How can I make "flat" sounding audio sound more "3d/full"?

Noiz2 said:
They have lost projects but the cuts are the governors proposal, they haven't actually been approved yet. But it is looking dodgy.
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I have a production mixer friend up there, and last he said, they went through. They are blaming the loss of "The Avengers" shooting there to Ohio on the loss of the incentives. Of course, he could be wrong. I don't live there, so I'm not 100% sure.

And yeah, a lot of the time it's all about WHO you know most of the time.
 
davefisk said:
I have a production mixer friend up there, and last he said, they went through. They are blaming the loss of "The Avengers" shooting there to Ohio on the loss of the incentives. Of course, he could be wrong. I don't live there, so I'm not 100% sure.

And yeah, a lot of the time it's all about WHO you know most of the time.
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Well hmmm, I don't live there yet either so? The last thing I read was that they hadn't gotten passed but were stuck in negotiations. But shows were leaving because of the uncertainty. Either way it sucks and is SO bloody stupid.

I love the logic. It was the same used in Oakland to keep the Wayan Brothers from building a studio on the old army base. The argument is based on all the money the films wouldn't pay because of the tax break and then claims we can't afford to give all that money away. What it fails to take into account is that the films wouldn't be there if not for the incentives and 100% of nothing is a whole lot less than 60% (roughly the states cut in Michigan with the incentives) of the taxes on $300,000,000 (and since they figure there is a 6:1 ratio of money spent to film money budgeted add another $600,000,000 taxed at the full rate). The government doesn't, and can't really, loose money on tax incentives. They aren't giving away money they are reducing what they collect from certain items. And with out the incentives they wouldn't have a dime of that money. I mean how many feature films were shot in Michigan before the incentives?
Some, because it's expensive to create the kind of urban desolation that you can get for free in parts of the state, but not many.
Plus it really hits the local budget since they don't generally give much of a break. So basically he's cutting funding for police and fire while claiming to help the people.
Drives me nuts!

Someone told me once "it's not so much who you know but who knows you". ;~)

Hey what was this thread about anyway?
 
Well, it depends on how you look at it. There was a thread over on jwsound that was talking about the whole tax incentive thing, and I think the local 695 in L.A. had a study done that showed that tax incentives don't really work they way people think they do, and states can actually lose money on them. It involved lots of numbers, which honestly, I'm not good at dealing with, and I don't know the people who did the study, so it could be totally way off. Personally, I'm not a fan of tax incentives for any industry...and I'm not a fan of taxes at all...but that's another thread for another forum. It just sucks that government involvement is determining where movies are shot.
 
davefisk said:
Ha! That's right.

You know, I'm usually pretty open with what sounds I use and how I use them when people ask me, but I have this one set of small recordings that only one other person in the world has, that, quite honestly, nobody but me and the other person that has them know what they are, even when people listen to it. This is the one set of sounds I keep close to the vest, and rarely pull out because it is so unique, but is SO FRIGGIN' COOL. I think having stuff like that is, meaning sounds that are unique to you...things you recorded on your own, or acquired through a friend (my situation), are really what help sound designers. It's great to have a massive commercially available SFX library, but having your own sound effects is really really helpful.
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Hey back OnT!

With you 100%. I think it may have been more of a NorCal thing than an LA one but as an assistant I did a LOT of recordings. And I kept that up. Even the ads we did we always recorded fresh stuff for and Foley, which is almost never done on ads. You end up with a very nice library and the hidden benefit is you have stuff to trade. I have gotten some great stuff because I asked. As a rule sound folks are very generous. But you really should be able to reciprocate.

Before 9-11 you could strap contact mics on things with out spending quality time at Gitmo and I have a lot of contact recordings of things like the Golden Gate Bridge. Very weird stuff.

The two most important things in building a sound. Break it down and layer it up.

Look at the thing and hear the parts that make it up. Get them and layer them.

It's harder than it sounds but that is 90% of what separates a big budget Hollywood sound track from your average Mini-Indi sound track.

When you really get down to it skill, taste, artistry all play a part but a major part is that an experienced sound person will break it down and layer it up and an inexperienced one will try to find something that is close to what they want and move on. And their choice is often flawed because they haven broken it down so they don't really know what they need. So it's OK but not very compelling.

Even crappy Hollywood films spend a fair amount of time polishing the turd and the sound folks are trying to get it just right even when they know the film is going to open and close before anybody notices.
 
davefisk said:
Here's a link to that study I mentioned:
http://www.695.com/Film_Incentive_Report.pdf
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Back to OT...

Interesting reading but this is by the "Tax Foundation". It used to be reputable but in 89 was bought by some very right wing folks and now is very biased.

"In 1989, Citizens for a Sound Economy, a conservative group founded and funded by the owners of Koch Industries, purchased the Tax Foundation, which continued to operate it as a subsidiary until its spin-off into Americans for Prosperity in 2005. After the acquisition, the board of directors was reduced from the former level of more than 30 prominent tax professionals."

Wikipedia

Source Watch

So who knows how accurate anything in the report is. Personally I don't see how you can possibly lose money unless your providing a lot of services, but then that's not a tax incentive.

OK back to our regular programing.

BTW - That wasn't a political swipe, the left puts out a load of tripe also, just pointing out the non-non-partisan nature of the source.
 
Yeah, that's what some of the folks on jwsound said, too. Just like anything that is polarizing, there are two sides to every story, and you have to take every "study" these days with a grain of salt.

To get back on topic...

What you said about layering is spot on. I interned at the place that did the sound design for The Matrix movies, and the lobby gunfight shootout scene in the first movie had over 100 tracks with all the layers of stuff they had. When I worked on Fear Factor, I would have some sessions 100 tracks wide for really involved stunts. There was one stunt where there were people jumping a quad off a pier, and I probably used at least 10 tracks just for the quad in order to get it right. On anything I did that had exteriors I usually had at least 4 stereo tracks for BG's.

Plus, the advantage of layering stuff up, especially if you are using a commercial library, is that it helps to make it less obvious that you are using a commercial library, as long as you know what you are doing.




Noiz2 said:
Back to OT...

Interesting reading but this is by the "Tax Foundation". It used to be reputable but in 89 was bought by some very right wing folks and now is very biased.

"In 1989, Citizens for a Sound Economy, a conservative group founded and funded by the owners of Koch Industries, purchased the Tax Foundation, which continued to operate it as a subsidiary until its spin-off into Americans for Prosperity in 2005. After the acquisition, the board of directors was reduced from the former level of more than 30 prominent tax professionals."

Wikipedia

Source Watch

So who knows how accurate anything in the report is. Personally I don't see how you can possibly lose money unless your providing a lot of services, but then that's not a tax incentive.

OK back to our regular programing.

BTW - That wasn't a political swipe, the left puts out a load of tripe also, just pointing out the non-non-partisan nature of the source.
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