Consistent ambiance? Or not?

[Stephen Pruitt]

Hi all. . .

I'm working on the audio of our next film, and I needed to add a little kitchen ambiance to kill the hum from over an overhead fan in one location of a telephone conversation. To kill the noise, I added a nice dishwasher ambiance effect. It sounds very nice.

My question is that when I go back and forth between the two locations (which are between two kitchens), the way I have it now, the dishwasher drops out when I'm in location B, but is always present in location A. Since I'm moving back and forth every few seconds, it sounds a little choppy to me.

There are two ways I can do this. I can leave it as is, with the dishwasher in one kitchen, but have no dishwasher in the other kitchen, or I could just keep the dishwasher sound consistent across both kitchens.

What would be the more "correct" method?

Thanks.

Stephen

 

[PatrickFaith]

The general normal process is:
1) rx5 the dialog track that has the fan
2) volume automate the dialog track
3) add ambient track loop from same room back to dialog track.

If you've done that first, you really just have to have your ear be the guide (this changes per country/genre but for me audio tracks that are clean/not-real are always better then a distracting "real" sounding dialog track).

 

[Jeremy Green]

This is an old post but I've been in those situations before - trying to keep the sound consistent with the location between faster cuts and it really starts to sounds choppy but when you take it out it seems "incorrect" or sometimes you can't, even with the mighty rx5. First step is determining if it is actually a problem. Step 1 - Get someone (spouse, friend, anyone that isn't working on the project) and just have them watch the cut. Don't say something is wrong, you want an unbiased opinion. If they don't say anything you might be overthinking it. Now without actually watching and hearing your edit I have no idea. Sometimes after working on a scene for a while its easy to warp your perspective and think little things are a huge deal when they actually might not be so getting a fresh perspective is a very valuable resource (that goes for a ton of other things in the video world).
If the impartial observer says something like "yeah, what's up with the sound and that dishwasher" I think Patricks suggestion is dead on.

 

[Elsie N]

Imagining the situation, I envision keeping the dishwasher on in the kitchen with the fan noise, but keep it as low as possible. I might also add some ambient noise to the other kitchen of a different nature, again at a low level. I might also punch in on a shot where the actor(s) are in close proximity to the dishwasher and bring the volume of the dishwasher up as well for that shot.

But I might also address the fan noise by embracing it... that is, get a close-up of the fan and boost the noise, then quieten it down during the rest of the scene.

 

[Marc Wielage]

Hi all. . . I'm working on the audio of our next film, and I needed to add a little kitchen ambiance to kill the hum from over an overhead fan in one location of a telephone conversation. To kill the noise, I added a nice dishwasher ambiance effect. It sounds very nice. My question is that when I go back and forth between the two locations (which are between two kitchens), the way I have it now, the dishwasher drops out when I'm in location B, but is always present in location A. Since I'm moving back and forth every few seconds, it sounds a little choppy to me.

I think in a lot of cases, non-pro mixers tend to go too far. I think a better philosophy is to lean towards subtlety, and avoid anything that really stands out. One possible exception would be (say) street noise, where that cuts in and out when you back and forth in a phone conversation. Even then, the street noise would still be slightly audible on the filtered B-side of the phone conversation.

I also don't think it's a good idea to cover up one noise by adding another noise. That's kind of like adding a ton of fragrance to cover up the huge stench of cow dung: all you wind up with is a new smell, which is dung + perfume. What you need to do is to find a way to kill the fan noise from the dialogue. At worst, you could always loop it. At best, you could use iZotope RX and see if that helps.

At least this is a lesson for next time: don't record with a fan turned on in the room. Even if it's on in the wide shots, turn it off for the close-ups and get clean audio on all those angles. I have worked on shoots where stuff like fans were not accessible, so we just re-recorded all the audio in a back room somewhere to give the sound editor some alternates, and that generally can work.