I know they can add audio in post by Foley artists, but how do they keep sounds of equipment, people, or other background noise that isn’t wanted out of the movie?
I’m especially curious about older movies that were made before the rise of digital audio.
In: Technology
You don’t need digital audio to be able to edit audio. From the start audio was not attached to the video; the first movies had no audio except for musical accompaniment that was actually played live by someone during the viewing!
Later on you could record the actors with directional microphones on poles held just out of frame. These “boom mics” are still used today and you can sometimes see errors as they slip into the edge of a shot. If you can get clean audio of their performance then you can add extra sound effects later.
Finally the equipment, people, and other background noise is just minimized. Ever hear the call “Quiet on the set!” before? That is to minimize the amount of noise that could contaminate the audio and ruin a take.
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