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The Master Guide / 13 Sound design and mix · Where sound comes from

Real sound first: the source order

For each row of the sound list, take the first source that can give the sound, and write down why.

For each row of the sound list, take the first source that can give the sound, and write down why.

The order [proven]:

  1. The shot's own sound, or an earlier take's. It is free, and it was recorded in the shot's own room.

  2. Anything real that a microphone could record (a street, a café, rain, a kettle, a car door, footsteps, a crowd): a real CC0 recording from Openverse. For an Arabic crowd, a real recording or recorded voices, never Seedance's (decided).

  3. What doesn't exist, or must be stylised (whooshes, risers, magic, interface sounds, a logo sting): ElevenLabs Sound Effects.

  4. Free CC0 effects from Openverse as the fallback, when a designed effect won't come right. Freesound, behind Openverse, also holds whooshes, impacts and interface sounds. The same rules apply: the CC0 filter on, and the licence checked on the sound's own page (see Sound design and mix → Real recordings from Openverse (CC0)).

Write the source and its reason in the list's Source column, in one of five forms: native (this shot), native (earlier take t2), real CC0, designed, or Foley-type action (a real recording first). The column works as the film's manifest: what you have, what you fetch, what you design.

Keep sound believable, not over-cinematic, unless the treatment asks for heightened sound. More real rows mean more originals to download by hand (see Sound design and mix → Real recordings from Openverse (CC0)), so gather them on one list per film.

Why: award sound designers put real recordings into invented worlds and design only what reality can't give. Factory's Save the Children film took over 80% of its audio from the original recordings.

Sources

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