forgot to record atmos track?

[luis bunuel]

hi..
my first post here..

was shooting a documentary last night and forgot to record an atmos track after an interview...:undecided

anybody got suggestions to get around this in post production?

cheers

 

[Steve House]

hi..
my first post here..

was shooting a documentary last night and forgot to record an atmos track after an interview...:undecided

anybody got suggestions to get around this in post production?

cheers

Go back to the location today with an audio recorder and record one. Note that "atmos" or ambient sound tracks are NOT the same thing as "room tone" tracks. Room tone is the sound of the silences between words and need to be recorded immediately after the scene is shot, before anyone starts moving around to move on to the next setup. If it's room tone you forgot to get, load the audio into your editor, zoom to expand the timeline, and copy/paste the silences between the words of the interview to assemble a new tone track. "Atmos" are the other sounds that occur in an environment - crickets chirping, wind rustling, etc - and can be recorded anytime the right sounds are present and even in other locations than the actual set if desired. A restaurant's babble of conversation and clinking dishes can be recorded in a real restaurant at some convenient time and laid under a scene shot on a soundstage to make the audience think it's in a restaurant, for example.

 

[luis bunuel]

thanks steve..
yes its room tone im after, i made this mistake before too.
prob is i borrowed the mic and returned it today

the room tone will not sound right if i record again with a different mic?

prob best to wait until i have a rode mic again

cheers again for the fast reply

 

[Steve House]

thanks steve..
yes its room tone im after, i made this mistake before too.
prob is i borrowed the mic and returned it today

the room tone will not sound right if i record again with a different mic?

prob best to wait until i have a rode mic again

cheers again for the fast reply

Remember room tone is NOT the sounds in the environment - it exists even on a silent soundstage completely isolated from background noises like lawnmowers down the street or distant barking dogs. It's the almost subliminal sound of the space itself. Room tone is recorded with the same mic as the scene with all the cast, crew, and equipment in place but standing still and silent. Going back now is too late, even with the same mic because it sounds different now without all the original people and equipment in it than it did when you made the original. Your best bet is to recover tone already in your existing footage from between the words or in the interval between rolling and calling "action" at the start of the scene by zooming in tight on the waveform in your editor until you can select just the space between words or syllables and copy/pasting it into a new track you're creating. It's tedious but a common technique to build a room tone track where one is needed but isn't available for some reason. Room tone is already underneath the recorded voice during dialog scenes and in the silences between words in a continuous take. The problem comes about when you cut between words and sentences and lengthen the existing spaces - now there is tone under the words but no tone under the spaces - the background presence starts and stops and sounds unnatural, like the voice is suddenly appearing out of nowhere. You need something to bridge those gaps. Recover tone from the normal gaps between words in the original master and use it to fill in silences as needed.