What are Room Tones?
Room tones are the background noise of a room. It’s important to capture room tones as they are used to replace unwanted sounds for example breaths in post-production.
Why do we record them?
I discovered how important room tones are especially when working with animation because it’s an artificial world where I create 100% of the sound design. Room tones create the illusion that the audience by using their sense of hearing feels fully immersed in the visual experience. A lack of realistic room tones takes the audience out of the illusion making for an unpleasant experience.
Room Tone Theory
Recording Room Ambiance Tip:
Capturing the room tone from the same previous position of the boom mic will capture a more realistic position of sound for post-production however this is room tone for a non-artificial world I am looking for my research to result in learning how to create a room tone for an artificial world.
Practical Response
I field-recorded environments that match the visual setting. I used the Sanken 50 microphone to record these room tones which is very successful.
Animation,
Real Room Tone,
The room tone of my accommodations bathroom and kitchen combined create a fanatic illusion replicating the screen-based visuals of the kitchen space. The atmospheric reflective space creates this illusion.
Animation,
Real Room Tone,
My bedroom creates an illusion of a quiet room tone of a non-reflective space here as exampled as the entrance/dining room in the animated world.
Conclusion
I was unaware of the importance of ‘Rone Tone’ working with audio-visual work. Through researching room tone, I discovered the methods by which industries standardised recording room tone. I used this information to form my own ideology of recording room for Animation.