“A well-placed cheap microphone will get you better audio than a poorly placed expensive microphone.” – My sound professor at Los Angeles Mission College uttered does words, more or less, during one of his always entertaining and informative lectures. And he’s 100% right. Just because you have the best, most expensive equipment doesn’t mean your film is automatically going to be great.
Audacity is a free audio editor and recorder for beginners that will give you an idea of whether or not sound production is something you will enjoy. Audacity is completely free and is available for Windows, Mac and Linux. If you do decide that sound is the thing for you, I would suggest moving on to Pro Tools, which is the industry standard for sound production.
Want to add some sound effects to your movie but don’t want to pay big bucks to purchase a sound effects library? Well, guess what? You don’t have to. If you look hard enough, you can always find a good, free alternative, much like the Celtx screenwriting software.
At SoundSnap, you can find thousands of free sound effects ranging in categories from Animals, Comic & Film FX, Industrial, Nature and Unreal. Finding the right effect is very simple. Simply search for what you’re looking for, example: Machine Gun, and in a few seconds you’ll see a list of all the available sounds which you can instantly preview without having to waste time downloading. Once you find the sound you want, simply click on the appropriate format: mp3, wav, aiff and the sound effect is yours. It’s that easy.