Latest Screenshot from my Foley Session after 3 days, what you don’t see here are the multiples and multiples of takes in the ‘Playlist’ view in the track inspectors!
#6 - Do I Lose Out On Post Sound Work Only Having A Stereo Setup?
I got asked the question do I lose out on sound design work because I only have a stereo setup. This would be true if I didn't collaborate with people that had a 5.1 surround sound setup. Collaboration is an important part in freelance life and especially for bigger projects with tighter deadlines.
Luis Fernando Puente is from Mexico. His favorite animal is the Orca and he loves listening to post-hardcore punk. Luis is currently a media arts student at BYU, and one day he desires to become an international name in film and music. If it was healthier, Luis admits he would go on 2am taco runs every day.
This seems like an easy enough question to answer if you work in or around the industry, but when I'm out and about and someone asks me what I do for a living, just saying "Sound Design" doesn't really explain it. I generally get the response of a blank stare until I say I work in film then A) "oh Film making... but what do you really do?" or B) "so, music then". I then go through a long winded explanation of what my job entails, leaving the poor person I was speaking to bored out of their mind. So I thought tonight I would subject you all to the same "brief" explanation of what post production audio is and the general workflow.
In a nutshell, Post-Production Audio is about creating a soundtrack for a visual media, be it Film, TV, or Games. Since the introduction of sound to films, Sound has been used to enhance the story. Once the film is shoot and the edit is at "picture lock", this is when the post audio kicks into gear, however, there are things that will be started before picture lock which I'll explain later. Post Audio in basic terms refers to getting the location sound, and tweaking the dialogue, adding sound effects and music and mixing the levels to sound just right. Here a cute video on explaining the post sound on Shaun the Sheep.
Let's break-down the steps of creating a finished sound mix for a feature film.
Pre-production (or the stage between having a script and shooting your film) :
In a perfect world, the post sound team will be decided on before shooting. However, as I work on a lot of "low budget" films, post sound unfortunately seems to be an afterthought. If the post team has been signed on to the project in pre-production, this is where they would meet up with the location sound team to go through the script and discuss any foreseen issues and problem solve. The post team might also give the location team a "dream list" of effects to gather if there isn't the budget to get these in post.
Production (or the stage where the film is being shot):
The production (or location) sound team includes a Sound recordist (or Sound Mixer) and Boom Operator. If the budget will allow, the location team might also include a 2nd Boom Operator (or Utility sound). The Sound recordist is the HOD (Head of Department). Their role is to record and mix the sound on set, and well as working hand in hand with their team on what microphones to use and ways to cover the scene. The Boom operator is just as important as the Sound recordist. He or She is probably the most recognisable soundie in film as "The guy that holds the stick with the big fluffy thing", which translates to; miking up the actors with lapels and/or using a boom mic just out of the camera's frame and following the sound, making sure it is always "on-mic". Imagine you're holding the boom and there is a laser attached to the end, every time the actor moves, your job is the keep that laser pointed at their mouth at all times. Trust me when I say, it's not as easy as everyone thinks. The 2nd Boom Operator jumps in when there is a 2nd boom mic required. This might be to cover large group of people, or people in two different rooms in which the camera travels through. They also help cable wrangle, changing batteries and other jobs that need to be done.
The number 1 job of the location sound team is the record the dialogue as clean as possible. This might sound easy enough if you're doing a simple 1 man sitting talking straight to camera in a room but the more you add to a scene, the more noise and obstacles you have to contend with. Say the scene is now outside, you now have traffic noise to deal with. And now the man is walking while talking, you now have to contend with his footsteps, the crews footsteps, a floating light source and the boom operators ability to keep him on mic at all times. And now the the man is walking in the rain, so you have to also contend with the sound of the generator from the rain machine, and the water hitting the microphone. So, you can see how things can get difficult very quickly.
As well as recording dialogue as cleanly as possible, the location sound team may also record wild lines, walla, atmos, IR and other sounds. Wild lines are lines of dialogue that are recorded again after the scene is finished. These are done for dialogue that might not have been captured clean during the scene and can sometimes be used to dub over the dud line. If the line is still unusable, this is where ADR comes into play. Walla will be recorded in scenes where are are a lot of extras (background people). These scenes are done with the crowd of extras miming, and then recorded vocally after the scene is finished. The reason for this is to get the main action clean. Atmos is room tone (the location sound without anything happening), which is very helpful when you're cutting between shoots to help fill in holes. Every room has a different sound to it, so it's a good idea to get an atmos track at every location you shoot at, and sometimes even at different times of the day. An IR is an Impluse Response. It is rare for the location team to gather this, but if a location has a interesting reverb (the reflection of sound in an area - like an echo) to it which might otherwise be hard to re-produce, the location team may record an IR. This is done by either recording a sharp sound like a clapper board slap or, for a more detailed recording, playing back a frequency wipe and recording this. For more details on IR, watch this video. The post production team may also ask the location team to record some sound effects or sound that are distinctive to a location. On big shoots, more popular in the states, there may be a team of soundies recording just the location sound effects and ambience's.
At the end of each day, the sound captured is given to the data wrangler and put together with the vision. These rushes are what the editor uses to cut the film together.
Post Production (or the stage after the film has been shoot):
Post Sound consist of several different steps. Depending on the size of the project, it may need all of these or just a few. On lower budget projects, the sound team will only be made up of a few people taking on several roles, while on bigger budget films, you'll have teams of people working in each step.These steps are; Dialogue Editing, ADR, Sound Effects Editing, Foley, Music Composition, and Mixing.
The first stage of Post Sound actually happens in the edit. This stage is called spotting, where the editor (sometimes, hopefully, along with the supervising sound editor) will place sound effects, music and guide narration to help with the general feel and timing of the edit.
A lot of post sound is done all at the same time, with everyone talking to each other in the process regarding what will and won't work. But if you're on a low budget film, you might be doing it all yourself. So lets break down the different roles and tasks.
The assistant vision editor will have synced up all the master audio and exported into a timeline file known as an OMF (Open Media Framework) or AAF( Advanced Authoring Format). From this timeline starts the Dialogue Editing. This means getting rid of unwanted tracks, checking the takes and sync, and cleaning background noise from the takes. There might be places where a line may not be clear, this is where Wild lines or alternative takes can come in handy to replace the word or line or even a consonant. Sometimes however, the location dialogue cannot be used and It will need to be ADR'd. Most directors will prefer the production dialogue for performance reasons. It is nearly impossible to duplicate all the conditions of the shoot when in the recording booth, and takes a huge amount of skill in the actor, recordist and director to get the performance and sound to fit seamlessly.
ADR (Automatic Dialogue replacement) is when a line is dubbed over because the original was unusable for one reason or another. The actor watches the shot and listens the the production audio, then mimics the performance while trying to keep the line in sync. Actors abilities to do ADR well can vary. The main key is to make the environment as natural as possible. In smaller studios the actor will be in a booth, speaking into a microphone wearing headphones and looking at a screen of themselves; very different to how it was on set. In larger studios, a sound stage used. Here the Actor, Director & Sound Supervisor will be on the stage while the ADR recordist will be in the control room. This stage is a lot more open, and having the director on the stage with the actor is closer to the conditions on set. ADR can also be used to change a performance of a line, changing the emotion of the scene, or even to change / add lines in. Here is a clip from the King Kong production diary on the ADR process.
When explaining to my poor party patron victim about the post sound process, sound effects and foley seems to get the response of "So you just play around will toys all day? Your job sounds easy". Though these are my favourite parts of post, it does take a huge amount of skill and creativity. A project I worked on in 2013 called The Fan required me to create the character and language of a pedestal fan. I spent most of my time on this project building things, capture interesting sounds of metals and other objects and playing around with effects, to have most of it thrown out and start again from scratch just to get the perfect combinations of sounds. This was a 17 min film, so you can imagine how much work is involved in something feature length.
Most of the sounds that you hear in a film will be built from scratch. Every time you hear a footstep or a door close or a car drive by, it was someone's job to pick that particular sound and place it in that particular spot. Sound is very subjective and can help create a particular feel for a scene depending on what sounds the Sound editors and designers choose to use or not use. There are different ways to obtain sound effects; Libraries, Recording and Foley. Sound effects libraries are databases of thousands upon thousands of sounds. These can be a great source but can also be very generic and don't have the flexibly like recording your own. Sound effect recording is a recording sound effects in the real world. A lot of sound effect recording can be done before picture lock because it doesn't focus on minute details. Some examples of things you would record would be traffic noise, water gushing against boats, car and plane engines, etc. The most detailed sound effects recording is done in the studio, watching the vision and creating the sounds at the same time. This process is called Foley, named after its inventor Jack Foley. The foley team includes; the Foley Mixer who records the sounds, the Foley Artist or Walker who are in the studio creating the sounds, and the Foley Editor who editors the sounds to makes sure everything is in sync. Some of the most common foley effects are footsteps. Because of this foley stages usually include several pits with different types of surfaces for the foley artist to re-create the footsteps in any given scene. Below is a picture of Universal Studios foley stage in Hollywood, also known as my idea of heaven.
The sound effects team is responsible for creating and laying every sound that could possibly be needed for the film. The Supervising sound editor, Sound Design and Director will numerous spotting sessions together to work out exactly what is needed. Because all the sounds in the film have to interact with each other, temp mixes are a good way to set whether a particular sound is working in the scene, or if there is a possible issue. It is very important for the sound effects team to have every sound the film could possibly need once it goes into the mix. Many "individual" sounds may actually be made up of multiple recordings, with each recording mixed in a particular way for that "one" sound to work. When the sounds are giving to the Mixing team, if often comes pre-mixed. A lot of the time, the Sound editor will also do a reference track of all or several of the sound effects mixed together and consolidated as one file. This way, the mixing team has a reference to go back to on what effects teams design for the sound effect was.
Music is something that I have never done as it's a whole other kettle of fish, so my explanation on this will be very brief. Music for films can be broken down into three types: Score, Source and Songs. The Score is original music written, by the composer, specifically to accompany a film. I will go into this more in just a minute. Source music is anything music that is heard from something in the scene like a radio or TV. Songs, I would say are self explanatory but nevertheless, are pieces of music that aren't generally written specify for the film. Some movies can by made up entirely for pop songs, while others might only use score.
The composer will start around the time of the first cut. At this time they will discuss with the Director and Editor the characteristics of the music and placement throughout the film. The Composer works a long side the Music Editor and Music Supervision to create the score. The Music Editors role is to spot the cues which involves makings a precise list of times for each hit of the music. The Supervising Music Editor sets up the recording sessions, making sure that each instrument has its own microphone and track. In the case of lower budget films, all or most of these instruments will be virtual, sourced from a library. Once all the music is recorded and gathered, the Music Editor will be the one who edits all the music elements prior to the final mix.
Music Composers must create music that doesn't clash with the dialogue and sound effects. It is important to use instruments that do not overlap a great deal in the same frequency range as the human voice, at the same time. This is also goes for key sound effects in the scene. Here is a little more info on the process of composing music for films.
The key for any role in a film is to help tell the story. If a particular sound effect or music is distracting from the audiences suspension of disbelief, then the sound is not working for the film. The biggest complement you can give a re-recording mixer (post sound mixer) is "I didn't notice the sound", because this means they did their job well. The soundtrack is meant to work on the audience subconsciously, putting them in touch with the characters and action the screen.
At the mixing stage, all the tracks (or elements) are adjusted in volume and tonal quality relative to what's happening on the screen. During this time, the Mixer with the Director will decided what sounds should be emphasized and what sounds should be pulled back. But a Mixers job isn't as simple as adjusting levels, it also entails using effects to place the sounds seamlessly into a scene. Mixers have a number of tools at there disposal. EQ's (Equalizers) are used to increase or decrease particular frequencies to make dialogue or sound effects have a particular color or effect. This is handy when using a mixture of microphones (such as lapels and booms) in a scene. Tools like reverbs can be used as well to adjust the perspective of the sound. However, these tools aren't just used to "fix" sounds, but can be used to create more character. Say you're working on the character of an evil master mind, using EQ's & filters you can make his voice sound deeper and more ominous, and maybe a little bit of reverb to make him seems larger than life. These techniques can also be used with effects, sometimes creating completely different sounds from the source material.
During the mix, the sound effects and music pieces are either heighten or lowered, or in some cases, eliminated all together. If the Mixer was also working on the sound effects, it can sometimes be hard to let go of sounds that look a long time to make, but in the end, without this sound in the mix, the film works better. Sometimes, all the sounds in a particular shot might be removed or muted to give a sense of silence. This can be a very powerfully tool. Read more on the use of silence here.
When entering the mixing stage, there can be hundreds of tracks of sounds for the mixer to play with. This is a lot of information, so for manageability, tracks are often combined after the filter stage into pre-mixes. When doing the final mix, the dialogue is usually mixed first. Dialogue is considered king in the sound world and all other sounds fit around this. However, sometimes the director will not prioritize hearing every word in a scene, as in the case in Christopher Nolan's Interstellar. It is also the mixers job to place where the sound is in the room. With technology like Dolby Atmos and Auro 3D, particular sound effects, dialogue and music can be physically placed in a wide range of positions; In the back of the room, at the top of the screen or bottom, or even above you on the ceiling. This technology is another way of enhacing the audio experience and making the viewer feel submersed in the story world.
The end product of the final mix is not just one mix. There are different standards for cinema release vs DVD release vs TV release. At the end, stems will be mixed out separately, which is handy for mixing foreign version or different format releases down the road. A stem refers to a mixed track of one particular category of sound; Effects, dialogue and music. The final copy of the soundtrack these days will be delivered as a digital file, however, optical film stock copies are still used, though rare.
To finish things off, here is the soundworks collections video for Monsters University. I have posted this video before, but it's still a great video which clearly breaks out the different elements of sound and how it all works together in the final mix. Enjoy :)
