You may have found yourself in this situation before: you are editing a dialogue sequence, and you need to add a little bit of a pause that the actors didn’t put in there when you shot the scene. You add it, play it back, and there is something very noticeable when you encounter that pause in the timeline – the lack of dialogue is not the thing that sticks out – it is the lack of the tone of the room that produces an ugly audio gap.
What happened? Well, inside of that gap is complete silence. Absolute digital silence. But wherever you are reading this right now, close your eyes and listen to the room your in. No room is absolute silence, and the quiet subtleties you are hearing in your room are known as room tone. It’s important to know how to use room tone to avoid audio editing difficulties.
