Be prepared (for sound)

Even if you just want to record some basic ambience material, keep your recorder running for as long as the batteries and data storage can manage. You can always edit out what you don’t need later, but you never know when an A-grade audio event may occur and provide something you didn’t expect, which is truly ‘found sound’. Cities are rich with creaks, booms, cheers and screeches that can’t be asked for a re-take. The countryside is also chock-full of bird calls, falling tree branches, rock falls and unidentified animal noises that can power any number of imaginative sound design projects.