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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Shooting my Entire RED Picture M.O.S.?

Tom
The first question you have to ask yourself is? Am I storyteller who just happens to own a kick ass camera, and have the skill to use it? Or are you a DP with Directorial aspirations?

Of the two IMO number one is the best way to be, when you shoot a feature.
The first axiom of film is, it’s not about you; it is and always will be about the audience.
They don’t come to a feature film to see stunning visuals. They come to emotionally connect to your characters, and then they will fallow them anywhere.

I assume this film is your dream come true, and it’s for the world to see that you can do this filmmaking shit, and they should give you truck loads of there money to make your next one. You don’t get that with strong visuals.

That is the problem with most films today. They are made by mostly music video Directors, who do incredible 6 to 10 min visually stunning sequences. But they can’t sustain an emotional core for a full feature. Your story is a love story complicated by a love triangle, between human beings. Not gigantic hunks of granite. No matter how impressive Half dome is. If you want to be the big man on campus, and get other peoples money, you have to have film Execs come out of your screening and say. “We can make some f**king money with this thing.” And that’s exactly what I want for you… To do that you have to create moments with emotional weight, an actors are the only way to do that.

When you start shooting your movie, those moments are going to happen, and it’s going to be magic, It will not be in the script, it will be organic, and if you don’t have a mic to capture it, you’re going spend hours in post trying to artificially recapture it. You could get lucky and get really close. But I assure you you’re going to kicking yourself in the edit bay, and you will never do it again. You will in the end spend three times the money in post and ADR, than you would have spent in location sound. Remember you’re the boss, hay sound guy while we set the next shot. Go down to the lake and get me some lake wave sounds. That way you go into post and you have it all.

And all that money you saved it going to go into your festival marketing budget, getting a PR guy that can build buzz, and get you sold. A then when you getting your Oscar, you’re up there thanking your Mom, your agent, your crew, and your actors. Then you’re going to thank your old pal Adobeone. From saving you from making the worst mistake of my professional career.

Then I’m going to raise my champagne glass in your honor; hell I might even get a little misty.
 
For me, it's not really about the budget. I have sound mixer friends who would do the whole 30-day roadtrip show for like 6 grand or whatever. For me, it's about keeping the crew small and freeing the "image." Crew wise, shooting in a National Park like Yosemite, you have to convince the Rangers you are a small "film school" crew shooting a "not for profit" short. I've done this many times before at places like Joshua Tree, and the less people and equipment you have standing around around, the less likely they are even to bother you in the first place.

There is a reason why no great film has ever shot in Yosemite... because you have to do it real low key, which is part of why the RED is so awesome. To the average Joe, it's just a "video camera." But we know better. ;)

Also, on the Visions of Light cinematography documentary, a lot of legendary DPs claimed that the introduction of sound into film production in the early part of the last century severely limited the power of the image and camera.

Also, if I saved 6K for a mixer, it's that much more I could spend on ADR and Sound Design.

This is just a hair-brained idea, and I probably won't do it, but I do thank you guys for sounding me out on the idea.
 
Rfo said:
I swear to god the entire first half of Andrei Tarkovsky's Nostalgia was shot MOS. I don't think you even see a mouth move for the first 20 minutes (and there is dialog). It also harkens to the 50-60's italian studio films (edit-oops already mentioned.)

I had a very similar idea and to me the key to doing this successfully is to not subordinate the soundtrack to the picture. Free the sound-track from the tyrany of the image, but do it self-consiously. Create some dissonance between the image and the sound. I want to see that film. However, if you want a movie that sounds like a normal movie and you have budget constraints I think you gotta go the normal route - at least for the dialog scenes. Take a little edirol digital recorder along and record environmental sounds for your sound designer to play with.

Disclaimer: background is heavily experimental film/experimental music
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RFO - You just made my evening. You just name checked the filmmaker (and the film) that got me interested in movies to begin with, and just described a movie I want to see (or make at some point).

As an aside, Tarkovsky's films had absolutely incredible sound design. Stalker and Nostalghia especially.

On another note, a friend of mine made an incredibly complex sound film about Joan of Arc, shot entirely MOS, with sound and picture working more or less on equal levels, as per your post. What I've seen of it is amazing; you need to be willing to overlook your preconceptions about film/sound sync, but it's stunning stuff. And wildly experimental in the best way.

Long live experimental film and music.
 
adobeone said:
Tom

When you start shooting your movie, those moments are going to happen, and it’s going to be magic, It will not be in the script, it will be organic, and if you don’t have a mic to capture it, you’re going spend hours in post trying to artificially recapture it. You could get lucky and get really close. But I assure you you’re going to kicking yourself in the edit bay, and you will never do it again. You will in the end spend three times the money in post and ADR, than you would have spent in location sound.
Click to expand...

Aint that true...!
 
adobeone said:
Tom


When you start shooting your movie, those moments are going to happen, and it’s going to be magic, It will not be in the script, it will be organic, and if you don’t have a mic to capture it, you’re going spend hours in post trying to artificially recapture it. You could get lucky and get really close. But I assure you you’re going to kicking yourself in the edit bay, and you will never do it again. You will in the end spend three times the money in post and ADR, than you would have spent in location sound. Remember you’re the boss, hay sound guy while we set the next shot. Go down to the lake and get me some lake wave sounds. That way you go into post and you have it all.
Click to expand...

I totally hear you on the first point, and I can already imagine kicking myself in the head if something magical happened in a dialog sequence. I have to think about this for sure.

As far as the sounds of gentle waves lapping a lake shore, isn't that something my sound designer could easily pull from stock sounds? Or am I wrong?
 
Rfo said:
Hijack: Sounds great, where can I see that Jason?
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Well, unfortunately, at the moment, unless you live in NJ, and know the guy who made it, you probably can't. It exists only on film and a DTS mix. There's been talk of putting out a DVD or HD/BD at some point, which I'm really hoping happens at some point, because it should be seen much more widely than it has been to date.

The movie's called Wired Angel, incidentally, directed by Sam Wells.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1034088/

[/Hijack]
 
Tom said:
I totally hear you on the first point, and I can already imagine kicking myself in the head if something magical happened in a dialog sequence. I have to think about this for sure.

As far as the sounds of gentle waves lapping a lake shore, isn't that something my sound designer could easily pull from stock sounds? Or am I wrong?
Click to expand...

Yeah but that stock sound has to be paid for, you hire the location sound guy you own the output. So next time you need lake waves it's in your library. Then you can sell it to some else.

Work smart not hard young pat-a-won.

By the time I'm done with you, your going to name your kids after me.
 
adobeone said:
Yeah but that stock sound has to be paid for, you hire the location sound guy you own the output. So next time you need lake waves it's in your library. Then you can sell it to some else.

Work smart not hard young pat-a-won.

By the time I'm done with you, your going to name your kids after me.
Click to expand...

So this sort of begs back to my original post. Will the sound house or sound design guy I work with have access to a large library of sounds, in theory? Do such sound houses have sounds they have built up over the years and don't have to pay for on an individual basis?

BTW, adobe, you're a noob here, so don't get too out of line! :)
 
rameshjai said:
I am not going to apologise for my ignorance because I am learning - could someone kindly tell me what MOS and ADR stand for. Thank you.
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MOS stands for something like "Mit Ohne Sound" or "Mit Out Sound" a (grammatically incorrect) mix of German and English. It essentially has come to mean "shoot silent" ie, shoot without sound recording.

ADR stands for "automatic dialogue replacement" and is the practice of re-recording lines that for whatever reason didn't take as desired (background noise, not clean enough, technical difficulties, lazy filmmakers, etc), in a studio over the image. Also known as looping.
 
Do specific scenes need to take place in specific locations? It seems like it would be best to shoot all of the dialog scenes at once with your small sound crew over how ever many days, and stick to more accessible locations. Then do an extended second unit type of shoot with your actors and your camera, grabbing shots of all of those out of the way places and magical moments. Maybe for the dialog scenes shoot some wide shots MOS if a particularly beautiful setting is necessary for that moment. After hiking to some remote location with a sound crew it would be dumb to waste time shooting closeups with blurry trees in the background.
 
JasonMurphy said:
MOS stands for something like "Mit Ohne Sound" or "Mit Out Sound" a (grammatically incorrect) mix of German and English. It essentially has come to mean "shoot silent" ie, shoot without sound recording.

ADR stands for "automatic dialogue replacement" and is the practice of re-recording lines that for whatever reason didn't take as desired (background noise, not clean enough, technical difficulties, lazy filmmakers, etc), in a studio over the image. Also known as looping.
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Thank you. I will be using those terms very often (and freely) from now on.
 
Tom said:
So this sort of begs back to my original post. Will the sound house or sound design guy I work with have access to a large library of sounds, in theory? Do such sound houses have sounds they have built up over the years and don't have to pay for on an individual basis?

BTW, adobe, you're a noob here, so don't get too out of line! :)
Click to expand...

A nood why I aught ah :angry03::) :)


Do not depend on anyone else to fill holes in your production, you will be disappointed every time. When you shoot your film you leave nothing to chance, you are there get it all. Tom you have more than enough money to make the kind of film you have planed.

The audiences today are so sophisticated, they have grown up on movies, they know instinctually when something is off, they may not know what it is, but they know something is wrong. Never give an audience that opportunity, because bubba it's a killer.
 
A mic weights what 1 pound? A lightweight boom pole.... 4? A portable mixer.... about 7. Double for two people.... 24 pounds.

My Rainier pack 2 years ago: 48 pounds + water.

I see no reason to worry about the weight of a few boom poles, mics and a small mixing board. I have a friend who brought 2 large hardcover books (for options) on a backpacking trip last year. Just think of your boom poles as ice axes, your mics as crampons and the cables as rope.

If you're really worried: record stereo with a high/low and pick one in post. At least you got it then.
 
I'm surprised no one mentioned Robert Rodriguez. Or if they did I didn't see it in the above posts.

He shot El Mariachi entirely MOS.

I saw another feature as well--a horror film from Asia--that was shot entirely MOS and dubbed for dialogue and sound. For the most part I'd never have known.

I'd be tempted to get some location sound, even bad location sound, however. And then you might still have to do a lot of sound and dialog replacement anyhow. But you'll have more choices.

Anyhow, good on you Tom. Where there's a will, there's a way. Do it how you need to do it. As long as you make your movie, you're about a million light years ahead of everyone else with a video camera.
 
How about a lav on each actor and you rig the receivers on a mounting plate at the camera? Then you have dialogue and invisible equipment. Everything else is gonna be foley anyway, right?
 
That's a possibility. Maybe better would be for me to bring along a boom mic, and just run it straight into the RED. I can boom op myself or I can get one of my guys to do it, for really important scenes. That's an option, I think. Good idea!
 
Why not use a couple of Sennheiser radios and countryman mics and then you'll only have to ADR the portions that have static or are otherwise unusable.

I know that many of Altman's films were shot this way and the quality of those mics and radios are really incredible. At the very least you'll have a guide track that should sound much better than a shotgun mounted to the camera.

[EDIT] Just saw that lordnumberzero beat to the punch!
 
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