· 1 min read
Room tone is the schedule
Five minutes nobody wants to shoot, protecting a week nobody budgeted for.
soundprocess
Halvard Sund
Every location gets five minutes of silence recorded before we wrap. It is the least popular five minutes of any shoot day and it has rescued more edits than any other habit we have.
What it actually buys
Room tone is not for filling gaps. It is for making cuts possible. Two takes recorded ninety minutes apart have different rooms in them, and without tone to bridge, the edit hears the join before the audience sees it.
The honest version
You will not miss it until you need it, and when you need it you will need it badly enough to have paid for a reshoot. Five minutes.