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How to Mix Indie Film Sound: The 6-Step Workflow · Indie Film Podcast

0:00
I do feel like a lot of directors only become really
0:03
cognizant of sound because they have at least one project where
0:07
it was awful. Chuck what is a crucial but
0:11
almost always overlooked aspect of any visual medium.
0:14
The importance of sound and music.
0:17
Welcome to Indie Film Podcast. I'm Vic.
0:20
And I am Chuck. For the past several weeks,
0:21
we've been talking about the seven deadly sins of low budget
0:24
filmmaking. So this has included things like
0:26
weak stories, lack of rehearsals, uninspired art
0:29
department, and poor shot design.
0:31
And this week we're talking about my favorite subject and
0:33
what I personally think is the deadliest of all the deadly
0:36
sins, and that's neglecting your film's sound.
0:40
All right, Chuck, what would you say are the top three mistakes
0:42
that you hear in indie films most often?
0:45
Well I want to say #1 is unnatural sounding dialogue
0:48
which lately has been due to people over cleaning their
0:52
dialogue with AI tools. The next thing is absent sound
0:56
effects and also the third would be a just a bad mix overall,
1:01
like a like an unbalanced sound mix.
1:04
And I think it's hilarious that if you had asked me five years
1:07
ago what I would have thought, I would have said that weird tinny
1:11
noise that you get when you use the noise reduction tool in
1:15
Adobe Premiere Audition a little bit too heavily.
1:20
And they kind of sound like they're talking in a tin can.
1:22
But that was the closest thing we had to AI noise or like AI
1:26
cleanup or noise reduction. Yeah, now it sounds just kind of
1:29
like people are talking from underwater.
1:32
Or if it if you get clean dialogue, it can sound like
1:35
they're just too boomy, like they're talking on a podcast
1:38
rather than chatting in an actual room.
1:40
And nobody wants to listen to podcast audio.
1:43
No, not. Not in a movie.
1:45
Unless your movie's about podcasting.
1:47
I guess that's fair. So I, I want to tell everybody
1:50
before we get into this episode that I am 100% self trained.
1:55
I'm not an audio engineer but I've been working in film audio
1:58
now for the last 11 years. I want to say was when I took a
2:02
deep dive into it. YouTube University and then also
2:06
picking the brain of actual trained experts when I've had
2:10
the opportunity. Which is a fantastic way to
2:13
learn. I it's worked for me.
2:15
I think the only problem is is I kind of like have a Swiss cheese
2:18
knowledge base where there's certain things I don't know.
2:21
There's a lot, a lot more unknown unknowns because I'm
2:24
only dealing with problems as they come up.
2:25
So all my experience though, is in indie filmmaking and I've
2:29
never done anything where it's like obviously triple-A budget,
2:32
you know, super high torque and sound design and action movies
2:37
or anything like that. That's fair.
2:39
So I think that's a solid disclaimer.
2:40
So then you have a general process, though, that you've
2:44
developed over these eleven years that you do use to kind of
2:47
go through and work a film, sound edit a film, sound mix a
2:53
film. I don't know the right
2:54
vernacular. Here, all of it, this is this is
2:56
I broke it down into 6 steps and I ran it by a couple of the pros
3:00
that I do know in the region and they said they gave me the
3:03
thumbs up. They're like check, this is
3:04
exactly what I do too, which is nice.
3:07
So these are the six, yes, these are the stick.
3:09
These are the six steps to the best possible sound for your
3:13
film. And this is in order.
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Number one is clean location sound #2 is balanced dialogue #3
3:21
is a realistic soundscape #4 is clever sound design. 5 natural
3:28
ADR and six a unique score. And you asked me a question when
3:32
we were before this episode and you said, well what if I have
3:34
the score ahead of time? I'm talking about this is the
3:37
order that I do the sound start to finish and so the last thing
3:41
to go into the actual sound mix for me is the score for the
3:46
film. OK, so if I'm writing something
3:48
and in the actual script I put and this is a needle drop for
3:51
this song, then that's probably still OK because it's not
3:55
actually building it yet. Yeah, yeah.
3:56
So don't ignore your score. I guess that's the important
3:59
thing there. You're allowed to think about it
4:01
at any point when you're making your movie.
4:03
Just don't. Yeah.
4:04
But if you're DYI in it, try not to put your score in too soon
4:08
while you're doing the mix because it's going to cover some
4:10
things out, like cover up some problems that might pop up
4:13
later. OK.
4:14
So do you want to just kind of like breakdown each of these in
4:17
order that I gave them? I was really hoping you would
4:19
cool. Yes, please.
4:20
So clean location sound, obviously that is the number one
4:24
thing that you want to grab and. And location sound is strictly
4:28
referring to everything that you're capturing while you're
4:30
filming, right? Yes, you want to get as you want
4:33
to get all the dialogue clean for your script on set if
4:36
possible. OK.
4:37
And like the the best way to do that is to just close the gap if
4:42
you're in a loud environment is to close the gap between the
4:45
microphone and the actors or talents or the sound source.
4:49
OK, right. Like just get it as close as
4:51
possible to your mouse. So without being visible.
4:54
Yes, without being visible. That's important because you
4:56
don't want to have to, you don't want to have to edit out or
4:59
rotoscope out of boom pole. But the the example of that the
5:02
the most difficult sound that I've ever captured was actually
5:06
from your short film dive. You're welcome.
5:09
And it was because we were in an incredibly loud environment.
5:13
We were at a bar. There were fridges and freezers
5:17
running and they were. Fans and age vats.
5:20
Additional ventilation for the kitchen.
5:22
Yes, and when you're shooting any film, that's just going to
5:25
be something that you deal with unfortunately.
5:28
And so for that one, the the nice thing is, is that we were
5:32
using anamorphic lenses and so I could get in closer on the top
5:38
to the actor's mouths. And so I just tried to get the
5:41
boom mic as close as I possibly could to the sound source to
5:46
eliminate the noise in that way. And then any time we got in on a
5:50
close up, it was nice the way that you shot it, there was a
5:53
lot of overlap. And so if I needed to pull lines
5:57
of dialogue from a different take or a different set up, I
6:01
could do that. The only thing that throws
6:03
throws it off is if you have an actor that gives you a very like
6:07
different take every single time that can throw off the dialogue.
6:12
Obviously from a director's perspective, I don't think it's
6:16
bad necessarily, though I do kind of like that.
6:19
I like that idea that your multiple takes are to try to get
6:22
different direction and different moments and different
6:24
takes on it. But then once you find one that
6:26
really fits and really feels right, get an extra take or two
6:29
of that one just so you get nice clean audio, great visuals, and
6:34
you never know, something bump, the camera just tweaked a little
6:37
bit. Who knows?
6:38
Who knows whatever happened? Yeah, and if you have a lot
6:40
going on in the scene and you can't get the microphone close
6:43
enough, you can definitely ask your director for an audio only
6:47
take. Yeah, and that has helped me in
6:50
the past. But you just said, ask your
6:53
director. Does that mean that the sound
6:57
people need to maybe step up a little bit?
7:00
Everyone's. I'm not saying they need to do
7:02
more because some people do a whole lot, but sound people are
7:05
very important. And location sound recordists
7:08
need to feel empowered to tell the director when something
7:12
didn't. Oh.
7:12
Yeah, and I always complain, but the problem is as I work with
7:15
directors where they're just oblivious.
7:17
Yeah, you know, And so definitely be listening.
7:21
If you're a director and you're just starting out and you can
7:25
get Bluetooth wireless dongles very inexpensively online, find
7:30
something that's they're just Bluetooth transmitters.
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And usually a sound person's bag will have a line out if it's not
7:36
plugged directly into the camera.
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And then you can get a a just take your headphones, plug it
7:41
into the the receiver, end on that you put the transmitter on
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the sound bag and listen closely to what's happening.
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Because when your sound person is like, oh, there's, you know,
7:50
whatever the motorcycle that we drove that drove past was way
7:53
too loud. One, it was and so don't
7:58
minimize that. And two, you're gonna be, you're
8:00
gonna be doing a lot of extra work in post instead of just
8:02
trying to get that line clean or trying to get that tape clean so
8:05
that you can insert it later on. So, so yeah, location sound,
8:09
definitely get all the lines that you that you need for the
8:14
film and then also get as many of the sound effects on set as
8:18
possible. Like for dive again, for
8:21
example, the pouring of the whiskey.
8:24
I got that in the environment I set up.
8:26
And I'm going to go into that a little bit later on as like a a
8:29
trick, but like set up mics to capture everything that I
8:32
possibly could on set so that I was getting the natural sound
8:36
environment rather than having to insert fully later.
8:39
And that just, it sounds more real.
8:42
I mean, of course it sounds more realistic.
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It's literally the actual thing that was happening there.
8:46
Because you could have gotten the sound of a beverage pouring,
8:49
but it wouldn't have been this viscosity pouring from this
8:53
particular spout into this exact container with this exact much
8:57
echo and hand around it. And I've I've done it myself
9:00
where I've inserted those that I've captured later as Foley and
9:04
they don't sound as good. So you've done, you've done a
9:07
good job recreating a lot of it though.
9:09
And, and for example, the lawful evil that we just did, we went
9:14
through and added in some additional sound to that, but
9:18
you went back to the exact location, set everything up the
9:21
exact same way, use the exact same props to make those sounds
9:25
happen again. Yeah, that was a a musical,
9:28
though that's totally different because we were just playing the
9:31
music and the actors were lip syncing.
9:32
So basically it was going to be impossible to get audio on set.
9:36
He's clean, so I had anticipated if we want environmental sounds,
9:40
I'd have to go back and fold him in.
9:41
Which is fair, so OK. So let I want to talk about the
9:44
next thing, which is dialogue. So after, after everything's
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synced up in post, right? So you get the, you know, the
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labs and the boom. And I send that off to I give
9:56
that off to the director editor or whatever.
9:58
They sync all that up and then they get that back to me.
10:02
And now my first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to just
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balance the dialogue and EQ it right, make that sound as good
10:09
as possible. So the the first thing is you
10:14
want to make sure that your your labs and your boom are in phase
10:20
and you're. Going to have to explain that.
10:22
Yeah, so that's that's a that's a weird thing you get one way
10:27
you get teeny dialogue is that the distance from the sound
10:31
source to the microphones, like sound does not travel as fast as
10:34
light. No.
10:35
So if you have a boom mic that's a couple feet away in a lab
10:38
that's less than a foot, that microphone can be can be pushing
10:44
while the boom is pulling. So I'll hold the microphone in.
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It is just an element that vibrates back and forth with the
10:51
sound waves. And so when the sound wave hits
10:55
the lab first, it can hit the boom just a fraction of a second
11:00
later, and then while one microphone is pushing, the other
11:04
one's pulling. So then they sort of start.
11:06
Cancelling each other. Out.
11:08
OK. And so you want to have to, you
11:10
have to go into your audio editing software.
11:13
And I don't know if like Premiere Pro or Davinci does
11:15
this well. I know Davinci has audio editing
11:17
inside of it, but like in Audition or Pro Tools, you can
11:23
just zoom right in to the milliseconds and you want to
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make sure that every like the lav and the boom are as In Sync
11:32
as possible, OK. And what'll happen is if you get
11:35
it slid over in just the right way, and sometimes you have to
11:39
flip the phase 180°, which means it just takes the waveform and
11:43
then it flips it. Upside down.
11:45
Upside down, so that happens a lot with lav microphones.
11:47
And that doesn't make people sound like they're speaking
11:49
satanically, backwards or in tongues.
11:51
It might, but you'll notice it right away if it does.
11:56
OK, So you can just you can just take the waveform, just flip it
12:00
completely because you can't do that to a video and just flip it
12:03
upside down and expect no. But all the all the audio's
12:06
doing is is telling the speaker to push and pull.
12:08
Right. So your microphone is pushing
12:11
and pulling. It's it's recording it as a as a
12:15
digital, which you zoom in on your audio software, you can
12:18
just see the wave going up and down and it has like all these
12:21
micro like hills and valleys. And so it's just telling it to
12:26
push and pull. But if you have one microphone
12:28
that's pushing and the other one that's pulling and then you sync
12:32
them up in your audio software, it just takes the average of all
12:35
that. And so the average is nothing.
12:37
Really. Yeah, muted.
12:39
Yeah. And so that's why you get weird
12:40
tiny dialogue sometimes. And it's usually because the lab
12:44
microphone is 180° out of phase, plus the distance that the lab
12:49
is from the actor's mouth to the to the boom.
12:53
And so there's software out there that'll automatically sync
12:56
it. But usually if I end up having
12:58
to use both lav and boom, I'll just go in and do a quick
13:02
alignment, zoom in on it and then slide it over.
13:04
And just manually tweak it. Don't trust the auto sync
13:07
manually tweak it just a little. Bit, well, you can hear it and
13:11
and it does take a while to to be able to hear it.
13:13
So if you're just starting out, you might not know what's going
13:16
on there, but I'm telling you just zoom in and get granular
13:20
with it. So that's the first thing I do
13:22
to, to, to clean it to, to match things up is if I'm mixing boom
13:27
and lav, right? Then I then I do that.
13:30
Sometimes I'll do one or the other.
13:31
Usually I rely more on boom and then I'll use the LAV if I need
13:36
it. OK, because the boom just sounds
13:38
better. I like a boom mic better than a
13:40
lav mic. OK.
13:41
That's more of a personal preference.
13:42
Yeah. And but you don't have clothing,
13:43
Russell, if you have somebody that that operates the boom,
13:46
well, usually you're going to be fine with that.
13:49
And then I'll I'll EQ the lav to match the boom.
13:53
Oh nice. And you can do that in your
13:55
audio. There's, there's plug insurance
13:57
that'll do it, that'll automatically match microphones
14:00
because every single microphone has a different equalization
14:04
setting. And then there's also the
14:06
proximity effect, right? OK.
14:08
So depending on how far the actual vocal source is from the
14:13
microphone itself, and then what the like the manufacturer, the
14:17
size, the shape, the type, all of these things for the
14:20
microphone itself also impact, yes.
14:22
OK, microphones all sound different and so usually labs
14:26
will be a little bit more muffled because they're
14:27
underneath clothing. So you'll have to lift some of
14:30
the high end stuff because that's not penetrating their
14:33
clothing, get into the microphone.
14:34
Plus it's right next to their chest a lot of times, and so
14:37
it's picking up more bass. And so you just kind of have to
14:40
EQ to make them sound similar. And I do know on Audition,
14:44
there's a segment in that where you can go into the Wave 4 view,
14:48
scan the entire take of somebody's dialogue and it'll
14:51
give you an average of where all the energy is and all the
14:55
frequency spectrums. And then that way you can
14:57
compare that to the same take on just the lav mic.
15:02
And then you'll see where, oh, this area needs more of a boost
15:05
and this area needs more of a cut.
15:07
And then you can put that into that Channel on the EQ you.
15:11
Mean like just kind of apply that as another.
15:13
EQ level on that. On that particular channel or or
15:17
I don't know, but that's. So I'll have like a boom track
15:20
and then I'll have a lab track. OK.
15:22
And then on the lab track I'll, I'll look at how much different
15:26
that is from the boom as an as an average.
15:28
Obviously you have to get granular on all this stuff, but
15:31
you know, as a starting point I'll be like, OK, well I need to
15:33
lift these high frequencies to match my boom.
15:37
OK. So that's that's how I do the
15:39
the EQ. This is actually be a good a
15:41
good time to talk about the time saving hack that I have for
15:45
everybody before I get into the next thing.
15:48
And that is something that I didn't dive as well, which was
15:52
to hide microphones to get action that you can't get.
15:58
So I hide microphones on set to get sound that needs to appear
16:03
on camera that I can't get with just a boom or a laugh.
16:07
OK, so for example, on dive we had I had a boom mic hidden
16:12
behind the the bar so that I could pick up the bartender's
16:16
footsteps. Yeah, which actually ended up
16:18
being incredibly important because we just had it stuck on
16:21
that static shot. And so when you saw the
16:24
bartender leave, we actually had the footsteps of him not just
16:28
exiting the frame, but then continuing to walk even farther
16:31
away, which meant that now we know these two are completely
16:34
alone. The bartender is absolutely
16:36
gone. So that actually sold the story
16:38
and was completely brilliant. Thank you again for doing that.
16:41
Yeah, no problem. It's it's it's really helpful
16:44
because it saves a lot of time in post.
16:46
Yeah, you didn't have to fully a bunch of footsteps.
16:48
No exactly, exactly or use unnatural sounding fully.
16:51
So let me, let me keep going. Bartender and heels.
16:54
That would have been fun. I just realized this might be
16:57
another long episode again because we're only in .2 out of
16:59
6 points here, but so dialogue. You want to EQ so that your mic
17:04
sounds similar. You want everything to sound
17:06
similar. You might have to add a little
17:08
bit of reverb to dialogue as well if you're switching between
17:12
boom and laugh, so I'll do that as well on the lab track.
17:14
And that's just an effect you can like drag and drop on and
17:17
then adjust. Yeah, yeah, it's tricky a little
17:20
bit, but you can. They're called impulses.
17:23
You can reference reverb impulses, which if you're
17:27
slating, you just need a clean click.
17:31
And if you keep your boom in position where it's going to be
17:35
roughly in in relation to the talent's mouth, if you have that
17:39
same distance on the on the slate, that click you can turn
17:43
into an impulse in post, put it into your reverb plug in and
17:47
then feather that in. So that that way the lab might
17:50
need a little bit more reverb because it's closer to the
17:52
actor's mouse. Like I said, it might not be
17:54
picking up as much of the room. OK, so it'll build a custom 1 so
17:58
you don't just get like something that's like crazy
18:00
guitar reverb, which if you mess around with the plug insurance,
18:03
you'll hear it be like, that sounds totally unnatural.
18:05
That's way too much. OK.
18:07
So that's nice that you can set your own sort of like pattern or
18:10
template, Yeah, pulse and then throw that on there.
18:14
Yeah, and and then the nice thing is usually you have it as
18:16
long as everybody's quiet after the slates clacks.
18:19
So further proof that the two AC is very, very important.
18:25
Yes. You call it, then you mark it,
18:30
then you walk away. Yeah, yeah, just give it a bee.
18:32
Make sure nobody's talking while you're doing it.
18:34
Then it'll be totally fine. And then the next thing I do
18:37
with the dialogue, actually the one of the first things I do,
18:39
this is all actually just kind of like at the same time, but
18:42
you want to clean up noisy dialogue, right?
18:45
You want to clean out the background noise and then you
18:48
want to add your your room tone that you're going to use for it.
18:53
That you captured on set, Yeah, With nobody talking.
18:56
Hopefully, yeah, hopefully you have that room tone or you can
19:00
if you if you clean it, if it's quiet enough and you can just
19:03
kind of remove most of that sound, you can get away with
19:05
adding different room tone and post Nice.
19:07
But so that's and that's how that's that's why phasing is
19:12
super important. So AI, I'm not quite sure how
19:15
that works, but the older tools, all you would do is capture a
19:18
sound print. Yeah.
19:20
And then it would basically play that sound print back over the
19:24
file 180° out of phase. Yeah.
19:26
So it would just take whatever that noise is and then flip flip
19:31
it so that the average is nothing.
19:33
Yeah, and 10 year old me was so excited to figure out how to do
19:37
that because suddenly now my camcorder audio is just fine.
19:41
Yeah, yeah. But but the other issue, the
19:44
other issue too is when you're doing that, you're removing some
19:46
of those frequencies from actor's mouths, which is why if
19:50
you have if you have uncompeting frequencies that are noisy, like
19:55
a low hum, that's not going to be attacking people's vocals as
19:58
much. But if you have something that's
20:00
like a buzz that's in the vocal range and then you try to remove
20:03
that, that's when you're going to get that weird warbly effect
20:06
on people's mouths or on people's dialogue when you when
20:09
you play it back. So you just got to be careful
20:11
with that and AI pushes it really far.
20:14
I know Da Vinci it starts to sound unnatural if you if you
20:17
hit it too. If you have two loud.
20:19
Too much noise in the dialogue, then it's just you really can't
20:24
do much. And Premiere adds words.
20:27
Their AI feature will just like add syllables and things like
20:30
that. What?
20:30
Yeah. So if you're using Premiere Pro,
20:32
cuz I've messed with that, if it's really noisy and you're
20:36
trying to remove too much of it, it'll just start speaking
20:39
gobbledy goop. The AI makes up words.
20:41
So it does think that it hears things.
20:43
There are ghosts and AI just found them.
20:46
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's it. That's what it means.
20:49
It has nothing to do with just. This technological algorithm is
20:52
trying to make something out of nothing, and it's ghost.
20:55
It's definitely ghost. It's Ghost so it'll pick up
20:58
Boom, Mikes will pick up ghost sunset and then and AI is
21:02
recognizing that. OK.
21:04
So, so that's, that's the dialogue clean up.
21:06
And I think that's where a lot of people, which I myself got
21:10
distracted the first time I tried to do audio on on the
21:13
Lower Century Studios feature film in post was I cleaned up
21:16
all the dialogue and then had the room tone in there.
21:19
And that's not done like you're not are.
21:24
You sure if sounds done? No, you can hear everyone.
21:27
This is this is where things like if you want to level up
21:31
your audio game, you got to do a lot more than that.
21:33
And that's that's the difference between the indie feature or the
21:36
indie films that we see at the high tier festivals versus the
21:41
mid or low tier. Like nobody skips out on those
21:44
things on audio. Because sound design is an
21:47
important other aspect of your whole story here.
21:50
So which we've seen some great looking films at some of the
21:53
film festivals, but at the same time the audio is off and it's
21:56
like, well, this is not going to get screened, no at Academy
21:59
qualifying festival, unfortunately.
22:01
Probably not, which is sad because especially if it was
22:03
like a really good story and everything but.
22:05
Yeah, you got to have clean sound.
22:07
So the soundscape is the term I'm using for just all the
22:12
realistic sounds in the environment.
22:14
OK, so this is a chair being pulled out.
22:17
Somebody's setting a glass down. The noise of a toothbrush if
22:19
you're brushing your teeth. OK, so you want to make sure if
22:22
you see it in the frame, if it makes a sound, add the sound.
22:28
That seems like a really simple rule to follow, but.
22:31
I like that it can get tedious, right, If somebody's walking and
22:35
the placement was wrong or you know, you're, you're using labs
22:38
and it's a quiet area and you can't hear their footsteps.
22:41
It's unnatural. So you might need to add
22:43
footsteps to that and it takes a lot of time.
22:46
That does take a lot of time. Or if somebody was shooting MOS
22:50
MIT out sound and it was just an insert shot and somebody sets
22:54
their glass down and it gets silent, you need to insert that
22:57
shot. You need to get the sound effect
22:59
for that in which sound effects libraries are not that expensive
23:02
any longer. Like you can get you can get
23:04
some. I mean it's there's like monthly
23:06
ones, which obviously like I have opinions about that because
23:09
I hate monthly everything, but because everybody just tries to
23:11
it's like death by 1000 cuts. So the but you can actually
23:16
purchase sound effects library. So it's like a one time buy and
23:19
some of them are a little bit more expensive, but but check it
23:22
out, look at reviews. I don't want to I don't want to
23:23
give anybody any recommendations on sound effects libraries
23:26
because I've built my own over the years.
23:28
So. But you did also recommend for
23:30
student projects or non commercial projects.
23:32
Is it the BBC library? Oh yeah, the BBC library does
23:36
have. One that's a really good one
23:37
too. So if you're just getting
23:38
started and you know this isn't commercial work and or
23:40
especially for a student film or something, that might be a good
23:43
place to start so you can at least try playing.
23:45
Yeah, mess around with them. But it's it's important.
23:47
So we're still, you know, three steps in.
23:49
And this is just like all the naturalistic capture and
23:52
everything. And this is, this is just grunt
23:53
work. Like this is not, this is not,
23:56
you know, fancy. High Capital.
23:58
A Art. No, no.
24:00
And that's that's 90% of what sound for film is like the
24:07
people that really like to most of the people that get really
24:11
into sound end up in the music realm.
24:13
Yeah, because that's mostly creative.
24:16
And when they're doing their sound mixing, it's mostly
24:18
creative In film, you just, you know, obviously there's some
24:21
surrealistic movies out there and you get to do some fun
24:23
stuff, but but you don't want the sound pulling you out it out
24:27
of the, of what's going on. You want it amplifying what's
24:30
happening or not distracting. And so step one is to make it
24:34
not distracting, right? Balance your dialogue.
24:36
I I didn't even mention that you know you can add compression or
24:39
whatever, but you want to make sure that all the the dialogue
24:42
is audible. Right.
24:44
And you don't want it to be, you don't want it to be too loud in
24:48
one scene and too quiet in the other.
24:49
You want it to consistent. So that's one of the things make
24:53
sure that that's all clean. Get your room tone in there.
24:56
Make your your actual soundscape with the sound effects that
25:00
match what's going on screen. Add more layers of ambience, if
25:04
that makes sense. If people are outside and
25:07
they're in a city, there's going to be crowds moving around.
25:09
There's going to be traffic. Yeah.
25:12
And that's another safety aspect too.
25:13
If it's loud and you're filming in a city, have the actor actors
25:17
project make sure that they can get over it.
25:20
And then you can add crowd and traffic noise in post too, to
25:24
help mask that out. Because the if you get clean
25:26
enough dialogue, it will cut through and you can actually
25:30
turn up the background noise for that scene for that purpose.
25:35
That is really nice. So you because you don't want it
25:37
to sound like it's in a studio. No, that's the goal is that it's
25:39
supposed to feel like you're being dropped into this moment.
25:41
Right. Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.
25:44
OK. And so after those, that's when
25:47
you get into, well, then I do, I do sound design stuff after
25:50
that, right. And that's that's what I
25:53
consider the creative aspect of things like, you know, we get,
25:58
we get a like you're lost in someone's head, right?
26:02
So you know, there's going to be sound effects or maybe there
26:05
maybe the dialogue in that scene suddenly sounds really muffled
26:08
because you have a close up on an actor's face.
26:10
Oh, and we're not listening to other people around them
26:12
anymore. We're just focusing on the world
26:14
that they're processing, yeah. Or risers, you know that like
26:20
that they have in action movies or.
26:21
Whatever of that again, one more time, thank.
26:25
You those whoops, add some whoops or or whatever sound
26:28
effects that are, that are completely unnatural, that
26:31
accentuate what's happening. The story.
26:34
They serve the story. Like, for example, a film that I
26:37
was working on recently with our our friend Mark.
26:40
He he wanted to have an intense part with this actor reading
26:46
this intense poem. And so he wanted like heartbeat
26:49
sounds. And so he sat down and got that
26:51
all mixed exactly how he wanted to have it.
26:53
But that's not it's not something you would hear in real
26:55
life. No, you're not going to hear the
26:56
person's actual heartbeat, but that's the beauty of a movie.
26:59
It's it's accentuating a feeling and that's like the sound design
27:02
thing or creating monster roars, that type of thing.
27:05
Yeah, that's that's what I would consider sound design.
27:07
So OK then then after that's done, that's when you usually.
27:10
Have that was that Step 4. That's Step 4, yes.
27:14
And then once that's done, because I dread it, that's when
27:18
you get to ADR, which is automatic dialogue replacement,
27:22
which is when you have the actors come in and re record
27:26
lines that aren't clean enough or lines that need to be added
27:30
later on. Or lines that have completely
27:32
changed. Or lines that have totally
27:33
changed, yes, so, so that that happens sometimes and it's not
27:39
fun. It's it's really tricky because
27:42
you have the the performance to handle and then also Eqing it to
27:47
make it sound natural. So performance, you know you
27:50
want to get the director there. And maybe give the actors a
27:54
little bit of a heads up because it's probably been who knows how
27:57
many months since they played this character and they might
28:00
want a little bit of time to get back into it again, Especially
28:05
if it was one that had a lot of like accentuated like dialects
28:08
or anything like that. Yeah, yeah, you, you want them
28:11
to be prepped because otherwise it's going to sound.
28:14
There's that's one way can sound unnatural, right?
28:17
And then as an audio engineer, there's no way to fix it.
28:21
As an audio mixer, there's no way that you can correct that in
28:23
post. If the if the delivery's
28:26
unnatural, you're screwed. Give it three years, AI will be
28:29
able to do it for you. But for right now, no, I'm
28:32
kidding. Yeah, for right now you got to
28:33
just get it the way it was delivered on set or the way it
28:36
should have been delivered on set.
28:38
So with that, you know, I try to use the same microphone in a
28:42
similar environment when I do the ADR so that I can alleviate
28:45
some of the reverb and EQ that you need to add in post.
28:48
But like we're in a studio now. If I were to record like ADR in
28:54
here, I would definitely have to add reverb, yeah.
28:57
Or if you're like outside, maybe a little bit of a delay, which
29:00
is kind of like an echo, like a little to make it seem like the
29:04
space is bigger depending on where you're filming.
29:06
So. So same thing again, like
29:08
matching the EQ of your lav to the boom.
29:11
You do the same thing with the ADR. Yeah.
29:15
And then insert that. And ideally, if possible,
29:18
especially if the majority of your audio from the film was,
29:20
say, from a boom mic, yeah. Is it a better choice to use
29:24
that same type of mic in the recording?
29:26
OK, just so that way. You're just gonna be fighting
29:28
with yourself in most cases if you.
29:30
Get. I do that everyday, yeah.
29:32
And we try to not fight with ourselves too much.
29:34
That's our goal with this podcast.
29:36
It's already brutal enough being an indie filmmaker.
29:38
We don't want to just be in constant battle.
29:41
So yeah, Adri, try to avoid it at all costs.
29:45
There's usually ways to to fix things if you don't need to
29:49
change lines. And I mean, one of the examples
29:52
is I was did post audio for a film and there was there was no
29:56
way to get people in for recording because they were
29:59
completely out of the area and, and it just needed to get done.
30:05
And it was somebody that was not a pro running the boom mic.
30:07
So it was all over the place. It was off access.
30:10
And what that means is like the microfilm was not pointed at the
30:13
talent sometimes. And so then you have to do a lot
30:15
of work there, which means like changing an EQ and slowly fading
30:20
it in and fading it out. There's a there's a lot of work
30:23
that goes into that type of stuff, but you can avoid it a
30:27
lot of times as long as it's like somewhat clean.
30:30
And one of the hacks I've learned on indie films, which
30:32
you can't do for, you know, high budget stuff, is to just turn U
30:35
the ambience. Make it.
30:37
Cover it U. Yeah, yeah.
30:39
Or if there's a weird click and O and you can't quite clean it
30:42
all out, like establish sound effects in the scene like.
30:47
At a dog barking early on. Car, yeah.
30:50
Car. Car driving by, dog barking.
30:52
Like if you establish some of this stuff, you can just be
30:54
like, I'm going to call back to that sound effect.
30:56
It's coming back. There's another car driving.
30:58
By feather it in lightly because the audience doesn't quite
31:00
notice it as long as it's not like a blaring horn or something
31:05
like that, but. It's not a truck backing up like
31:07
that, the big noise. Exactly.
31:08
There's a lot. There's just a lot of fun ways
31:10
to mess up indie film audio. I assume yeah, this is all just
31:14
terrifying to me. If I'm being on I it's obvious I
31:17
don't do location sound but. Yeah.
31:20
This is just terrifying. It's it's, it's not that bad.
31:23
It's, it's important, I feel like for film makers to to
31:26
dabble in it a little bit so that they have some language.
31:28
Yeah, to be able to to handle these situations and to
31:31
understand what's going on. Because when I'm on an indie
31:35
film set, usually it's I'm not noticed, right.
31:39
Like it's unless there's a problem, it's my job to bring up
31:43
the problems. Yeah.
31:44
And usually I'm a one man band when I'm on a film set too.
31:49
And. That's not uncommon either.
31:51
Yeah, I've been on. I've actually been on a
31:52
commercial set. It was really funny.
31:54
I think it was, I think it was like like 10 people in the
31:59
camera department. Dang.
32:01
And I was the only person on set, on set with audio.
32:04
Yeah, it was really fun. And I I took a picture of all
32:07
these people like clamoring around the script truck and then
32:10
sent it to one of my audio friends.
32:12
I'm like, I'm like, this is camera department.
32:14
Guess how many people are in audio department today.
32:16
And and it was it was me. So it's not abnormal when you're
32:20
on a film set. But the The funny thing is, is
32:22
it's like it's if the audio's bad, nobody's going to listen to
32:25
what you're, nobody's going to watch what you're what you're
32:27
making. So no.
32:28
I guess I should go back to my point, like as a director, I
32:32
think it's really important to to keep that in mind.
32:35
And you're very audio forward when I work with you.
32:37
And I've worked and obviously my brother is very audio forward
32:40
and I've worked with some audio forward directors.
32:42
And The thing is, is then the the film ends up being that much
32:45
better. Yeah, and.
32:46
The final finished film is. I do feel like a lot of
32:49
directors only become really cognizant of sound because they
32:53
have at least one project where it was awful.
32:57
Yeah. And they know better now.
33:00
Yeah, in which if you go to film school, you get to get that
33:02
knocked out, like right when you're doing your student you.
33:04
Usually do. You usually do, which is nice.
33:07
If you're self trained like you just bang your head on the wall.
33:10
Yep, fight with yourself. The way I like to think of it
33:13
whenever I'm directing anything is I know that I hired the best
33:19
people to do this, which means now I need to listen to them.
33:24
So on set if my if I love to take but my DP says didn't look
33:28
right. We got a weird like flash or
33:30
reflection or something. We got to go again.
33:31
Then we got to go again. If my sound person says, hey,
33:34
sorry, there was a truck going by and it'll definitely be
33:37
noticeable. We can't cover that.
33:39
We're going to go again. It doesn't matter how much I
33:40
love the take. It means we can't use the take.
33:43
So it doesn't matter if it was good.
33:44
It's it's burnt in. The audio's burnt in.
33:47
When you record it on set, the image is burnt in and it's, it's
33:52
if somebody has, if there's AU haul truck that like pulled in
33:56
and parked right outside of the frame or right into the frame,
33:59
right and you're shooting something, the director is not
34:02
going to take two. It's going to be two seconds and
34:03
be like, we need to reframe this.
34:05
We can't have that U-Haul truck. We probably don't.
34:08
Want that you need to listen to your location sound record as if
34:11
they're like that was a really loud bang or a really loud noise
34:14
or whatever we need to retake this yeah the plane is too much
34:18
you know take the time to listen because that's burned in and
34:20
it's just going to deteriorate the quality just as quickly but
34:24
and you'll notice it in post. You will, but you'll be like,
34:28
well, I think we can get by with this on set and then you will
34:30
regret it later. So just save yourself the time,
34:32
trust to the people that you brought onto your set and listen
34:35
to them. Yes, they know what they're
34:37
doing. We're really, we're really
34:38
preaching today. We are.
34:39
This feels very preachy. But I do, I do promise, like
34:43
this is stuff that I've screwed up every step along the way.
34:46
And it's been humbling to, to try to learn how to like, Polish
34:50
the stuff as as best I can. I'm not anywhere close to the
34:55
the caliber of some of the audio people that I've worked with
35:00
that are professionals that went to school for this or you know,
35:02
I've associated with but never actually work with them, but you
35:06
know. Because there's never more than
35:07
one sound person on the set so. True, true.
35:09
But we've won a couple of awards for the the film sound that that
35:12
we've done. So it's not like, yeah,
35:13
hopefully I can pass for for somewhat decent.
35:17
I think, I think you can, yeah, I think you can based on just
35:21
how in demand you are in the area alone.
35:23
I think we can. I think we can say that.
35:25
Yeah, there's also supply demand curve there.
35:27
So the supply is. So the last thing I just want to
35:30
touch on real quick and then we can wrap up here is SCORE, which
35:33
we did a whole episode with Jesse, yes, about score, and you
35:36
can check that out. That is Season 2, Episode 9.
35:39
So that was only like 10 episodes ago.
35:41
So if you haven't seen that one, definitely listen.
35:44
Listen to that and. How to communicate with a
35:48
composer? It's not just about score, it's
35:50
about communicating with your composer to make sure you get
35:53
the score that you want. Exactly.
35:55
And that's a good one. And what I do end up doing then
35:58
is you just you adjust the level of the score to make sure that
36:01
it's not overwhelming and make sure that it's present enough.
36:04
And you, those are just called automation clips, right?
36:06
And that just, you turn it up, key framing, you turn it up, you
36:09
turn it down. And then another nice trick, if
36:12
you're just starting out, you want to be careful with, you can
36:14
just EQ down around 1000 Hertz, go to your parametric EQ, drop
36:19
that down slightly. And then that way you can turn
36:22
the music up more and it's not competing as much with speech.
36:26
Oh, that's really nice because I do hate it when you'll hear
36:30
sometimes, and maybe it's just not listening to it on the right
36:33
speakers. I know 'cause if anything's
36:34
mixed in 5.1 or 7.1 or whatever, that changes it.
36:37
But if you're listening to something where the music gets
36:39
really, really loud and dramatic and intense, and I love that.
36:42
I love being drawn into it. But then I'm like, now they're
36:44
talking and I think they're saying really important things
36:46
and I am losing half of what they're saying here.
36:48
It just gets muddy mixing with that music.
36:51
So EQ some of those ranges that are competing with the vocals
36:56
out on the EQ on that score track.
36:58
That's nice and you should be able to hear it, but then you
37:00
also you want to turn it down like if.
37:03
You can't hear the dialogue, the music's too.
37:05
I do want to say like I am critical of some of those action
37:08
films that have been coming out recently where it is really hard
37:11
to hear the dialogue. I don't like that.
37:13
I don't like to have to go to my stereo system and have to crank
37:15
up the center channel, which is the the one where the dialogue
37:17
comes out and adjust it for every single movie I watch.
37:21
Because some of them you can barely hear it and some of them
37:23
then all of a sudden it's blasting.
37:24
But you know, hey, that's. An but that's a personal gripe.
37:27
That's the way it works. So that's that's what I got.
37:30
If you all have questions about film sound, please feel free to
37:33
leave a comment and I can do my best to answer them or look up
37:37
the answer. Or if you're a fellow sound
37:39
person or sound engineer or just sound aficionado, please feel
37:43
free to comment and let us know your favorite tips and tricks,
37:47
because there aren't a lot of good sound tutorials and
37:50
insights and details on the Internet.
37:52
It's really it's hard to find a start to finish way to it's not
37:59
there's no Bob Ross out there that's gonna do that's gonna do
38:03
a film sound tutorial. Unless somebody out there if you
38:07
have a channel or if you have something that that works,
38:09
comment, let us know that. But there's all.
38:11
Sorts comment below and we will throw in a little bit of money
38:14
for your first YouTube ad to make sure that more people know
38:18
you're out there doing your tutorial.
38:20
There we go. Don't worry, it won't be much
38:22
money, but it will be some. We'll, we'll chip in on that one
38:24
because it's important, all right?
38:25
Should we talk about the Featured Filmmaker of the Week?
38:28
Absolutely. We have Tom Hughes this week and
38:31
it's kind of a horror film. How I was going to talk about
38:34
it. OK so Tom Hughes first feature
38:38
is a no budget Bigfoot film made with a two person crew.
38:42
On the night they went out to the forest to get pick up shots
38:45
they realized they forgot to bring Bigfoots head which.
38:48
Is a little bit of a problem. They shot the creature from the
38:51
waist down and luckily it worked out really well.
38:55
Tom's films are made with budgets of around £500 where he
38:58
handles writing, producing, acting, directing, editing and
39:01
promoting his films all by himself.
39:03
So if you would like to find out more about the found footage
39:07
Bigfoot film Fox Hollow, that's a lot of apps.
39:10
It was, that's why I went slower.
39:12
I did not want to screw that up. But Fox Hollow is the name you
39:15
can follow at Ritual under Score Video.
39:17
Or check out this really sweet site called POV thehorror.com,
39:21
which is apparently just a site dedicated to found footage
39:25
horror movies. Yeah.
39:26
So I'm also going to say thanks, Tom, for letting me know that
39:28
that website exists. Yeah.
39:30
That's a good one. I needed to learn that.
39:33
All these streaming platforms coming up, but the ones that
39:35
support indie film? Kudos.
39:36
Absolutely. We dig it.
39:37
Yes. All right, if you want to be in
39:39
a featured filmmaker, go to indiefilmpodcast.com/submit and
39:43
you can submit to be our Featured Filmmaker of the Week.
39:45
And with that, shall we succinctly say farewell?
39:47
I think so. Goodbye, bye.