11
A PRE Fader aux is sent out BEFORE the volume fader (and usually the mute)... so any volume changes made on the fader are not reflected in the send. When monitoring, this means you can have a different mix going to the Monitors then the Mains... for example VO talent might want a guide track in the headphones to help with timing, but you don't want to hear ...
10
I rarely have ever worked for free, but on the occasions I have it has been for atleast one of the following reasons:
For a friend trying to get a start. Helping friends is always a good thing, they will normally come back around to help you out later, be it with work or simply helping you move.
A project I really believe in. Sometimes something comes ...
9
Record one long shot.
Split it from the half.
Put one half to the right channel and the other to left channel.
Export a stereo file.
This way you will get a very wide stereo image that is hard to get from a stereo field recording and your sounds in the front will be clearly distinct from ambience.
Do not just transform to stereo. If you do that, you will ...
8
Threshold is the point set for when the compressor actually starts compressing once the volume of the program or track reaches above that level. Note that it's a static volume, so if you have a voice or instrument that is all over the place due to levels, you might want to do a pre-leveling with a fader/volume automation to even it out so it's always hitting ...
7
This has been my experience:
Usually, I'll start by working with a set of dedicated Weapons tracks so the guns don't gum up the other fx edits. This all depends on the film's context though.
If its a walk n talk with one or two gunshots through the whole film, I'll cut them up in the regular FX tracks and run with no weapons tracks. But if it's something ...
7
Very kind of you Brendan to link to the blog post, glad people are finding it useful!
As Melissa has touched upon (and that book is a very good introduction to dialogue that I equally recommend), and as briefly mentioned in the blog post, editorial is the foundation here. No amount of Broadband noise suppression, even a Cedar DNS, can fix a dialogue track ...
7
Nope, the sound information is missing and there is no way to recover it. (At least not that I'm aware of.) Even if there was, it would have to basically be completely guessing at what should be there. (Edit: there is software that will make the guess, and that's what the answer with the waveforms is illustrating. It is worth noting that it is a guess ...
6
When starting out I worked for free. But only on shorts, and only one gratis per director. I would never do a feature for free, even if there's a so-called back-end. It's just too much time to give someone.
The goal of working for free is to make connections and get your chops up to a point where you feel confident charging for your services. Besides, if ...
6
These may be of interest to you:
http://www.stavrosound.com/blog/wordpress/2011/08/backgrounds-part-i-we-create-the-world-for-ourselves/
http://www.stavrosound.com/blog/wordpress/2011/12/backgrounds-part-ii-analyse-this-no-really-analyze-it/
There's two schools of BGz in my opinion. The school of thought where they are there for presence and smoothing ...
6
My personal take on it is that usually for stems the channel denomination should equal your other stems, or at least be LCR or 5.0. In the case of working in a stereo environment, I'd recommend going with stereo.
For one, dialogue does have to be panned sometimes - whether for creative purposes, or in rare cases to fix a story issue that's hard to see ...
6
You're right, that's what dialnorm is for; to try to create a standard for average dialogue level (dialogue being king and all). Having Dolby Media Meter helps a lot, but your ears should do a fine job too.
I would avoid boosting dialogue in the absence of loud FX. Just because you have the headroom doesn't mean you need to use it. If i'm understanding the ...
6
The basics are thus:
"What are the specifications of the broadcaster you're delivering to?"
You're asking us to distill a very complex process down into a "paint by numbers" process. If it were that easy, there'd be a manual that anyone could follow. I'm not trying to be mean by saying this, only trying to give you an idea of the scope of the question you'...
6
To quote Thomas Edison "I have not failed. I've just found 10000 ways that won't work."
It's always a horrible feeling when you look back at something at realize it wasn't as good as you'd hoped. Look at this as an opportunity to discover some things about yourself. Maybe you don't want to work under those sort of conditions in future projects, so that will ...
6
Your real problem is most likely recording technique and possibly the gear you're using. A good sound recorded properly doesn't need any EQ to sound professional.
Where you place your microphone is the most important thing in capturing a sound and works just like EQing when in the right hands.
6
It really depends.
Sometimes you need a global volume boost because the audio is too low anyway to correctly listen to the noise reduction you're applying. Sometimes there's a 50 or 60Hz rumble or any other fixed unwanted frequency that you could remove before denoising...
But generally speaking "the sooner the better". And before any processing other than ...
5
one way is to slap a side-chained gate on your source sound, and feed the gate with an irregular (referring to tempo here) sound to control when it opens. if you know what kind of rhythm/a-tempo you want the glitch to have, you can even record yourself tapping with a pair of pens/pencils/drumsticks on a desk or table. this can be the best way to get a useful ...
5
Templates, templates, templates
Know your hot keys front and back
To do the above, practice, practice, practice so it becomes muscle memory
As George said, organize your workflow into jobs, passes, or procedures - scattered workflow is the quickest way to get gummed up - in it's most simply form, do all editorial together as one, and do all mixing/processing ...
5
+1 to Sonsey's explanation of Pre and Post-fade sends.
However, I'd add that you don't ALWAYS send monitor mixes prefade, either.
I have a large vocal ensemble that I mix regularly, whose monitors sends I almost always send POST-fader. Why? Because I want them to hear in their monitors the same mix that the house is hearing, so that they can more ...
5
Yeah, forests are tough. Altiverb has some good forest verbs.
Try an in game worldized reverb with heavy damping, a short tail and a longer predelay. I've found predelay to be the most important setting for real world verbs like this. It should almost sound like a long slapback verb. Try more than 80ms and experiment.
5
This is called a sibilance, or sibilant articulation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibilant
You can avoid it in the recording process using a pop filter, but in post production there are a handful of de-essers available for taming those sounds. The process involves compressing just the frequency range that contains the sibilant consonants through ...
4
Also, request access to the wardrobe head of department and art department so the recordist can lay down some rules.
This is the same as the DOP saying to wardrobe: No high contrast stripes on actors - this will not work with well with many HD digital cameras.
The head of sound department will say things like, no dangling metallic jewellery, no noisy ...
4
I have done the 48 hr fest multiple times and have competed at the national level, not once did we ever actually get to "post sound" All was done within the video editor. As with just about any film, picture editing takes more time and post sound is the one with the hard deadline. The best you will be able to do is sit behind the video editor and start ...
4
I think its becoming quite a joke now how many producers and directors expect sound done for free. There are a few valid exceptions mentioned here by others, if I were a student I may consider it or for a friend or charity. I sometimes work on student films and will always give a reduced rate but working for free is in 95% of cases taking the piss. The ...
4
It's quite commonly used in (music) mastering. You can obviously widen/tighten the stereo image, clean up specific "areas" of the mix, and push for more volume (like that's needed!). I've only tried it a few times for interest sake.
Just on a (mid)side note, I'm a HUGE fan of Voxengo's MSED plugin, which allows you to pass your already decoded sound inline ...
4
@Stavrosound totally nailed it. Our post team at Todd-AO does cover everything, BGs included, and they are treated as described for the reasons mentioned. I wasn't sure they existed either until I asked the supervising sound editor. Two additional notes:
First, it's a cartoon, so our ears (and eyes) accept a ton of things which we might not in live-action.
...
4
While I agree with @Stavrosound, if you're talking tv it depends on what your deliverables sheet dictates. Different networks, even different departments in the same network, request different formats of stems as final deliverables.
If you're using a single master template for all your work, I'd bus my dialog in stereo (or lcr) for panning, verb, delay, ...
4
The subject of my dissertation was The Use of Sound Effects and Stylised Ambiences in Filmmaking which turned out to be a really fascinating focus of study. It was, however, a huge can of worms that I could only touch on in the required word count. I think the most important thing is to find a subject that you are passionate about and one that will have ...
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