How to make a phone conversation "sound effect"?

H

HKFF

Active member
I couldn't find any thing on making the "phone conversation" sound effect anywhere, so I hope someone can help me here.

This is what I am trying to do: I have 2 people talking on the phone, person A and person B. Person A is shown talking on the phone, hearing person B through the phone (this is where I want this phone sound effect). Person B continues talk over to the next shot, where his voice changes to normal.

How can I make this sound effect? Can I do this in Avid do this, or do I need another program or plug in?
 
hi hkff-

most of your sound editing programs, like sound forge or pro tools will give you this option. its like when you use an 'effect' or 'transition' in avid or premiere or fcp, you use an effect or filter on the wave form. then, you would export that sound clip and voila.
 
Thank for the quick reply Rick,

I have Adobe After Effects 6.5 and Adobe Audition 1.0. Will either of those programs give me the effect I want? I'd rather not invest more money into sound forge or pro tools. (I'm broke!)
 
HKFF-

Try not to ever waste your time messing with the audio settings in AE. It will drive you batty. For one thing, AE is an awesome and incredibly powerful visual effects tool. It knows virtually nothing about sound. So, it just doesn't have what you are looking for. Even if it did, which it doesn't, you'd go nuts applying an effect to a sound then RAM previewing everything to hear the changes you've made. It's too laborious because it's not what AE does. Audition might. If it's an audio program. I am not familiar with it. But be sure to not look for effects that are titled, "phone conversation" effects. Most audio programs do not work this way. They deal with terms like, flange, or reverb, or equalizer. So, when you import the sound file into the program, you will have to roll your sleeves up and get down and dirty with the program to find what you are looking for. Chances are, "Audition" will be enough.

Rick
 
Drop an AudioSuite plug-in. I believe the graphic EQ filter has a preset for telephone, or you can create one by removing lows and highs and keep mids somewhat exaggerated.

Michael
 
What I've done in the past when non linear systems were just hitting the steets was for the Talent to call up on a normal phone with speaker facilty. Put them on speaker phone and record the sound via the speaker. Hey presto.........No Filters Required.
 
Just use your NLE to put a simple filter on your audio. Cut the audio where the context changes from the person talking through the phone, and when you are seeing them talk. When they are being heard through the phone, simply remove most or all of the low(bass) to their voice, and up the treble a bit. Keep it normal when they are seen talking.
 
... i tweak an EQ filter to drop most low freq and then add a slight distortion filter. you can vary the level of distortion to the quality of the connection as desired. sounds great.
 
Thanks everyone for your tips!!! I will have to find some time to experiement with audition. I think I might have access to soundforge, so I'll look into that too.

Constantine said:
Just use your NLE to put a simple filter on your audio. Cut the audio where the context changes from the person talking through the phone, and when you are seeing them talk. When they are being heard through the phone, simply remove most or all of the low(bass) to their voice, and up the treble a bit. Keep it normal when they are seen talking.
Click to expand...

Which filter do you use with which NLE?
 
Yeah, your primary goal with the audio track is to emphasize the higher frequencies and dampen the lower. I've done phone conversations before. I've screened out all bass and increased treble. If you want to take it a step further, you recompress that audio to the lowest sound quality as possible. That will do it.

Another option is one I have also done. That is, taking the audio, running it through a phone, and micing the audio on the receiving end via camera. That also works well, just make sure you're working in an acoustically acceptable room with no ambient noise. The audio will be considerably lower, which is a drawback of the technique, but it's the most realistic way to achieve the effect you're after.

Good luck, and let us know how it turns out!
 
I was going to just record the phone convo from an actual phone, but for learning purposes, I wanted to know how to do it through NLE. Always trying to learn more and more, you guys here at DVXuser are great.

Alright thanks guys! I'll let you guys know once I get the proper programs to work with audio. :)
 
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