Why is sound still like this?

[Mark Hensley]

Being a sound professional, all I can say is, educate yourself , and stop blaming problems on your lack of knowledge, and lack of desire to hire people who know what they're doing.
As the saying goes. You pay peanuts, you get monkeys.
If you don't have a budget why are you shooting a big movie?

 

[Joe D'Arcy]

Being a sound professional, all I can say is, educate yourself , and stop blaming problems on your lack of knowledge, and lack of desire to hire people who know what they're doing.
As the saying goes. You pay peanuts, you get monkeys.
If you don't have a budget why are you shooting a big movie?

I think you'll find that Christoffer is suggesting or hoping that someone will invest some time and money into audio, in a similar way to what Jim Jannard did with RED.

Welcome to Reduser Mark.

 

[Marc Wielage]

I think you'll find that Christoffer is suggesting or hoping that someone will invest some time and money into audio, in a similar way to what Jim Jannard did with RED.

I will again say that the problems are not technological. It all boils down to hiring the right people who know what they're doing, and stop trying to do everything yourself. If I want to build a house, I'm not going to try to do all the carpentry, all the plumbing, all the electrical work, all the drywall, all the masonry, all the painting, and all the roofing. I'll hire individual professionals who are skilled in each specific area, and make sure they're supervised to do the job right. There is no magic wand to wave that solves these issues, just as you still need grips, gaffers, electricians, a cinematographer, assistants, and a camera operator to handle the picture end.

Sound is no different. Just get a good location sound mixer and a boom op on set, test the workflow, then hire a good assistant editor for dailies, hire a post supervisor to make sure the editing, mixing, and finishing processes go smoothly, and have good sound editors and re-recording mixers for post. It's not necessarily expensive, but it does require experience, care, and time.

 

[Mark Hensley]

Why does the generation today think everything can be fixed with a single plugin quick fix. Like auto tune in music, they want everything done automatically to the lowest common denominator, so they don't have develop any skills. They want it cheap, and they don't want to have to spend any money, but want professional results.well, I've been to indie film festivals and short film festivals. And it's always very obvious who the folks are that know their craft, as well as the importance of good crews from set to post.Some "film makers" just want to make something that moves and makes sound, and don't care about quality.They are hoping to make the next blair witch or paranormal activity, and make a million bucks by investing nothing.Others want to have a career making movies.

 

[Marc Wielage]

They are hoping to make the next blair witch or paranormal activity, and make a million bucks by investing nothing.

Although... both Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity each had $250,000 post workflows with tons of sound effects work and lots of ADR dialogue, plus extensive color-correction. The initial cost to make the film was only the beginning of a long, long process. So I think a lot of filmmakers who assume that a film like that cost nothing (or $10,000 or $20,000 or whatever) are sorely surprised by the reality of what it takes to get a huge, successful feature released.

But I agree: skimping on something as straightforward as dialogue and timecode during production is bewildering. Both are solvable and don't take rocket science degrees to accomplish. You just need good people and the right equipment.

A good example of this is the recent "found footage" film Chronicle, which made it look like home video footage but was in reality a full union shoot with very elaborate visual effects. I think the physical production cost about $1 million, but then they did $9 million on the visual effects, so it tapped out at $10M. It wound up making $127M worldwide, so that was a huge hit, relatively speaking.

 

[Nick Gardner]

I'm not going to try to do all the carpentry, all the plumbing, all the electrical work, all the drywall, all the masonry, all the painting, and all the roofing.

This just brought a smile from me as I did all that and just passed my last inspection today. On to drywall! From personal experience I can say that making a good movie is several orders of magnitude harder than building a house. But I agree with everything else you said ;-)

Nick

 

[Mark Hensley]

This just brought a smile from me as I did all that and just passed my last inspection today. On to drywall! From personal experience I can say that making a good movie is several orders of magnitude harder than building a house. But I agree with everything else you said ;-)

Nick

having done one my own reno's and dry walling.
Hire a drywaller.
ill never do it again myself.

 

[Nick Fury]

having done one my own reno's and dry walling.
Hire a drywaller.
ill never do it again myself.

If you are local, I have a great device (and the technique), to do heavy knockdown, as well...

Thank you very much

Fury

 

[Nick Gardner]

I hate drywall. But they have those sanders that plug into a shop vac now........I also hate wide shot medium shot over over coverage, but It pays the fry wall bill.

Nick

 

[Mark Hensley]

If you are local, I have a great device (and the technique), to do heavy knockdown, as well...

Thank you very much

Fury

Nah. My home Reno days are over. I'll hire people now.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Why does the generation today think everything can be fixed with a single plugin quick fix.

Why do some people keep underestimating the potential of plugins to make our lives easier and more straight forward. That's as silly as saying that dumping unstable silver compounds layered in plastic into tanks of chemicals is a perfectly easy solution. "Why does everyone think that we can process images without a giant lab and millions of dollars in equipment?!"

I would rather my sound guy is focused on getting the right mic in the right place for the optimal sound without worrying about anything technical. As soon as you have to worry about something technical--your technology has failed. If I had my way production would be a purely creative endeavor. It's easy enough to screw things up with the best people on the job. It should be "Hard" to screw up, not hard to get it right. RED definitely didn't have this right for a long long time in REDCine. It was *easy* to screw up and hard to get right. (Remember when just white balancing would often result in clipped channels?) With floating point processing they're approaching "hard to screw up".

 

[Mark Hensley]

It's easy to screw things up when you don't know what you are doing.
No matter how foolproof something is.
And I hate to break it to you, but expecting film making to not have a technical side to it, is like hoping to find a leprechaun at the end of the rainbow with a pot of gold.

the best film makers understand the process every step of the way.

and then you have amateurs. Who will remain amateurs, because they want the easy way out.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

Yeah, because the easy way out of getting a 4K image out of an inexpensive camera that we can edit directly from the RAW files is truly amateuristic.
I find it interesting that people truly mistake innovation for "not understanding the process". By understanding the process I see that it has a lot of room for innovation and being a sceptic and not willing to change the way things are now will take technology nowhere.

Like another idea I had some time ago, about having a tracker on an actor so the focus pulling could automatically change based on the distance between sensor and actor. I was bashed down with pitchforks from people saying "I didn't understand the process of focus pulling" and "nothing works that precise". Well, now the technology is here, a few of them actually and people are amazed... the narrow-mindness of the masses astonish me.

 

[Mark Hensley]

You are confusing innovation, with lack of understanding.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

You are confusing innovation, with lack of understanding.

No, I'm not. You are confusing my call out for innovation, with me lacking in understanding. Understanding of what? Understanding of how things are done in the industry right now? Well, that I know and I still think there is a lot of room for technological improvements, outside of the box to be cliché.

 

[Mark Hensley]

No, I'm not. You are confusing my call out for innovation, with me lacking in understanding. Understanding of what? Understanding of how things are done in the industry right now? Well, that I know and I still think there is a lot of room for technological improvements, outside of the box to be cliché.

Your lack of understanding is, that what the audio is recorded TO is the least of the issues. Having the experience and know how of HOW to get it there properly, is the most important thing.

 

[Marc Wielage]

Your lack of understanding is, that what the audio is recorded TO is the least of the issues. Having the experience and know how of HOW to get it there properly, is the most important thing.

That is very true. None of this technology can overcome the need for expertise at all film specialists -- and that goes for focus-pulling, production sound mixers, and assistant editors. There is no magic button that makes this stuff work.

I've often joked that 90% of my job is troubleshooting, and no plug-in or automatic control can do that. (Yet.)

It's a sad fact of production that almost everybody knows what bad sound is like, but very few people understand how to get good sound in the first place.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

Your lack of understanding is, that what the audio is recorded TO is the least of the issues. Having the experience and know how of HOW to get it there properly, is the most important thing.

Nothing about what I suggested with this technology has anything to do with the profession and experience to get good sound, stop implying that because I've already said that isn't the thing I'm talking about. I'm trying to call out for innovation of improving the technology to enable it to be attached to the video files directly, in high quality, just like on the external recorder. Stop implying that I do not understand what I'm talking about and get off your high horse, because it's getting tiresome. I do not know what you are trying to prove here, what your goal is?
I'm suggesting improvements and innovation to further develop how we use technology during production so that it can help during post production, but you preach some kind of strange conservatism and an inability to understand that I do not talk about the experience of the craft, I'm talking about the tools of the craft, get that?
So please just stop trolling an issue that isn't an issue.

and that goes for focus-pulling, production sound mixers, and assistant editors. There is no magic button that makes this stuff work.

Once again, I do not understand what people are talking about, this has NOTHING.... NOOOOOTHING to do with the experience or inexperience of filmmakers, it's about the TOOLS. The Red One was a 4K camera innovation, the mocap focus pulling equipment shown at NAB is a focus puller tool, everything is meant to improve the work of the filmmakers using them. So once again, this thread is about improving the tools, stop making it into some argument about "magic things that make perfect films so we don't need craftsmanship", it's not, period.

 

[Mark Hensley]

Would you rely on a single coax cable to carry all your audio to the camera, so they can be recorded there?
because that is what would be needed. A MADI interface. Now you have yet another cable hanging off of your camera.
With nobody keeping an eye on wether it's actually being recorded. Cables go bad when moved a lot.
Where now you have the radio mics feeding a stationary console that's feeding a stationary recorder, and someone keeping an eye on levels and that audio is actually being recorded, you have a much better fail proof system.

 

[Mike P.]

Is there no professional grade audio interconnect that can send multiple audio tracks (to the camera in this case)? There definitely should be a way to send 4-8 iso tracks to the camera from the mixer via one-cable, which are then recorded as 4-8 isos in-camera.