Noiz2
Sound Ninja
There is this misconception that the BIG difference (sound-wise) between "Hollywood" big budget films is better production recording. Don't get me wrong that IS a big difference, but the BIGGEST difference is how those tracks are handled in post. As a rule almost nothing but dialog is used from the production tracks, and well air FOR the dialog track. NOTHING else.
The rest of the sound isn't even recorded on location for the most part. Things like footsteps and anything people touch, handle,etc will be Foleyed (or covered by FX or WIFO). FX will fill in all the backgrounds sounds and all the specifics (hard FX) like gunshots, doorbells, door opens and closes, car sounds, birds etc. For the most part these sounds will not come off of CD libraries you can buy, though some will. Most will be or have been recorded by the editors, facility, studio etc. Some will be recorded specifically for this film others will have been recorded for other films and then put in the "library".
The biggest asset a facility or editor has, other than their skill, is their "library". And editors trade and "loan" sounds to each other all the time and even from time to time sell them. Usually if you need a LOT of something that you know so and so has a LOT of then the show will buy use/ access to that library. But if I need a musket sound (this is an actual case) I posted to the post section on digi Users conference (though there are a number of other lists that would also work) and in less than an hour I had an email from an editor in Canada that just done a bunch of revolutionary reenactment recordings and sent me a link to 20 or so long files of musket shots and voleys and gobs of other good stuff.
It goes both ways I send a (now) friend in New Zealand some protools sessions that I had used for a Jackie Chan fight sequence. He was working on a no budget Nija flick. He sent me two CD's of recordings around New Zealand.
Anyway the point is commercial CD's are often limiting and if your spending less than $100/ disk are probably not very good. There are better options, like recording your own.
Once you have some recordings you are in a much better trading position. Every city sounds different, if you live in one go out and record it. Professional editors are always looking for stuff that was not recorded in NYC, LA or SanFrancisco.
Now that you have some sounds and your hot to replace things it's important to remember it's almost never a one to one deal. You should probably have two to three stereo tracks that are broad backgrounds (wind, "city roar", rain, backyard "air") and then you should have some specifics.
You're in an apartment say. You should throw in an occasional car by, an alarm chirp, maybe some voices in the street, a garbage truck etc. The idea is to make it a living place where life goes on.
So now you have maybe 7-8 tracks and you haven't even gotten to the hard FX yet! "Hard FX" are specifics that are linked to something you see or know is there. So for instance, door opens and closes (even if the door isn't in the shot). This is a very "see a dog hear a dog" stuff. If you see it you should hear it. That is going to take a bunch of tracks. For one thing a lot of hard FX are layered. A Kung Fu hit say is going to be three or four tracks on it's own. That door close might be two or three tracks.
Lets take a peek at those and you will see how just about everything can get "layered up". The KF hit: you want to have usually three "hits" one in the high register one in the mid and one low to add weight. You often also want a touch of whoosh. The high one adds "snap" the mid is your main sound and has a lot to do with the kind of hit. If things are wet then the mid hit is a really wet hit. The low one is just to add beef. Playing with the different levels and slight timing changes will give you a lot of variety in how the combo will sound (but don't keep using the same combo - keep 10 to 15 hits between repeats, because even though you can make them sound different the audience will pick up on the repeat if they are too close together). Often a little whoosh of the arm/ foot swinging into the hit will give you a MUCH harder hit. Whooshes are like salt a little enhances a lot tastes bad.
The Door: The door could be a single sound. But often it good to add some texture. Maybe a little hinge squeak, or security chain rattle, maybe the doorknob creeks a bit??? It depends on what kind of door it is and how important it is. Most doors are a one or two layer deal but some especially "high tech" or mechanical doors will have a stack of layers.
What are we up to now 15- 25 tracks or so.
Foley. Foley is not FX. Though it is similar and if you use Foley recorded for one show in a second show poof, now it's FX. It's kind of confusing but technically Foley is recording sounds IN SYNC to picture. If your not watching your movie and recording in sync your not doing Foley. Side note on a pet peeve, it's Foley not foley. It's named after the guy who invented it and his name was Foley, so even though it's used as a name of a process it's also a proper name and should be capitalized.
Anyway Foley is one thing often not done at all on no budget films. Truthfully you probably don't have the time or equipment to do a real Foley session with full coverage. What you can do that will work almost as well is a combo of more FX and WIFO. WIFO stands for WIld FOley. And if you look at my rant your saying THAT"S NOT FOLEY. yah I know but it's the movie biz where even cloths pins have strange names. Wild Foley is pretty much recording in sync with your memory of the film. Traditionally this was because it's hard to project 35mm in the field. Now it's often done to record something that will fit better if recorded in the "real world". I've use my house to record all kinds of WIFO. And the great part is it often just drops right in because it sounds like it happened in the space in the movie. So if you have a dinner scene and the camera made production unusable. Set up you dinning room table with similar items (you only need one place setting) and record the actions, either your best guess from memory or play the scene on a laptop etc. Do a few takes and do different takes for each character. You don't need to do everything but more is generally better. At least get silverware sounds and glass downs etc. This will add a huge amount of texture and believability to your track.
So now your at 20-30 tracks.
Anything that is clean AND useful in the production tracks, use. The biggest time savers are if you can get footsteps and cloth sounds. Cloth is usually done in the Foley session and is important if you do any ADR. It is simply some sound for all the soft stuff people are wearing, handling, sitting on etc. Usually it's just a loose sync track that is going to play very low when it's needed so that people actually sound like they are wearing clothes. It's often in production, if you can use it. The norm is to pull the "production FX" (PFX) on to there own tracks so the dialog tracks are JUST dialog. That isn't always possible even in big budget films and in no budget I usually only separate some. It gets tricky if the dialog needs a lot of tweaking because you often don't want to alter the PFX.
If you have done all of the above then if you need ADR your most of the way to making it fit since all the sounds you lost with the production you have replaced.
Dialog. Big films checkerboard characters and often put characters on their own track so they can be tweaked individually. I tend to even though in a no budget it's usually a wast of time. What you do get out of it is a familiarity with the tracks and that's good, also if you do need to work on the tracks they are already separated. You want to separate them out by problems anyway and you my want/ need to checkerboard cuts so you can smooth the edits. But in the end it usually doesn't make any sonic difference if you don't spend a few days pulling apart the dialog.
Now pretend there won't be any music and mix that baby. A good track shouldn't "need" any music. When you add the music it will be the special sauce that really polishes the track. And when you add the music decide in each case who is going to lead the scene, music or sound and have the other one get out of the way. Sometimes, well often it will change in the scene so I should probably say for every moment. But a touch of FX under a heavy score moment keeps the score in "the world" of the movie. BG's are more likely to go away under music and Foley is more likely to stay but?...
The above will get you a track that does not sound like a low budget film, that echoey empty "low budget" sound. Your film will have that full nuanced textured "Hollywood" sound. It takes time but it's not nec expensive. For a full on track the rule of thumb is 10-15 man-hours per screen minute plus a day per reel (10 min) to mix. You can cheat a little and the more you work the more you know how to cheat but it's still a lot of time. That 90 min no budget epic should take a single editor around 90-135 days (10 hour days) to finish. Assuming you cut a LOT of corners and get lucky your only going to cut that in half or so. After that your cutting into what is possible. Truthfully a lot of no budget films don't really need a full on treatment and it may make them "look" worse, if the visuals don't live up to the sound by a wide gap. But the closer you get to the above as a rule the better the film will come out "looking". A good sound track will look better through some magic in the brain. A great looking film with a bad track will not look as good as it really is to an audience.
One way to cheat is for scenes you know are going to be BIG score, don't do much coverage. Pick a few things that should be heard and then just skate the rest.
This turned out to kind of a novel but I didn't think it had been really covered here before.
The rest of the sound isn't even recorded on location for the most part. Things like footsteps and anything people touch, handle,etc will be Foleyed (or covered by FX or WIFO). FX will fill in all the backgrounds sounds and all the specifics (hard FX) like gunshots, doorbells, door opens and closes, car sounds, birds etc. For the most part these sounds will not come off of CD libraries you can buy, though some will. Most will be or have been recorded by the editors, facility, studio etc. Some will be recorded specifically for this film others will have been recorded for other films and then put in the "library".
The biggest asset a facility or editor has, other than their skill, is their "library". And editors trade and "loan" sounds to each other all the time and even from time to time sell them. Usually if you need a LOT of something that you know so and so has a LOT of then the show will buy use/ access to that library. But if I need a musket sound (this is an actual case) I posted to the post section on digi Users conference (though there are a number of other lists that would also work) and in less than an hour I had an email from an editor in Canada that just done a bunch of revolutionary reenactment recordings and sent me a link to 20 or so long files of musket shots and voleys and gobs of other good stuff.
It goes both ways I send a (now) friend in New Zealand some protools sessions that I had used for a Jackie Chan fight sequence. He was working on a no budget Nija flick. He sent me two CD's of recordings around New Zealand.
Anyway the point is commercial CD's are often limiting and if your spending less than $100/ disk are probably not very good. There are better options, like recording your own.
Once you have some recordings you are in a much better trading position. Every city sounds different, if you live in one go out and record it. Professional editors are always looking for stuff that was not recorded in NYC, LA or SanFrancisco.
Now that you have some sounds and your hot to replace things it's important to remember it's almost never a one to one deal. You should probably have two to three stereo tracks that are broad backgrounds (wind, "city roar", rain, backyard "air") and then you should have some specifics.
You're in an apartment say. You should throw in an occasional car by, an alarm chirp, maybe some voices in the street, a garbage truck etc. The idea is to make it a living place where life goes on.
So now you have maybe 7-8 tracks and you haven't even gotten to the hard FX yet! "Hard FX" are specifics that are linked to something you see or know is there. So for instance, door opens and closes (even if the door isn't in the shot). This is a very "see a dog hear a dog" stuff. If you see it you should hear it. That is going to take a bunch of tracks. For one thing a lot of hard FX are layered. A Kung Fu hit say is going to be three or four tracks on it's own. That door close might be two or three tracks.
Lets take a peek at those and you will see how just about everything can get "layered up". The KF hit: you want to have usually three "hits" one in the high register one in the mid and one low to add weight. You often also want a touch of whoosh. The high one adds "snap" the mid is your main sound and has a lot to do with the kind of hit. If things are wet then the mid hit is a really wet hit. The low one is just to add beef. Playing with the different levels and slight timing changes will give you a lot of variety in how the combo will sound (but don't keep using the same combo - keep 10 to 15 hits between repeats, because even though you can make them sound different the audience will pick up on the repeat if they are too close together). Often a little whoosh of the arm/ foot swinging into the hit will give you a MUCH harder hit. Whooshes are like salt a little enhances a lot tastes bad.
The Door: The door could be a single sound. But often it good to add some texture. Maybe a little hinge squeak, or security chain rattle, maybe the doorknob creeks a bit??? It depends on what kind of door it is and how important it is. Most doors are a one or two layer deal but some especially "high tech" or mechanical doors will have a stack of layers.
What are we up to now 15- 25 tracks or so.
Foley. Foley is not FX. Though it is similar and if you use Foley recorded for one show in a second show poof, now it's FX. It's kind of confusing but technically Foley is recording sounds IN SYNC to picture. If your not watching your movie and recording in sync your not doing Foley. Side note on a pet peeve, it's Foley not foley. It's named after the guy who invented it and his name was Foley, so even though it's used as a name of a process it's also a proper name and should be capitalized.
Anyway Foley is one thing often not done at all on no budget films. Truthfully you probably don't have the time or equipment to do a real Foley session with full coverage. What you can do that will work almost as well is a combo of more FX and WIFO. WIFO stands for WIld FOley. And if you look at my rant your saying THAT"S NOT FOLEY. yah I know but it's the movie biz where even cloths pins have strange names. Wild Foley is pretty much recording in sync with your memory of the film. Traditionally this was because it's hard to project 35mm in the field. Now it's often done to record something that will fit better if recorded in the "real world". I've use my house to record all kinds of WIFO. And the great part is it often just drops right in because it sounds like it happened in the space in the movie. So if you have a dinner scene and the camera made production unusable. Set up you dinning room table with similar items (you only need one place setting) and record the actions, either your best guess from memory or play the scene on a laptop etc. Do a few takes and do different takes for each character. You don't need to do everything but more is generally better. At least get silverware sounds and glass downs etc. This will add a huge amount of texture and believability to your track.
So now your at 20-30 tracks.
Anything that is clean AND useful in the production tracks, use. The biggest time savers are if you can get footsteps and cloth sounds. Cloth is usually done in the Foley session and is important if you do any ADR. It is simply some sound for all the soft stuff people are wearing, handling, sitting on etc. Usually it's just a loose sync track that is going to play very low when it's needed so that people actually sound like they are wearing clothes. It's often in production, if you can use it. The norm is to pull the "production FX" (PFX) on to there own tracks so the dialog tracks are JUST dialog. That isn't always possible even in big budget films and in no budget I usually only separate some. It gets tricky if the dialog needs a lot of tweaking because you often don't want to alter the PFX.
If you have done all of the above then if you need ADR your most of the way to making it fit since all the sounds you lost with the production you have replaced.
Dialog. Big films checkerboard characters and often put characters on their own track so they can be tweaked individually. I tend to even though in a no budget it's usually a wast of time. What you do get out of it is a familiarity with the tracks and that's good, also if you do need to work on the tracks they are already separated. You want to separate them out by problems anyway and you my want/ need to checkerboard cuts so you can smooth the edits. But in the end it usually doesn't make any sonic difference if you don't spend a few days pulling apart the dialog.
Now pretend there won't be any music and mix that baby. A good track shouldn't "need" any music. When you add the music it will be the special sauce that really polishes the track. And when you add the music decide in each case who is going to lead the scene, music or sound and have the other one get out of the way. Sometimes, well often it will change in the scene so I should probably say for every moment. But a touch of FX under a heavy score moment keeps the score in "the world" of the movie. BG's are more likely to go away under music and Foley is more likely to stay but?...
The above will get you a track that does not sound like a low budget film, that echoey empty "low budget" sound. Your film will have that full nuanced textured "Hollywood" sound. It takes time but it's not nec expensive. For a full on track the rule of thumb is 10-15 man-hours per screen minute plus a day per reel (10 min) to mix. You can cheat a little and the more you work the more you know how to cheat but it's still a lot of time. That 90 min no budget epic should take a single editor around 90-135 days (10 hour days) to finish. Assuming you cut a LOT of corners and get lucky your only going to cut that in half or so. After that your cutting into what is possible. Truthfully a lot of no budget films don't really need a full on treatment and it may make them "look" worse, if the visuals don't live up to the sound by a wide gap. But the closer you get to the above as a rule the better the film will come out "looking". A good sound track will look better through some magic in the brain. A great looking film with a bad track will not look as good as it really is to an audience.
One way to cheat is for scenes you know are going to be BIG score, don't do much coverage. Pick a few things that should be heard and then just skate the rest.
This turned out to kind of a novel but I didn't think it had been really covered here before.
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