeak, every line stepped on by an overzealous PA is part of the canvas. These are the artifacts we live with, and if they’re missing, the foundation collapses.
Before editing begins, we sync. And syncing is not glamorous. It is forensic, monastic, obsessive. Slates and claps are matched, but rarely is it that simple. The AAF is often full of low-res proxy audio from the offline edit, usually camera scratch, with no relation to the pristine polywavs recorded in the field. We conform those WAVs back to timecode. If metadata is correct, it’s straightforward — scene, take, channel layout, all aligned. If metadata is sloppy, we rebuild. Entire days of rushes re-assembled by hand, frame by frame. Channel labeling is checked: boom left, lavs right, plant mics tucked into their own tracks. Nothing is assumed.
Double-system recording is reconciled meticulously. Picture editors rarely notice drift — but we do. Frame rate mismatches, pull-ups, pull-downs. A 23.976 project exported as 24.000. A 25 fps AAF sitting against 48kHz audio with a 0.1% discrepancy. These are the quiet disasters that destroy sync, and they must be caught before the first cut. We use conforming tools — Ediload, Titan, Conformalizer — to realign offline edits with production sound. Timecode is cross-checked against burn-ins. False starts and wild lines logged. Tail slates corrected. Sometimes a character’s line only exists in the guide track, and we must hunt it down in the production rolls, searching through mislabeled folders like detectives chasing ghosts. Nothing moves forward until sync integrity is absolute. If the bones are crooked, the body will never stand.
Only once sync is airtight do we move into the session template. Think of it as architecture. Dialogue tracks sit at the top, meticulously separated: principal dialogue, ADR, guide tracks, and safety duplicates. Production effects — doors, phones, practical sounds — get their own lanes. Futz returns are armed and ready for radios, TVs, PA systems. Hard FX are staged separately from design elements. Ambiences live in their own strata, carefully layered so density and movement can be controlled independently. Music stems are parked in their designated beds, but the truth is, music is reactive; it bends around dialogue and SFX, never dictating structure. A good template isn’t convenience. It’s order.
Before we carve, we block. We log Foley passes — cloth, props, footsteps — where production can’t carry the weight. We mark custom sound design moments: explosions, swells, the abstract sonic fabric that glues picture together. We map ADR sessions, anticipating coverage for noisy lines, missing words, or script changes. We schedule noise reduction passes, pre-dubs, deliverables. The edit isn’t a blank canvas — it’s a war plan. Precision now prevents chaos later.
The seasoned editor also watches for hidden traps. Phase issues between boom and lav. Production mics placed out of polarity. A lav buried under a shirt that generates a 200 Hz bump needing surgical EQ. Wireless dropouts replaced by wild lines. Or worse: a line overdubbed on set with no metadata at all, dropped into the AAF with no source link. Every one of these anomalies is caught, logged, and neutralized.
Dialogue is sacred. It is stripped, cleaned, and rebuilt. Strip silence, de-breath passes, spectral repair, notch EQ for lav rustle, harmonic balancing to blend ADR with boom. Group walla is cut with precision — the sound of a crowd is never random, it’s orchestrated chaos. Foley provides intimacy — leather creaks, fabric brushes, tactile connection between actor and object. Hard effects deliver the mechanical truth. Cinematic SFX bring the surreal, the stylized. Ambiences give life to empty rooms, tone beds that make a scene breathe. And music, always last, ties the bloodstream together without suffocating the body.
By the time we reach the pre-dub, nothing is accidental. Bussing architecture is immaculate. Dialogue, music, Foley, and FX each routed through their stems. Aux returns are organized — convolution reverbs for spaces, algorithmic verbs for musicality, delays printed where needed. Master faders calibrated to target loudness. Printmasters and M&Es planned from day one. The session looks pristine, like a showroom floor, not a battlefield.
And then the act begins. We don’t place sounds — we execute them. Every transient sharpened, reverbs sculpted to fit onscreen geometry, ambiences faded in like breathing. The session transforms into the film’s subconscious. What the audience doesn’t notice is what matters most: that the world feels inevitable, seamless, inevitable. That’s audio post. Ritual, obsession, architecture, chaos contained.
