The entire book is fascinating: it's absolutely packed with useful information and tips. Most of us remember learning in high school physics that sound travels about 1,100 feet per second, but besides gauging the location of a lightning bolt from how long it takes for the thunder to reach our ears, we never found it useful. Imagine, however, shooting a scene from about 90 feet away with a camera-mounted microphone. In this scenario, the audio will lag behind the image by about three frames--not much, but it's certainly noticeable. The problem gets worse as the distance increases. The workaround is to put a microphone next to the subject or slide the audio track so that it syncs with the images.

The book presents other solutions to showstopping problems that, because of lack of experience, a filmmaker wouldn't realize until getting to the editing room. Other critical issues such as preproduction planning, the art of production and recording (including environmental factors and microphone setups), and post-production editing and effects are also discussed.