Making conversations or crowd sounds unintelligible

E

eco_bach

Well-known member
Hi
I shooting a small crowd scene of anywhere from 10-20 people. I need to somehow use the natural recorded audio and ambience but make most of the recorded voices somehow unintelligible, sort of like walla, but it still has to sound natural.


Does this make any sense?


Is there any way to do this?
 
Not clear what you think is wrong with walla? The whole point of walla is to sound "natural".
If it doesn't sound natural, then you aren't doing it right. There are different phrases for different locations/languages.
 
let the people say "wala" for about 3min.... or let them say baba, or whawa or whabawa wala ba

But take care no one suddenly shouts "I love Judy !!!"
 
Thanks
Was hoping there was some easy effect in post to massage the audio, and make it unintelligible while still sounding natural.
 
First rule: IT CAN NOT BE FIXED IN POST.

If you remember that all the time, you're (almost) always good.

The only thing that could help is adding 1000 ton of reverb... But then it also has to fit. For example people in a museum or church or big room you can add some reverb to make it unitelligible.
And then have a few layers ... But it has to fit...if you have 5000 people, it can fit...if you have only 3 people...it doesn't fit
 
Is your "crowd" consciously participating in your production? Or are you shooting "Candid Camera"?
Are you not able to instruct them what to say? It is MUCH MUCH easier to have the crowd do it
than to try to do it in post. For that matter MOST things are easier to do in production than in post.
 
Another fix in post is to have lots of different tracks available in your sound fx library and pick the ones that suit the scene!
 
First, your "crowd" should be mostly silent while shooting the main actors, they need to mime all their conversations.

After you've shot the scene you then get the extras to do the walla. As dre83 mentioned you get some to say walla, some to say babba, wawwa, blah blah, etc. The actors should have "conversations" amongst each other using these "words". Make sure that you get a crowd sound appropriate to the scene, and you may want to get a few different performances (quiet, medium, loud) and a few different perspectives; make them long. Afterwards get some individual laughs, etc. to blend in with what you see when the scene is edited together. Mix well and, voilá! believable crowd walla.

If your walla is already recorded I hope you have a lot of it; you will need to edit out any "intelligible" speech, and you will probably have to loop it. "Dumbing" it down with EQ or reverb will definitely sound inferior, but, then again, you may have no choice at this point. BTW, there are lots of good walla clips available from various sound FX libraries.
 
I get that, but I think it would depend on the contrast between the level for the background "crowd sound" and the level(s) of the other tracks. Maybe split it to two tracks; one running forward and the other reversed adjusting the level of each until it sounds as best it can. Then, make a judgment call.
 
if it's all wawahaababawaababwaaawababababawa then it could work... But I thought that Terry ment with "understandable" phrases ?
 
Just take the same track and multiply it over itself however many times necessary so that you have several different out of sync layers. Decrease the volume as needed and, wala (that's the pun, I know how to spell voila!).
 
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