audio for movie

[j1clark@ucsd.edu]

Have you every been in a real sound stage or recording studio?

The 'last' time I was in a 'recording studio', there was large microphone hanging down from the ceiling in the center of the room. The most interesting part of the place was the disk cutter...

I don't recall much about the walls... there was carpet...

 

[Noiz2]

Good post, Noiz. Can you please elaborate on padding everything down?

Thanks.

Doc. mentioned room treatments but also things like shoes get a padding on the soles to cut town on footsteps "stepping" on lines. Plates, cups, etc. may be treated with some padding to cut down on their noise. Things like padding the bottom of a tea cup so it doesn't clatter on the saucer.
Making sure none of the motorized and RF producing devices are off, as in refrigerator, AC, furnace, TV's.

Using silk instead of synthetics in costumes, taping, sticking, whatever - noisy costume bits so they don't make noise.

A lot of work goes into making sure you are only recording dialog. Most of it is not complicated or particularly expensive (if we are talking about location shoots).

 

[Noiz2]

The 'last' time I was in a 'recording studio', there was large microphone hanging down from the ceiling in the center of the room. The most interesting part of the place was the disk cutter...

I don't recall much about the walls... there was carpet...

Actually I wouldn't put sound stage and recording studio together. Most recording studios are fairly live. They have portable walls or fancier versions to deaden areas but in general they are fairly live. A sound stage is as dead as they can get it.

Both are as isolated from the outside world as the budget allowed, so in that way they are similar.

 

[mentatDUKE]

Well I think treating a location that way would make the sound a bit disconnected and clinical. Hardwood floors aside, is the idea to add reverb in post rather than to use the reverb that the location actually gives you? I don't notice sound treatment when I watch BTS for movies. Interesting....

 

[davefisk]

If you can cut down on as much reverb as you can on production, then you should. The reason is when you get to post, you may have picture cuts that cause the reverb to not match or not make sense with the cut of the picture, so if you have dialogue from production that doesn't have reverb all over it, you can cut the picture like you want, and then the reverb is added later. This is another reason why you want to get rid of as much other sounds like refrigerators and such because when the camera changes perspective, so does the mic on production, and the sound changes, and that sounds really unnatural. For some shots, like a long steady walk and talk that is single cam with no coverage, then you might be ok without having to get as nitpicky about that stuff.

 

[Noiz2]

Well I think treating a location that way would make the sound a bit disconnected and clinical. Hardwood floors aside, is the idea to add reverb in post rather than to use the reverb that the location actually gives you? I don't notice sound treatment when I watch BTS for movies. Interesting....

Most BTS is well just cut out the "T". It's like reading magazine pieces on sound, most of it is BS. A lot depends on your location but on a large sound stage you have maybe 10,000 sq feet with really tall ceilings. How many films are set in that kind of space? Yes the idea is to eliminate everything that identifies the "space" your working in, because that is almost never the "space" your film takes place in. And because your going to be cutting from different days maybe in different locations and they need to sound like they are all in the same world, house, whatever.

Low budget all on "location" shoots don't usually have the luxury do go quite that far but every bit helps.

I'll give a low budget example.

Your scene takes place in a small studio apartment. Practically you can't shoot in one because of crew and lighting etc. is going to make being "real" a living nightmare to shoot.
You have a friend who is in real-estate and can get you a nice house that is going to be sold, owner thinks it's cool, and it's empty and has plenty of room to set up.

You can use the living room and shoot against a couple of corners, looks great you can dress it the way you want plenty of room for lights etc.

BUT the house is empty. That intimate studio set is going to look great and sound like a barn.

There is no way to remove the "barn" like quality of the sound in post. If you don't know that from personal experience trust me on this. Films that have had access to $50K Cedar boxes and all the best toys can't do it and you no budget feature doesn't have a chance to even make much of a dent in that give away of low budget "indi" sound.

I was on the above shoot. We had to create walls of moving blankets and bring in carpet for the floor of the "set". It helped a lot.

Anyway the point is 99.99999% of the time the "world" of the film is not the "world" it was shot in so you don't want any of the "real world" to get in your tracks because in post you will bust a nut trying to get rid of it. And that is all time that post should be spending adding to the film not trying to mitigate production flaws.

BTW the above mentioned studio apartment was supposed to be in the city. The house was way out in the boondocks. It was great for traffic and such but the minute it got to dusk the crickets went wild. So we had to seal the place up like a tomb to keep the very uncity crix out.

 

[gonzo_entertainment]

Well I think treating a location that way would make the sound a bit disconnected and clinical. Hardwood floors aside, is the idea to add reverb in post rather than to use the reverb that the location actually gives you? I don't notice sound treatment when I watch BTS for movies. Interesting....

You're basically adding everything in post. The sound of every footstep, the turn of every door knob, the sound of every bird outside the window, all done in post. The object of the game is getting the dialogue as clean and free of any external noise as possible. Everything else including the acoustics of the rroom can be done in post.

 

[dre83]

I'm sure you will now have a different look towards "sound" in film/video ?

And as said before, you're not the only one who thought sound was "only" something hanging with video...

The "magical thing" about sound is that your ears hear different then mics. For example when you're having a conversation and you hear the TV playing and the refrigerator rumbling and dogs barking you're not going to say to yourself: "héééé, I hear the ref and the dogs and the tv"... You hear it but you're not paying attention to it.
But when you record this conversation, and play it you"ll see:" héé, that tv is disturbing, and the dog too, and the ref too".

 

[j1clark@ucsd.edu]

I'm sure you will now have a different look towards "sound" in film/video ?

And as said before, you're not the only one who thought sound was "only" something hanging with video...

The "magical thing" about sound is that your ears hear different then mics. For example when you're having a conversation and you hear the TV playing and the refrigerator rumbling and dogs barking you're not going to say to yourself: "héééé, I hear the ref and the dogs and the tv"... You hear it but you're not paying attention to it.
But when you record this conversation, and play it you"ll see:" héé, that tv is disturbing, and the dog too, and the ref too".

Have a conversation, with a friend, in a starbucks, on a noisy street... but, use an omni mic in the vicinity of your head, and feed it into headphones... since it's mono... your ears have no directionality...

 

[Noiz2]

Have a conversation, with a friend, in a starbucks, on a noisy street... but, use an omni mic in the vicinity of your head, and feed it into headphones... since it's mono... your ears have no directionality...

??? They actually have quite a bit of directionality. You hear significantly more in the direction you are looking and you get a ton of location information from the timing and phase differences between what each ear hears.

But part of what people are trying to say here (to the OP) is that your brain does a fantastic job of filtering and selecting what out of all the info pouring into your ears you actually "hear". A mic doesn't do any of that filtering and your brain doesn't have anywhere near the ability to work it's magic on recorded material that it does in a live situation.

If you do what J1Clark suggests it will be obvious. Even if you recorded with a stereo pair, in the recording it will be very difficult to folow the conversation. A hyper cardioid boomed as close as you can get is much closer to the way your brain "hears". Because really your ears don't "hear" they just collect acoustic info and send it to the brain. The brain "hears". Human ears aren't even very good at the one task they are assigned. Animals ears with the ability to shift shapes and directions are far better at tuning the raw data and enable the brain to hear with much better precision.

The brain also uses sight smell and touch to help "hear" things. Rain and frying chicken sound essentially identical. It's sight and smell and maybe touch that identify one from the other. Match frying chicken up with a rainy shot and nobody will notice a problem.

So recordings have the huge deficit (for dialog) of not containing any of the other things your brain wants to help it "hear". This is a huge asset for FX since we can use all kinds of things that are "wrong" but sound right "in context".