Doesn't this depend first on what you are trying to accomplish? If your int=
entions are journalistic then fidelity of circumstance is required and thin=
gs should be as they are. If your intent is to create a work of art then by=
definition it has a point of view and thus is edited from its inception. =
A soundscape without anthrophony, by whatever means, is a perfectly good go=
al if that's what you elected to do. In any case truthfulness in intent is,=
I think, what's important. Today we can embed metadata. When I have manipu=
lated something in some way, I detail that in a note.
I've been working on a project for several years, cataloguing and editing o=
f videos of primates. The audio is often very bad: talk in several language=
s; crunching feet; not-so-distant cars; the recordist breathing; camera str=
aps whacking against the tripod. Since my intention here is for the viewer =
to see the animals and not a documentary on the recording of the video, I s=
ample, cut and paste audio to create a background that's "authentic" if not=
perfectly truthful and, as far as possible, is without humans. With my own=
video, I usually record long audio passages in the field so that I have a =
sound track to fall back on when I edit the video.
Marc
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