Natural History and Outdoor Lifestyle Audio Post-Production Experts

Great Foley is All About the Details

Your Audience is Always Listening

It's the dead of night in a forest in California. A mysterious alien spacecraft alights in a dark clearing, lights flashing, as ominous music plays in the background. The camera pans across the silhouettes of tree branches as a coyote howls in the distance. Suddenly a quavering, haunting cry pierces the night air. And that's the exact moment in the movie E.T. when Steven Spielberg lost all the birding enthusiasts in the audience.

Your Audience Cares About the Subject Matter

So why did this simple, scene-setting soundscape so alienate all cinema-going bird-lovers, you may wonder? Three simple words: Eastern Screech-owl. That shrill note that evokes such mystery in an otherwise faultless opening scene belongs to a bird species found exclusively to the east of the Rocky Mountains. An Eastern Screech-owl in a California forest would be bigger news to birders than the titular alien adventurer!

Respect Your Audiences’ Passion and Expertise

This misplaced owl is one of many examples of how Hollywood gets birds wrong when it comes to the art of audio post-production. Do you want to ramp up the tension in a suburban thriller? Add some fog and the haunting wail of a Common Loon to the scene. The problem, keen listeners will understand that the loon may be a long way from its favored habitat of pristine, wilderness lakes. Do you need a beautiful birdsong serenade for two lovers as they embrace in the snowy outdoors of the Midwest? A logical choice is the Hermit Thrush, perhaps the most beautiful songster in all of North America. The issue, what outdoorsy nature lover has ever heard a Hermit Thrush singing in midwinter? The list of inaccuracies goes on and on.

Daniel creating the sound of a hummingbird’s wings in our audio post-production studio

We Can Relate

We’re nerds about birds, wildlife, and outdoor lifestyle audio. We know that there’s nothing more distracting for a birder or nature lover than watching a video or film and hearing misused birdsong or other inappropriate animal calls.

Our Post-Production House Gets the Soundtrack of the Birders Documentary Right

Our Audience is All About the Details

When WhereNext was awarded the tender to produce a feature-length documentary on birding in Colombia, we knew right away that the audio post-production needed to be faultless. This film's target audience was birders, so no error in birdsong, big or small, was likely to go unnoticed. Spielberg might have annoyed a few persnickety twitchers during the E.T., but if we didn't do our homework for this project, we risked alienating our entire audience.

Shortcomings in the Field Work Need to be Fixed in Post-Production

During our pre-production recce trip, our audio expert Daniel Murcia immediately identified a challenge. Despite the world-class footage, we would be obtaining of rare and exciting species, most of the audio from our on-camera mics would be distant and wouldn't work on film. Our Bogota audio post-production studio would need to craft an immersive and accurate soundscape to match the visuals captured in the field.

Partnering with Experts

Our post-production team began this process by compiling a complete list of every bird species featured in the film, in order of appearance. We then partnered with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and eBird to source original birdsong recordings from the Macauley Library, the world's most extensive collection of bird recordings. Once we had access to these recordings, matching the right bird calls to each setting was the question.

Nerd-Proofing the Documentary Audio

Localizing Background Audio and Verifying Birdsongs

Our goal was not just to include the correct birdsong for images of that species but also to ensure that all of the background audio was entirely faithful to each region's birdsong in the film. So even though we shot scenes in the Santa Marta Mountains, where White-tipped Quetzals can often be heard calling in the cloud forest, it was no good hearing that species whistling away in the coastal deserts of La Guajira. Each scene needed a soundscape that was entirely, 100% accurate to the species profile found there.

Crafting and Polishing the Foley

Using the species spreadsheet as a reference point, and aided by unfettered access to the Macauley Library's jaw-dropping collection of bird recordings and our own ambient recording made during the production, Daniel got to work creating the audio of The Birders. He's an exceptionally creative audio expert and worked tirelessly, night and day, to craft the most immersive audio experience imaginable. He recorded his hiking boots crunching over the gravel of our office patio to mimic the sounds of our stars hiking up rocky trails; our early-bird employees would get to the office and find him crouched down among our pot plants, recording the rustling leaves for ambient sounds; he even hand-crafted a little plastic device to mimic the sound of a hummingbird's wings as it bathed in a Pacific rainstorm. Perhaps no previous natural history documentary has taken such a proactive, detail-oriented approach to audio post-production.

Relying on Our In-House Authority for the Final Review

The star of The Birders (and expert ornithologist) Diego Calderon was a regular fixture in the WhereNext studio during the post-production process. He watched every scene with Daniel, volume turned up high, and aurally 'birded' the movie, letting Daniel know when a birdsong didn't fit the location while suggesting alternatives. Our hard work paid off. “The Birders” has met with rave reviews, over 3 million views, and nary a complaint from birders, wildlife lovers, and most of the world's top bird experts. That's something Steven Spielberg can't say!

Check out the video at the top of the page for the full story of the audio post-production process of The Birders and to learn more about our audio post-production house in Bogota, Colombia.

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