The Museum of the Moving Image

One of my favorite exhibits in the museum and one that I was able to participate in was the voice over and sound recording exhibit, where we were shown some of the basic aspects of how a film is created after the actual events are captured. There are sound booths in the museum that appear to be like something you would find in a studio (without, of course, the incredibly giant and scary soundboards) and we were able to enter these “studios” and explore for ourselves how dialogue, sound effects, and music are recorded, chosen, and placed in a film. As an audience member I was always very interested in the role that sound plays in a movie and I found that this aspect of post-production work in film is one that interests me. It is obvious that the music in a film is something that is added later in the film making process but I never knew how much voice over and sound effect work is really done in post-production. There seems to be a great deal of importance placed on this aspect of film making and the museum gives a general idea of how this process is done. While some of the decisions we made when experimenting with these film processes were funny and ridiculous they really showed how intricate the process of post-production sound is. The exhibit also showed me how there is a great deal of artistic freedom for the sound mixer or editor within film making. There seems to be many possibilities for an artistic style to come across in sound recording and editing and that is something I found to be appealing process in media production.