mixing the audio for 48 hour film project...

M

midnightblues

Member
Hey guys....

I have an upcoming 48 hour project in Chicago. I was wondering if any of you guys have any tips for getting the best audio mix within a short amount of time for the best theatrical presentation.

Last year, what happened during the screening of our film was that the sound of our film was so low, we couldn't hear it, sitting in the back row. I don't think they heard it in the front row either. While other films were loud as....well.., they were louder than our film. I don't know what to do to fix this problem from happening again this year.

I was just thinking, since I'm a novice at audio mixing, but I need to find a quick solution to get a decent sound level for our film. This year, I was going to use the audio from a movie trailer or the audio from a dvd as the audio level that I want to match our film to.

Since they are professionally mixed, I assume that all I have to do is get the music, sound effects, and vocals around that level and maybe I'll be ok for the screening?

I don't know. I just don't want it to happen again.

Sound is gonna be the biggest issue on this one. But we'll be renting a Sennheiser 416 mic package, that should help us with sound.

I'll be mixing in Sony Vegas 8.

Thanks
Mark
 
The DVD level idea is a good indicator but the problem I've seen with these fast contests are that various productions come in with all sorts of levels, created by people that haven't a clue, all the way up to pro level.

So what's a projectionist to do? The answer is, ride the levels. But they aren't going to be inclined to do so from what I've observed.

You might contact the contest folks ahead of the presentation and voice your concern.

Good luck!
 
When you get to the mixdown stage slap a limiter like Waves L2 or whatever you have that is equivalent and play with your threshold until you notice the attenuation starting to hit. You can usually suck down several db before this starts to distort or pump badly. With the L2 you can seriously overdo it so try to maintain your perspective.

If you happen to be rocking Pro Tools, I would suggest the very good and free/inexpensive Massey L2007

A very excellent limiter that is free for unlimited use in slightly crippled form, and $89 for the full version. Use the same approach with the Massey. Set the output up close to 0, then start cranking down the threshold until gain reduction starts popping. Again, you can pile on too much, so the idea is to not shave off too much at once.


That is a quick and dirty way to bring up the AVERAGE VOLUME OR DECREASE THE DYNAMIC RANGE of your entire mix. I put that in caps because I swear if someone suggests normalilzing im gonna freaking blow a gasket :)

Limiting and compression are the tools you use to accomplish this goal. If you want to be more subtle drop a compressor with conservative settings on every track of dialogue you have, and still limit the overall mix. This is the only way to really pump up your levels.

The preceeding advice already assumes you have performed any volume automation needed on individual tracks.

I scanned over the article posted above. If you can only remember ONE THING, remember that you can roll off every track at 150hz and %99.999999 of the time it will only help and never hurt anything.
 
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In addition to the other suggestions, do your final mix at a CALIBRATED workstation. Get a cheap Radio Shack sound pressure meter and some test tones of a sine tone at -20dBFS and a pink noise source at the same level. Calibrate your workstation so the sine wave reads -20DBFS on the NLE meters and switch to the pink noise. Without adjust the playback levels on your NLE, adjust the monitor speaker gain one channel at a time until ir reads about 85dBSPL at the editing position for theatrical release.
 
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