Your problem was to be expected, if the only device used for capturing sound (and dialogue) was the (likely rather inferior) microphone on your camera (camcorder?). There are many reasons why sound is almost always recorded with a separate boom microphone, pointed at the talent from above. Most important ones are that the voices sound much clearer when the mic is less then 1m (3ft) away from their lips, then when it is 5m (15ft) away. If you can get your actors back to the same location and re-shoot the scene(s) using a separate microphone on a boom pole, your end result will be infinitely better. It doesn't even have to be a $500 shotgun mic; you could get a $30 Chinese-made shotgun ( http://www.ebay.com/itm/280780703719) and mount it onto a fishing pole, PVC tube, broom stick or something similar that you may already have.

Salvaging poorly recorded audio will be a major challenge. Depending on what kind of buzz you're getting, you may or may not be able to filter it out. It will also depend on what kind of software tools you may have at your disposal. Some audio editors will allow you to take a sample of the room tone, complete with the buzz (noise print) and then intelligently remove any noise that matches that noise print. Adobe Audition (previously Soundbooth) can do this, among others. This might help you a bit.

The greatest value you may get from this is the learning experience. As has been said on this forum many times, sound is (at least) as important in a movie as image. Even professional cinematographers (who tend to "root for the home team") will often tell you that the audience tends to easily forgive underexposed or overexposed imagery, but will never forgive (and quickly lose interest in) poorly recorded dialogue. No matter what kind of conditions you have on your set, you really need to make sure your dialogue is recorded with a separate microphone that is as close to the lips of your talent as possible. If all you have is the mic on the camcorder, you may as well cancel the shoot until you get a proper mic. You wouldn't shoot a movie without a camera; shooting one without a proper microphone is practically as pointless.

I appreciate your advice. But I did in fact use a boom mic. So no advice on what to do when the boom mic picks up bad background noise? Any audio programs you can list maybe?

I mentioned Audition (and Soundbooth), It is available as a stand-alone product, or as a part of the Creative Studio Production Premium package. You can download a free trial version which will have all the features and will work for 30 days ( http://www.adobe.com/products/audition.html).

The feature I had mentioned can be found under 'Effects', 'Noise Reduction/Restoration...'. Before selecting it, you'll open up your audio file, find a segment where there's no dialogue or other incidental sound except the offending buzz and select that segment of your audio file. Then go to the 'Noise Reduction/Restoration...' and choose 'Capture Noise Print'. Then de-select the segment, so that nothing is selected on your audio file. Go back to 'Noise Reduction/Restoration...' and choose 'Noise Reduction (Process)...'. This will open up a complex dialogue box with parameters to tweak. You can use default setting and check the result, or you can look for help ( '?' ) and read about the parameters and what they do.

For my work (development of e-Learning courses), I often record audio in less than ideal settings (a room with loud HVAC system). I had successfully used this effect to neutralise that annoying background noise without effecting the quality of the spoken voice.

The raison for the different kind of sounds when having character1 in one shot and charachter2 in the other shot is because of the background noise. For example if there's a street one side and a fountain the other side and the boom is swinging from street to fountain to street to fountain to street to fountain... Well..I think you get the point ?

Trick is to record 1min street and 1min fountaint (make it 3min...just because sound sometimes also wants to do difficult :-p) and put that under the scene. Play with levels so that it doesn't override but just mask.

www.philipsfilmsound.com
sound design - sound editing

It's called "room tone." Most Sound Mixers (on set) will ask for one minute of total quiet from EVERYONE on set immediately after a scene is completed. This means having everyone stand still and do nothing right where they were during the scene. Keep the mics where they were as well.

Then, once your picture is locked and you've edited the dialogue track as well as possible, you can do a final mix with any sound fx, music, and room tone.

If the location sound is unacceptable and unfixable in post, then professionals bring the actors back in for ADR sessions, which basically means that the actors watch the scenes on a monitor then re-record their dialogue exactly as they did it that day, except this time it is in a very quiet room. You can then re-edit your dialogue tracks and proceed with the final mix.

Brian Dzyak
Cameraman/Author
IATSE Local 600, SOC
http://www.whatireallywanttodo.com
http://www.realfilmcareer.com

It is very hard to fix bad sound in Post. No matter what you do it will never be as good as well recorded sound in the first place. Techniques for getting good sound have been mentioned in the above posts so I won't add to that. You have asked about software to help fix it. Having a good audio program and plugins is handy, but depending on what the problem sound is, it may or may not be able to be fixed. Electrical hums and buzzes can sometimes be minimized or removed. Trouble is most of the tools are expensive. Waves Restoration bundle and Izotope RX are very handy for this sort of thing, along with EQ's etc. They need to be used as plugins in a DAW software or 2-track editing program though. I mostly use Logic and Sound Forge with the mentioned additional plugins for editing audio and fixing problem sound.

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Tony Koretz
http://rocksuresoundz.com