Department guide · Sound
Sound on the day and sound afterwards, which are two different jobs.
Production sound is recorded once, in a field, with wind and a generator and an actor who turns away at the wrong moment. Post sound is built slowly in a room with time to think. They share a vocabulary and almost nothing else, and people who are brilliant at one are frequently useless at the other.
This covers both and keeps them separate. It is for boom operators, sound assistants, recordists and mixers, and for the growing number of people who record their own audio because there is nobody else on the crew to do it.
Where to start
Microphone placement, then everything else.
01
Placement beats equipment, every time
A cheap microphone in the right place beats an expensive one in the wrong place. That is not a consoling thing people say to beginners; it is how sound works. Learn placement before you save for kit.
02
Then learn what a mixer is listening for
Room tone, handling noise, clothing rustle, reflections, the fridge nobody turned off. Recognising problems by ear is the actual skill, and it is trainable from free material with headphones on.
03
Then split into your lane
If you want to be on set, follow the boom operators. If you want a room and a screen, follow the post houses. Doing both badly is a common and avoidable mistake in your first two years.
Use headphones for all of it. Watching sound tutorials through laptop speakers is a waste of your evening.
The list
Free, checked, and every one of these links out.
Curtis Judd (opens in a new tab) · Free · YouTube · anyone starting
Microphones, recorders, radio systems and the physics of clean dialogue. He demonstrates rather than asserts, publishes his method, and never sells you a product as a substitute for technique.
Sound Speeds (opens in a new tab) · Free · YouTube · boom operators
A working boom operator’s channel, set up to publish the professional technique that normally stays inside the department. Booming is a physical craft barely documented anywhere else.
SoundGirls (opens in a new tab) · Free to read · free membership · film, broadcast and live
An international organisation for women in audio: resources, mentoring, events, scholarships and a jobs board. It is a route to people as well as to material, which almost nothing else on this list is.
AMPS — Association of Motion Picture Sound (opens in a new tab) · Free to read · paid membership · UK practice
The UK craft guild for production and post sound — mixers, designers, editors, operators and Foley artists. UK practice, written by the people who set it.
Boom Box Post (opens in a new tab) · Free · written · aiming at post
A post-sound house writing up dialogue editing, Foley, sound design and the full audio post workflow, step by step. Production sound and post sound are two different jobs and this is the clearest free writing on the second one.
Production Expert (opens in a new tab) · Free · articles and reviews · working technicians
Daily writing on professional audio tools, workflows and post practice. It assumes you are already working, which makes it the natural next step after Curtis Judd, and the troubleshooting pieces will save you on a delivery deadline.
Blackmagic Design — Fairlight training (opens in a new tab) · Free · books, videos and project files · audio post
A complete free curriculum for audio post inside a free application, with media to follow along on. The software is free and so is the teaching, which makes this the cheapest serious route into audio post that exists.
ScreenSkills — sound job profiles and skills checklists (opens in a new tab) · Free · no account · UK grades
Sound trainee, sound assistant, boom operator, production sound mixer. The grades in UK sound are few in number and badly explained everywhere else.
Every link here goes to the owner’s own page, in a new tab. How we treat other people’s work · Last checked September 2026.
Manufacturers publish the rest: Sound Devices, Zaxcom, Lectrosonics, Sennheiser, Schoeps and DPA all put full manuals, application notes and polar-pattern data online. Frequency planning and radio mic co-ordination are technical, badly covered by tutorials, and properly covered by the people who built the kit.
Money on it
Where money helps
A second-hand recorder and a cheap shotgun microphone
Not a course, and the cheapest useful thing on this page. You cannot learn placement by watching. Ten hours with a real microphone teaches more than fifty videos, and a used two-channel recorder plus one decent microphone never expires.
Paid
A Pro Tools subscription, when a job asks for it
Pro Tools is the post-sound standard. Learn on Fairlight for nothing first and buy the subscription the week a job requires it. Starting on free software costs you nothing in employability.
Paid
The Mark Milsome Foundation — online production safety course (opens in a new tab) · Independently certified · about an hour and a quarter · check the cost on their page
Created after the death of camera operator Mark Milsome on set in 2017, and the cheapest credible line on a CV with no credits.
The books
Three, and they cover different halves of the job.
| Book | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Sound for Film and Television — Tomlinson Holman | The standard text across production sound, post and the physics under both. Technical, dense, and the one book that covers the whole chain. |
| Dialogue Editing for Motion Pictures — John Purcell | The craft of making recorded dialogue usable. The specific book for the specific job, and there is no free equivalent. |
| The Location Sound Bible — Ric Viers | Practical production sound on location. Less theoretical than Holman and closer to the day. |
Where you are
The same list, sorted by what you have already done.
| If this is you | Do this, in this department |
|---|---|
| Never been on a set | Curtis Judd, with headphones on, then record something badly and listen back. |
| You have a first day | Learn what the mixer is listening for so you understand why you are being asked to stand still. |
| Building a career | The skills checklist for your grade and the one above it, then pick a lane: floor or post. |
| Changing department | Placement is the whole craft. Start there, whatever you did before, and borrow a microphone. |
| Running a department | AMPS guidance, the Bectu cards you are hiring inside, and the manufacturers’ frequency co-ordination notes. |
The grades
What each rung actually does.
Production sound mixer
Head of department on the floor. What gets recorded, and what the edit will be able to use.
Any word on this page you have not met before is in the glossary, in UK terms.
Where the gap gets filled
On a unit, with something moving.
The sound course puts you on real recorders and radio mics with real actors moving through real spaces, which is the only way any of the above becomes physical rather than theoretical. The production simulations then add the thing you cannot simulate alone: everybody else, all talking at once, on a schedule.
The free route here is strong and will take you a long way.
