Sound off about sound and audio

[number6]

This is a continuation from another thread about how to record sound. I would like to broaden the topic to include anyone's ideas about how to not only record sound, but what works in cleaning up sound in post and even how to score a production or do-it-yourself Foley. Anything goes.

 

[Jochen Schmidt-Hambrock]

Score: If you dont know how to do it: Its much too deep to get into just for your own project. Unless you already play an instrument and know the software. Just take a look at how complex Logic, Cubase, etc. is. Do you know how to get a musician to play your music?

This is just the production side of it. AND you have to know how to have and use musical ideas.

I may be not quite objective (since scoring is how I make a living), but a (very musical) director friend of mine tried to score one of his films with Soundtrack Pro. He was musical enough to realise how terrible this was.

So, do yourself a favour and get a composer. You may be surprised.

Jochen

 

[number6]

So, Jochen, you think the loop based applications won't work in simply adding drama, etc., to a scene? We're not really talking about releasing a soundtrack DVD, but just enhancing the visuals on the screen.

 

[Jochen Schmidt-Hambrock]

Sure, it will work a little bit (if you dont screw it up).

Just like I would work as a colorist........

;-))

Jochen

 

[Joel Kaye]

So, Jochen, you think the loop based applications won't work in simply adding drama, etc., to a scene? We're not really talking about releasing a soundtrack DVD, but just enhancing the visuals on the screen.

My take would be that adding atmosphere is one thing and writing a score is another.

If you're already a musician I think it's probably worth a shot comparing what you can come up with vs. someone who does scores vs. something like Smartsound. Caveat: I can't say I'd trust just any musician to help you with a score though - because scoring a film is different, or should be - than writing a song or jamming on stage somewhere.

Every project is different... some need an orchestral score with themes for each character - like Star Wars - other need a genre of popular music, others need great atmosphere or industrial and none need techno-electronica. ;-P

So - if you're pretty good at what your movie needs then what the heck, why let everyone else have all the fun? I wouldn't be surprised to find a lot of moviemakers to be multitalented and scoring their own stuff doable. Also, there's tons of software and synths out there to make creating music easier if you want to dig into that world. It's all learnable - it just takes time.

I think Robert Rodriguez was told by Danny Elfman (or some other big composer) that he should try scoring his own movies since he's a musician. And he's been doing it. And he writes and he shoots and he's pocketing millions of bucks too.

There's always this interesting larger idea here - when do you hire the "pros" vs. doing it yourself? Following that logic to it's conclusion we'd hire someone else for everything including writing/directing/shooting.

Maybe a better way of looking at it is - what do you want to spend your time doing? What are you most passionate about? Where are your natural talents and which one's do you want to develop most?

 

[Jochen Schmidt-Hambrock]

My take would be that adding atmosphere is one thing and writing a score is another.

Absolutly! Do you drag little boxes of audio across screens, or: Can you come up with a theme, a melody, at least a motif?

I can't say I'd trust just any musician to help you with a score though - because scoring a film is different, or should be - than writing a song or jamming on stage somewhere.

Quite a lot of filmes suffered because of one guitar playing actor saying he could "do" the score.

Every project is different... some need an orchestral score with themes for each character - like Star Wars - other need a genre of popular music, others need great atmosphere or industrial and none need techno-electronica. ;-P

Hehe, although some of that MATRIX electronic score was pretty good.

Maybe a better way of looking at it is - what do you want to spend your time doing? What are you most passionate about? Where are your natural talents and which one's do you want to develop most?

Amen to that - and the exact reason I have a Red reservation.

Jochen

 

[Bruce Allen]

On the general topic of sound, personally I HATE the sound of lav mics. To the point of trying to deliberately write scenes that can be boomed...

Anyone else crazy like this?

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[Zakaree Sandberg]

Before cinematography i was hardcore audio guy.. i own my own fully loaded pro tools HD studio running some of the top gear. I am also a hardcore musician playing about 5 instruments.. I scored almost every students project in film school.. using 10-30 piece orchestras.. Dont do it yourself!!! music is sooo important.. way too important to eff up. I wouldnt have a musician use my red one to DP my movie..

as for you Bruce.. I totally agree.. i HAAATTTTEEE LAVS .. I have used some that are really good and some that are terrible.. but I always tried to boom!

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Don't blow up the house. Spend the money on music.

You could have a black screen for 60 minutes and very engaging music and people would be perfectly content. It's called a concert. If there is good music and there just so happens to be a resemblence of a plot unfolding they'll assume it's the plot keeping them engaged.

If you screw up the music it doesn't matter how good the story was.

 

[number6]

On the general topic of sound, personally I HATE the sound of lav mics. To the point of trying to deliberately write scenes that can be boomed...

Anyone else crazy like this?

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

Bruce and Zakaree, what is it about lav mics you don't like? Zakaree, you having had experience with all the sound tools, can't you clean up just about anything in a track in post? Sure, it's time consuming, but when time trumps cash, what the heck, eh?

 

[number6]

Jochen, I understand your focus on the musical soundtrack, but my approach will be to merely create tension or thought, or even love. I think it can be done without anyone noticing the music. I would actually like to have the audience not even be aware there was a score. Do you see this also as a function of music in a movie?

 

[number6]

You could have a black screen for 60 minutes and very engaging music and people would be perfectly content.

So, you've read my script?:biggrin:

 

[Bruce Allen]

Bruce and Zakaree, what is it about lav mics you don't like?

Zakaree, you having had experience with all the sound tools, can't you clean up just about anything in a track in post? Sure, it's time consuming, but when time trumps cash, what the heck, eh?

That's the audio equivalent of saying you can shoot on an HV20 instead of the Red because you can clean up just about anything in post. Oh wait, that's what I AM doing!

Yes, you can clean stuff up but actually I think it's nigh-impossible to add depth / dimension in post. It is definitely more difficult to paint audio than frames of picture. Also, picture can be expressive and abstract, so if it is messed up, you can sometimes get away with masking it with effects. Dialogue you generally want to be intelligible. If you screw up the voice recording, you can't put a flange filter over everything and hope it hides it.

Lav mics:
a) don't capture the space that the actors are in - everything feels too dead and dimensionless
b) are capturing audio from a weird place - like, a dude's chest. How many times do you listen to people from the perspective of their chests?
c) are expensive relative to their overall sound quality

EDIT: oh yes, and don't forget the problems they cause with clothing rustles. It's also hard to shoot nude scenes with 'em. Basically whether your actors have their clothes on or off, they suck. The only time I'd use them would be if I were specifically trying to do something in the Altman style. Altman and his sound team are the only ones who seem to make them work. Any other good lav sound examples you guys know?

Until then, I'll use a hypercardiod like a Schoeps MK41 for controlled indoor environments, a Sanken shotgun for more problematic ones, and a nice shotgun for outdoors, please.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[number6]

My take would be that adding atmosphere is one thing and writing a score is another.


Maybe a better way of looking at it is - what do you want to spend your time doing? What are you most passionate about? Where are your natural talents and which one's do you want to develop most?

Good points. The atmosphere for me is the thing. I've been fooling around with Acid Pro for a few years and later, Adobe Audition. Certainly no expert but I have an ear, if I do say so (there was a water trailer that used to pass the house a couple of times a week. Very rhythmic... recorded it and plan to use it someday in something. Never heard that particular sound before or since.) But anyway, what I create will not stand on its oun, but accompanying the visual, it will lend to the mood.

But I didn't really start this thread to debate if I should or should not score my oun stuff. I'm just curious about what other's experiences have been with sound, or editing sound or scoring a movie in general. And questions like why Bruce and Zakaree do not like lav mics, or what creative ways others have used to get good sound in difficult situations. And while there have been other threads devoted to specific microphones, I'm not sure if one has addressed any debate of which applications for working with sound are strongest.

 

[number6]

That's the audio equivalent of saying you can shoot on an HV20 instead of the Red because you can clean up just about anything in post. Oh wait, that's what I AM doing!

Yes, you can clean stuff up but actually I think it's nigh-impossible to add depth / dimension in post. It is definitely more difficult to paint audio than frames of picture. Also, picture can be expressive and abstract, so if it is messed up, you can sometimes get away with masking it with effects. Dialogue you generally want to be intelligible. If you screw up the voice recording, you can't put a flange filter over everything and hope it hides it.

Lav mics:
a) don't capture the space that the actors are in - everything feels too dead and dimensionless
b) are capturing audio from a weird place - like, a dude's chest. How many times do you listen to people from the perspective of their chests?
c) are expensive relative to their overall sound quality

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

Bruce, sometimes I think you are the perfectionist... good for you!

 

[Joel Kaye]

I'm just curious about what other's experiences have been with sound, or editing sound or scoring a movie in general. And questions like why Bruce and Zakaree do not like lav mics, or what creative ways others have used to get good sound in difficult situations. And while there have been other threads devoted to specific microphones, I'm not sure if one has addressed any debate of which applications for working with sound are strongest.

Good questions. Actually I've got some questions for you sound gurus too. I'm in post on a short right now and I've been working through the audio. One scene is kinda tough because one of the critical camera angles has A/C hum and the rest don't. It cleans up well enough to mix as long as I add a backing track underneath it all.

When you're cleaning up your dialogue tracks do you generally use some combo of EQ,Compression and Noise Reduction? What order would you apply those?

I've noticed that when I'm stacking sounds - like foley from the location underneath dialogue of a couple people on different tracks then all the ambient noise stacks up and gets worse. That kinda led me to think it might be best to silence all the dead parts and place one lower level ambient track underneath it all.

Make sense or are there better approaches?

 

[Jochen Schmidt-Hambrock]

Noise reduction first. There are good plugins for that (taking a "fingerprint" of the noise - so its good to have roomtone with the offending noise present).

50 or 60 herz hum ist a problem because its not enough to filter the base frequency. You have to kill the harmonics too, and they are in the speech-range. That means you will damage your dialog to some extend.

Hence the EQ, for rescuing that.

Third variable is the dynamics, like compressor, expander, gates (all in multiband). To some extend the afore mentioned noise reduction plugins are dynamic processors too (just very many).

All of this messes with the phase of your audio, so you want to have *good* EQ´(they are called Linear Phase EQ´s for that reason). That means hardware or serious CPU power.

Feature film means 5.1. And *that* is a whole can of calamities waiting to happen. (I once had a flute sound flipping from surround to left channel every second because of a wrong ambience setting for that sound)

Playing with those variables requires a lot of expertise, this is the reason you have experts. As in all crafts, you have to use intuition, that comes from experience.

If you just experiment blindly, you may get nowhere fast, ear fatique sets in and you end up with an angry fruitsalat of audio (you hopefully delete the next morning)

But all of this should not discourage anybody to start. Just remember how important any audio is for film. So dont screw it up.

Jochen

 

[Bruce Allen]

Right on, Josch.

Oh, and joelnet, before doing all of the above steps, try editing your audio as much as possible. Not only macro-scale editing (you were asking about this when talking about cutting out the silent portions in foley tracks?), but micro-scale editing too - sometimes it's quicker and better to take a syllable from an alternate take than trying to clean up something that was delivered unclearly.

I'm not sure which stage of the process you're in - are you laying out your sounds in Avid or are you in Pro Tools already? Also, in Pro Tools, there are multiple stages of the process.

Josch is absolutely right though... do the NR first. Multiband compressors, etc, you want to do a little later. Final eq, reverb, etc you might want to add even later still, when you are in more of the sound re-recording mixer stage of things. Or better yet, spend days / weeks cleaning things up as best you can and do a few hours' final mix in a real mixing stage. Things like final eq, levels, etc you can't really do unless you have a great speaker / monitoring setup. But the early editing, noise reduction stuff you can do well at home. So get the stems nice and clean (you don't want to be paying someone else to do that stuff which you can do with headphones even) and then take it to a pro for the final mix. They know a lot of things about the way the human brain works, the way you want to have certain things in certain frequencies (and not too many going on at the same time), etc. Also, you'll probably have lost objectivity by then. So it might be good to run through it fresh...

Anyway, I'm sure you can do it yourself too, but you might enjoy (and learn some tricks from) doing a final mix out of house...

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[Bruce Allen]

Bruce, sometimes I think you are the perfectionist... good for you!

Oh boy, you are absolutely right. Problem is, I am a perfectionist about EVERYTHING - hence my inability to afford a Red I want great performances, script, production design, sound, lighting, locations etc. And I want people who work on stuff not to feel exploited. Especially if they're helping me on something done for personal artistic / career advancement purposes. So there goes my budget right there... sad!

On the other hand, if you get it right, you only really need to have the budget for one film.

Back on topic, Number6, I'd highly, highly recommend you get a good dependable guy / gal running after your actors with a boom mic...

And hey Zakaree, what mic setup would you recommend for recording him blowing up his house? I know he could do library sounds, but if he is really crazy enough to do it (and we've pleaded with him not to...), he should at least mic it right, eh? What do you think? A couple dynamics nearby, a few mid-side stereo pairs further away? We're going to want that sucker to echo through the hills...

Oh boy, I'm getting like Finner - "BLOW IT UP BLOW IT UP..."

You have thought about selling stock footage and sounds of your house blowing up, right Number6? Get everyone from Red to bring their cameras and you can have it shot in every angle, in panoramic 3D-rama...

And if you sell the explosion sounds maybe it can be like the Wilhelm scream for the 21st century? You know, that crazy scream that they put in every movie for kicks... it's getting old. I'd much rather that they tried to mix in "Number6's house" into every action movie explosion I will get it into movie trailers for you for sure...

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[mdo]

Good questions. Actually I've got some questions for you sound gurus too. I'm in post on a short right now and I've been working through the audio. One scene is kinda tough because one of the critical camera angles has A/C hum and the rest don't. It cleans up well enough to mix as long as I add a backing track underneath it all.

There's a magical way to clean up a regular 50- or 60-cycle hum that should just about always be used, if the equipment needed is available. It's light-years ahead of EQ.

I first read about it in a Publison 90 (I think it was) manual in 1982.

What you do is tap an effects send off the track, delay the send by one-half of the period of the hum, and then mix it back in to the track. Delaying the send one-half of the period causes the cycle of the hum to be exactly 180 degrees out of phase so that when you mix it back in, it completely cancels the hum with almost no noticeable effect on the track itself. I've done this several times, and it's unbelievable how clean it is.

If the track can withstand the added delay, you can instead delay the send a full period of the hum, invert the phase, and mix it back in with the same effect.

Half a period of a 60-cycle hum is 16.67 milliseconds, which is not noticeable for a voice track. If the sound on the track has sharp spikes, like a click track, this might not work because with an extremely sharp attack and decay you can hear the echo, even at that short delay.

The trick to it is getting the delay exactly right on 16.67. I was able to get the delay perfect with a Lexicon Prime Time because it has a variable knob for delay, but I couldn't do it with a Super Prime Time because the delay was graduated in steps and wasn't infinitely variable.

To do it, set up the effects send, get the delay fairly close, return the send to the track and ensure it's at about 50% of the volume of the main track, and then adjust the delay through the 16.67 millisecond point. Right at that point, the hum will instantly disappear, and as soon as you pass it, the hum will come right back, which tells you how selective the technique is. Once you have the delay right, you can adjust the amount of the delayed signal being mixed in, if necessary, to completely eliminate the hum.

Everyone should have this technique in their arsenal.

Edit: I would expect that there is sound processing software that can remove regular hums like this, although I'm not sufficiently familiar with what's out there to know. If the software can predict the hum, it can simply subtract it from the signal. Anyone know if there is software that works this way?