Dealing with off axis sound in post

S

stringz

Active member
I was recording on a short this weekend and was curious as to what can be done in post production to smooth over off axis sound.

I was using an MKH 60 indoors (i know it's not ideal) and booming set ups with lots of movement. Nearly all the dialog I got hitting the sweet spot but occasionally due to a head turn or tilt, or other movement, i would miss the odd word and consequently hear the off axis sound you get with the 60. It wasn't terrible and you could hear the word but it just sounds different to the on axis sound but due to time restrictions we couldn't retake. The shots were fairly wide, though I was able to get the mic fairly close.

So what I want to know is whether there is an easy fix for this, it can't just be a case of raising the level of the off axis sound with a mic like the 60, as the dynamics of the sound are coloured rather than just reduced in level that you get with a schoeps hyper cardioid.

Also, for a wideish shot is the audience more tolerant to slightly off axis sound than it would be for a close up?

Thank you in advance.
 
You hear the tonal quality and volume of a persons voice change when they turn away from you in the real world as well. The problem is that mics artificially enhance this. You have to decide how unnatural it sounds.

I recently worked on a scene that had a similar problem, a character doing Tai Chi moving back and forth, sometimes turning his back, while speaking with a second character. I ended up fixing things on a line-by-line basis; sometimes I changed volume and/or EQ, on others I replaced the line (or even a lost word) with dialog taken from the unused/alternate takes using Vocalign and then used volume and EQ to get them to blend in.

There is no easy fix. The more tools and the more fodder (alternate audio takes and ADR) you have available the more options you will have, but dialog editing and clean-up is still a painstaking process.
 
Thank you.

I think overall that whomever does the post sound will have enough to work with. We did on average about 3 takes on the dialog shots and I'm certain that the odd word could be lifted from another take.

When you receive audio rushes, do you expect to have to do this or only when you are working with production tracks that have been made by a less than capable sound department/recordist?
 
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stringz said:
When you receive audio rushes, do you expect to have to do this or only when you are working with production tracks that have been made by a less than capable sound department/recordist?
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No one's perfect. Even on Hollywood sets with directors that'll bend over backwards for sound, a top end mixer and boom ops, ect... people make mistakes. Actors may do something unexpected that goes off-mic.

Alts and wild lines are common in all budget ranges (Richard King talks about Dark Knight how the production crew got enough wild lines that there was almost zero ADR). Having professionals just makes those mistakes less often, and hopefully will try to get the wild takes necessary to fix it later (can be very important if the director just likes doing 1 take and moving on)
 
Gohanto said:
Alts and wild lines are common in all budget ranges (Richard King talks about Dark Knight how the production crew got enough wild lines that there was almost zero ADR). Having professionals just makes those mistakes less often, and hopefully will try to get the wild takes necessary to fix it later (can be very important if the director just likes doing 1 take and moving on)
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You just said a mouthful... you'd be surprised how many actors, etc. look at you like you just conjured a fireball when you ask to get a couple wild lines. :)
 
With only three takes there may be enough, but you can never tell. On my current audio post project I had 30 or more takes for some scenes. Just so you won't think the directors were incompetent, indulgent or crazy, the project has an ensemble cast; eight people in a room calls for a lot of angles, etc. Most scenes had 10 to 20 takes. The drawback is you have to log everything that you need, then listen to each take and compile a list of what is useful. Then you can begin the matching process.

Wilds are great stuff if you can get it, which is rarely at the low/no/micro budget level. Wild lines are nice and clean, in character, and usually MUCH better performances than ADR.
 
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You may also be able to use matching EQ to make it more cohesive. I use something from Roger Nichols that can take two bits of sound and compare them and create an EQ curve that attempts to get one to match the other. There are a number of those types of plugins around. It isn't magic but it gan often help with the voice quality. Your probably also picking up some extra bounce/ slapback echo on the off axis stuff and that is a lot harder to mitigate but there is another RN plugin called D4 that is a level based compressor/expander that can often help with low level echos.
 
Noiz2 said:
You may also be able to use matching EQ to make it more cohesive. I use something from Roger Nichols that can take two bits of sound and compare them and create an EQ curve that attempts to get one to match the other. There are a number of those types of plugins around. It isn't magic but it gan often help with the voice quality. Your probably also picking up some extra bounce/ slapback echo on the off axis stuff and that is a lot harder to mitigate but there is another RN plugin called D4 that is a level based compressor/expander that can often help with low level echos.
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And what sort of effort is all this? Do you sit there cursing the production sound team for not getting it right during the takes or not enough wild lines?
 
stringz said:
And what sort of effort is all this? Do you sit there cursing the production sound team for not getting it right during the takes or not enough wild lines?
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Those choices are almost never the decision of the sound team. The boom-op not only must constantly adjust the aim of the mic to capture the dialog performances, but must also keep the the mic/boom out of the frame and not cast shadows. This being the case it is amazing how much quality production dialog a professional sound team is able to capture on a set. And that is another issue; too many low budget productions do not retain a professional sound crew; they just plug the mic into the camera, hand the boom to whichever PA isn't busy and hope for the best - and usually end up with the worst.

As far as dialog wilds (and room tones/ambiences and sound FX wilds) 99% of the time the schedule and budget dictate whether or not this is done. At the low/no/micro budget indie level it is often ignored. You can pick any reason you want - the director is ignorant about sound, you have to be out of the location quickly, "we'll fix it in post", the talent has to get to their real job, etc.

A dialog/sound editor (and, I assume, a visual editor as well) just has to deal with what they are given. If you are given poor production sound you look for the solid pieces of crap in the pool of diarrhea and spend your time polishing those turds. If you are you are given diamonds in the rough you cut and polish to bring out the beauty and the brilliance.
 
stringz said:
And what sort of effort is all this? Do you sit there cursing the production sound team for not getting it right during the takes or not enough wild lines?
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No, because I have been there and know what production is like. There is "in the biz" a certain amount blaming it on the production folks but that is because most post sound folks haven't been on set and don't understand the limitations.

And truthfully it is not that much extra effort since the dialog is going to get massaged anyway. When I start cursing is when the sound guy AND the director both totally faild to understand anything about sound needs and you get stuff that days per minute just to get it up to bad. A comedy where the sound guy thought it was a good choice to loosely clip mics on the sun visors (bounced off the ceiling a LOT) and the director thought he needed to do all the in car shots while the car was driving down a country road. That film also had some cut together adlib between two characters recorded with one mic where I was asked to "you know, get rid of the other actor's voice"... Then there was the beach scene where our stars in bathing suits are miced with unprotected lavs. Big wind BIG surf, barely audible dialog constantly hammered by the wind hits and the surf crashes. And it's a VERY important bit of dialog. The kicker was it was shot so the camera never sees any water! They could have shot it in a sand box in a nice quiet location for all the audience can tell.

Off axis is an issue but it happens, even to folks who should know better. You get distracted for a second and miss the move, an actor muffs a line and the second one jumps in early. It happens, it's not something that is that big a deal (usually).
 
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