Mixing audio for video – Music
Music determines the atmosphere of the video. If you have the luxury of using custom-made music for a video, then video + music naturally coincide. It gets more difficult if you have to add stock music to the video afterwards. And this is the reality for most web videos or explainer videos.
If possible at all, choose the music first. Even before production starts. There might already be a storyboard or something. Because of this you probably already know which direction you would like to go with the music. Go find that first. And give this music to the script writer who is going to write the voice-over text and to the voice-over as well. The music creates a context and the voice-over and script-writer will tune into this.
Ok, great if you are in one of those ideal situations. But for most of the videos I was working on as a sound designer, I had to choose the right music myself. And that was at the very end, the video was already 100% finished and the voice-over had already been recorded.
Then it’s a bigger challenge to get everything together. It basically means you have to smuggle a lot. On the next page we will have a look at this.
