So can someone tell me the process for audio in a film?

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P.S.T.

Active member
Anyways, through all this time I've become good in audio,music wise. First of, mono is when all your tracks sit in the center and you hear everything the same from both your speakers. Stereo is when you pan intruments (or voices) to the left and right to give you an image of a band playing infront of you. You would do the same with and voices to give realism to what people are seeing. Now, recording in stereo is where the technicalities come in. Recording in stereo will make your audio tracks actually sounds more realistic. So let's say we record an acoustic that we want to pan both left AND right. Well if you only record one mono track and copy and paste it to a left and right track, all you get is a wider mono track. BUT, if you record with two microphones (I won't get specific with the placement and the names for several methods of mic placement) and place one on the left and one on the right, your microphones will capture the TRUE sound of each side of the guitar. THen you get both tracks and pan them accordingly. Your sound will then be true stereo and your ears will SWEAR that you hear a guitar surrounding you. Some of you might know this and I'm not trying to insult anyone that does .
This down here I am assuming completely and that is why I'm asking:
Anyways, I suppose for an academy award winning audio, you would want to record sounds exactly as they show in the picture to make it sound more realistic. If you see gun shot in the middle of a park and just add one of those downloaded sounds, even adding reverb and other effects, your ears will not be convinced. Sometimes you have to record with certain placement and space. Right?

So that's a little bit about stereo recording and the nature of recording. 5.1 I am not so sure how this goes. I have a plug in that let's you move a track to any side of the 5 speakers but I'm not sure that it's being encoded in to Dolby 5.1 or DTS. You have to buy their plug in. Right?

So after saying all that, how exactly is it done? From dialog to the sound effects. I've read many things about it but it hasn't been enough to teach me how to do it myself. Do you mix down one BIG track on your movie and then export it? Or is it a series of small tracks? How do you make sounds move from left to right? Is dialog just sitting in the center all the time? All these questions!! ahh anyone got some idea?

 
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dialogue is 95% of the time panned dead centre. its kind of a convention. panning of dialogue is usually reserved for off screen dialogue. effects are placed stereo, and for special effects you might use a 5.1 fly over (usually action movies on this one). ambience is usually stereo front and back to surround the viewer.

regarding mixdown, big films make premixes (or stems) of the various elements: Music, Effects, Dialogue. So they might mix down 40 tracks of effects to 8 tracks for instance.

The final stem tracks then go to final mix, where a final mixdown is created. Also at final mix stage an M&E mix is created (no dialogue). This allows dubbing of the film into different languages without having to make a completely new mix in foreign countries.
 
Thanks Tim, that gives me a better clue. I kinda want more details and there's still unanswered questions.


This place is dead!:furious3:
 
um, have you tried doing some research? i gave you quite a few answers there. no one can just tell you every detail of a field that takes years to learn and master.

More details? Read them up yourself. There are plenty of books and websites to help.

Unanswered questions? Dont just say that, how am I meant to respond to it?

C'mon man, get proactive - dont be passive! Search the forums and do some reading then ask a clever question! "Tell me everything about audio that there is to know" is not a question.
 
I know quiete a bit about audio. What process goes on in adding audio to a film is what I'm asking. How exactly do they record the sound effects, do they actually go about recording sounds from the real distance or are they close up to mics? How do they make audio move around? What exactly makes your audio 5.1? Like I said, I have a plug- in that can move tracks anywhere on the 5 speakers but it doesn't make it Dolby 5.1 . Do you have one or two big tracks of dialogue or are there many different tracks and then put into one big one? I've tried searching these things but I can't find these specific questions I have. If you could give me a source, I'd be happy. I tried searching in this forum but there's really nothing except stupid questions about microphones. I'm not asking to hand me down the info, just kinda get me going. That's the whole point of these places called "forums".
 
Hi, P.S.T. You've asked some pretty broad questions, so I'm not sure where to start.

First off, if you're interested in the technical aspects of surround and stereo recording, there are a number of excellent (if rather technical) articles on Rycote's website:
http://www.rycote.com/information/documents/09_Rycote_Surround_Sound_CW.pdf
http://www.rycote.com/products/pdf/The%20Stereophonic%20Zoom.pdf
http://www.rycote.com/products/pdf/MMAD%20-%20Multichannel%20Microphone%20Array%20Design.pdf
Although you're quite correct in your guitar example that mic placement can give the illusion of the listener being inside the instrument, phase-accurate stereo (or surround) recording will more often give the illusion that the listener is in the same room as the guitar player.

To add to Timadapter's points about dialogue panning, another reason why dialogue is typically kept in the centre of the stereo image or on the centre channel of a 5.1 or LCR setup has to do with the wide range of monitoring positions for audience members. For example, when primary dialogue is panned hard left or right, the audience members on the oppisite side of the theatre may have difficulty hearing it propperly. Of course, putting dialogue on the surrounds will be problematic for those theatres with impropperly callibrated surrounds or no surrounds altogether. Another caveat for using the surrounds is that when problems are encountered with the DTS or DD tracks on a print, the projector may switch to the optical stereo tracks. Hard-panning dialogue in broadcast or DVD mixes also runs the risk of the dialogue being lost on impropperly set up home theatres or mono TVs where only the right or left audio cables are plugged into the TV's single audio input. Mono compatability is of paramount importance in broadcast video for that very reason.

A feature film mix is usually broken down into five parts: Dialogue, ADR, Effects, Foley, and Music.

Dialogue is made up of synch production dialogue (typically taken from the picture edit via OMF), as well as wild takes (non-synchronized takes of dialogue used in lieu of compromised synch sound), out takes (synch dialogue taken from unused shots or takes), production foley (sound effects recorded wild or in sych during the production shoot), and room tone (one-minute recordings of silence rolled for each setup). I often wind up with eight tracks of dialogue (six for the various characters, one each for production foley and room tone). Since production sound is almost always recorded mono, these tracks are likewise almost always mono.

ADR (automatic dialogue replacement, among other acronyms) is dialogue that has been re-recorded in a studio setting in synch with picture. This is most often used to replace compromised production sound, but it can also be used to improve actor performances or change the actual dialogue being said. Because most ADR involves fixing a few lines of dialogue here and there, it generally has to approximately match the production sound (ie. the same mics, perspecitves). Good ADR sounds like well recorded production sound, bad ADR calls attention to itself. I'll usually include offscreen narration and voiceover on the ADR tracks, although they technically aren't ADR. Because you're typically matching mono dialogue, ADR is generally recorded mono.

Sound effects can be further broken down into specifics and atmospheres, although many effects would fit into either category. Specific effects typically have to be in synch with on screen, or even off-screen, action. You're gunshot in the park is an example of a specific effect. Specifics are often mono, but they can also be stereo or surround recordings. Atmospheres are usually not synch-critical, and tend to fill out the background of the soundscape and give an enhanced sense of location and realism. Birds singing in trees, rain falling on a roof, distant traffic are all common examples of atmospheres. For obvious reasons, atmosphere tracks are usually stereo or surround, although mono tracks are also used. Effects tracks can really add up, and its not uncommon to have a hundred tracks on a feature film mix. Effects can come from commercial sound libraries, proprietary sound libraries, or they can be custom recorded by the sound editorial team.

Foley is the art of recording sound effects in synch with picture playback. This is almost always done in a specially designed foley studio (or foley pit), although location foley can give some incredible results. Footsteps make up the lions share of foley work, so foley artists are often reffered to as "walkers." There's plenty of overlap between effects and foley, and you could even cut in footsteps as sound effects, but its usually better/easier/quicker/more cost-effective to perform certain types of effects during a foley session. A good foley artist will have the uncanny ability to actually emote with their foley performance. Although higher budget films will be able to afford full foley coverage (aka. M&E coverage), tighter budgets will selectively replace production sound. Since foley acts as a counterpart to production sound and ADR, it is generally recorded mono. Perspectives are also very important to the realism and transparency of foley. Foley sessions will typically include 8 tracks of footsteps, 8 tracks of props (also known as foley specifics), and a track of "movement" (the sound of character's clothing rustling, and a crucial part of the foley tracks). In some cases, such as big budget films or Imax films, foley tracks will actually number over a hundred.

Music is just that: music. This includes both diegetic (music in the scene that the characters can hear, radios, etc.) and non-diegetic music (music that's in there for dramatic reasons rather than as part of the action of the plot). Often this will involve stereo tracks of pre-recorded music from CDs, or multi-track recordings of music composed for the specific film.

I hope that gets you started. If you have any more specific questions, please ask.
 
P.S.T. said:
How exactly do they record the sound effects, do they actually go about recording sounds from the real distance or are they close up to mics?
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Both, and sometimes both at the same time. The beauty of multitrack recorders is that on a single gunshot, you could have a distant surround group, a mid distance stereo pair, a dynamic mic up close, and even a kick drum mic catching the bottom end. When teams of sound effects recordists go out, each armed with a stereo pair, they can jam their timecodes and record various perspectives at the same time (eg. interior and exteriors of a car). Sometimes we don't even use mics; contact transducers, hydrophones and geophones all have their places in the arsenal of a field recordist. A sennheiser MKH416/MKH30 pair is great for most, but certainly not all, circumstances.

P.S.T. said:
I tried searching in this forum but there's really nothing except stupid questions about microphones.
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If a mic question results in an improvement in someones future audio recording, I don't think we can call it stupid. Many of the people on this forum become irritated by the frequent "I need a mic for under $100" posts, but that's why we have stickies.
 
sorry it just grates me when someone comes and says "tell me everything about sound" which is basically what you have asked. and I think its pretty generous of Smuir to have given up the substantial amount of time I'm sure that post took to write to answer you. so well done, smuir, thats a great post.

please understand - the answers to every single question you have asked IS on the internet. filmsound.org should get you started, but have you tried searching on google? even wikipedia? try search for "sound effects" on wiki for instance - HEAPS of info. You seem to know a little about sound, but asking a question so broad and unfocused its pretty obvious you havent dont the homework, you're just harvesting the info of a so called "forum".

anyway, not trying to be an @ss, its just that forums like this are way more useful when you can share as well as give. you learn more in the long term this way.
 
timapter said:
sorry it just grates me when someone comes and says "tell me everything about sound" which is basically what you have asked. and I think its pretty generous of Smuir to have given up the substantial amount of time I'm sure that post took to write to answer you. so well done, smuir, thats a great post.

please understand - the answers to every single question you have asked IS on the internet. filmsound.org should get you started, but have you tried searching on google? even wikipedia? try search for "sound effects" on wiki for instance - HEAPS of info. You seem to know a little about sound, but asking a question so broad and unfocused its pretty obvious you havent dont the homework, you're just harvesting the info of a so called "forum".

anyway, not trying to be an @ss, its just that forums like this are way more useful when you can share as well as give. you learn more in the long term this way.
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That's cool. I'm more used to this other forum specific on music and recording and it's pretty normal to ask questions like these as long as you searched the forum. I did try searching things but I guess I need to try to find out exactly what to ask. Thanks for your time though. :)

SMuir you gave me really awesome stuff. Thank You. I'll keep posting on this thread about the new things I learned and any doubts I might encounter.
 
Here is my advice. Stereo recording is highly overrated. You start mixing tons and tons of stereo sources together and you get mush.

Your example of an acoustic guitar is fine, but probably only if the guitar is the featured instrument for a track. Otherwise, record it mono, or at least only use one track.

I would suggest, and I believe SMuir alluded to this as well, that you should record everything mono, with the exception of basic ambience. The issue is that when you include real stereo information the ear picks up lots of spatial information. When you start to include a bunch of disparate info the image becomes murky. For example, your characters are standing out in a soft rain. So you record ambience of soft rain falling out in a field. Perfect! Very convincing to the ear. Now you add stereo foley of footsteps and keys rustling and such (recorded in a studio), and now you are confusing the ear with multiple sources. If the foley is mono, then the spatial information is largely stripped away, and it becomes much easier to convincingly place it wherever you want.



Additionaly there are pure practical issues. More stereo is just more tracks to manage, and it makes it more difficult to control stereo placement of the effect or foley.

To answer your question, "how do you make sounds move from left to right" You just automate the panning of a mono track and whoosh, it moves. I think you would find that most effects are not made up of a single recording, but of multiple sources, acoustic and created and then further manipulated and treated to produce the final result.
 
Kudos to SMuir for offering up a reasonable answer to a huge question.

There are several really good books if you are truly interested in learning the sound for film world. This link also has a lot beginnger's info: http://www.filmsound.org/

Cheers
 
What I have read so far is showing me that recording in surround sound is very difficult :cry: . I might not be able to have surround sound on my film. Production will not start until maybe 1 or 2 years from now, so who knows?

So anyways, if I can record my sounds in stereo, what exactly makes it Dolby Digital? Will a stereo mix suffice to have a proffesional sound, or do I need that goofy Dolby logo?
 
you dont have to record in surround sound to have a surround sound mix on a film. you could take a mono dialogue track, a mono ambience and a mono effect and mix them to surround. dialogue - centre speaker. ambience, there are various ways to make it a "pseudo stereo" by chopping in half and panning the two bits left and right. then you can pan this stereo track to cover the rear L and R speakers too (i.e. - pan it so it sits ON the audiences head). The effect you could pan to the rear, and automate it to fly over the front - like footsteps say. and now 3 mono tracks are in a surround format.

recording in surround sound in pretty much NOT DONE in production sound (with some big film fancy exceptions, or for special effects). Even stereo is NOT COMMONLY recorded on set (with the exception of the odd special ambience, or strange setups - please remember Im speaking broadly here). What IS recorded is any number of mono tracks - from 1 up to usually not more than 16 (16 you're looking at the reality TV side of things, or maybe a complicated outside broadcast that is going to tape for later remix).

It is possible to have surround sound that ISNT dolby. dolby is a trademark for an encoding system (algorithm) for surround sound - Dolby Digital. Another one is DTS. They are essentially different flavours of surround, some engineers prefer one or the other. Its also possible to encode to surround sound using other systems - Nuendo, for example, has an ac3 (which is the DVD surround sound file format) encoder. Its not dolby though (far as I know).
 
and yes, of course a stereo mix can sound professional! dont forget that the music industry mixes 99.9% of albums to stereo - if its good enough for the top recording artists in the world of course its a professional standard.
 
Just for the record, Tim, AC3 is a Dolby Digital format!

There are plenty of uncompressed surround formats, too, from DVD-A to some of the newer versions of Dolby and DTS (I forget the trademark names). Surround basically means "stereo with more than 2 tracks", using "stereo" in the strict sense (that is, as the use of multiple speakers to create a 3-d effect).
 
P.S.T. said:
What I have read so far is showing me that recording in surround sound is very difficult :cry: . I might not be able to have surround sound on my film. Production will not start until maybe 1 or 2 years from now, so who knows?

So anyways, if I can record my sounds in stereo, what exactly makes it Dolby Digital? Will a stereo mix suffice to have a proffesional sound, or do I need that goofy Dolby logo?
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99.9% of independent cinema can't even get decent mono tracks and you want to nail down 5.1? Surround/Dolby/5.1 does not mean you are getting good audio for your movie. Focus on just getting the basics for now. If you nail that then move on to surround sound concerns. Pumping bad audio out of 6 speakers instead of two or three will just surround your listener in crap instead of stereophonic crap.

For theatrical releases, Dolby is going to cost you a pretty penny (think in the range of $10,000 just for a festival license), so be sure you know what you are getting yourself into before you dive in.

Good luck
 
ah, my bad ullanta. too long in the field and away from a studio! :)

ullanta is right. you can get polyphonic files in all sorts of formats, ac3 IS a dolby format.
 
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