Creaks: Floor & Stairs

Good floor and stair creaks, recorded from head height in order to mirror location recording, can be useful for sweetening foley or production footsteps.  However, if you think a particular creak has potential for manipulation or as an element in a layered design then it may well be worth recording much closer – you be the judge.

If you do record some creaks with the intention of them being sweeteners then please record a decent amount of them.  Bear in mind  that, with longer scenes in particular, it’s handy to have a generous length of track available from which you can cherry-pick the creaks that suit each particular moment.  Try and get a variety of intensities of creak out of your chosen surface; the shorter, subtler creaks are sometimes more useful than the big ol’ horror movie ones.  Record yourself or a volunteer making the floor or stairs creak; don’t record an ambient track of the general public passing by because this will also carry extraneous noise (movement, voices, etc.) with it, which we don’t want.  Perhaps remove your shoes so that your creaks aren’t spoiled by being tied to actual footfalls.

Be careful with the room acoustic:  Decide whether this is useful to have in your recording or not.  Remember that it is a lot easier to add reverb than remove it. Having said that, if a room has a nice acoustic, perhaps consider recording two-track mono – one closer boom and one more distant room mic.  Don’t contribute stereo files; it’s just a waste of drive space.  Include photos and thorough meta descriptions with your recordings whenever possible too.

Although, the images above would suggest otherwise – the surfaces do not have to be wood, they just have to creak in some way.  If you do a floor and stair recording from the same location which ‘match’ then please reflect this with appropriate naming.