Mixing audio for feature length

K

Kingshighway77

Member
Ok everyone,

I am a part of a student film at Quinnipiac University called The Mercury Cycle, being produced by our school's film society. It is a feature length film and I am doing all of the post sound work. So I will be doing ADR and mixing and effects and all that.

My questions is: What is the best way to work with a feature length film for audio editing. I would imagine working in protools with a video track would be good, but I'm not sure how that would work. I feel like I would need to do each scene separate and then put the movie back together with the finished audio in final cut.

Does anyone know a good way to work with a lot of tracks of audio for a feature length film?
 
That's a big question. Lot's involved to do a proper job.

Usually, it's broken up into Acts or Reels, and the sound is grouped into sections, ie ADR, dialog, foley, ambience, backgrounds, fx, music...etc, then those groups are mixed down into stems, usually an A and a B stem or more if needed, and those stems are used for the final mix.
 
Definitely focus on small sections at a time, and also on track groups at the same time. Focus on dialog scene by scene, then the sound effects, then backgrounds, then music (granted not necessarily in that order and you can break up the work however you like) and then in the final mix you'll have everything up and running at the same time and that's when you tweak everything to flow together. Breaking everything up early just helps most people focus better and work faster since they're not overwhelmed with all the work.
 
Forgot to mention Timecode. Very important. Once picture is locked, have timecode striped on the video and make sure you know if it's 24p, 23.976, 29.97 DROP Frame, or NON-Drop....etc and sync video TC with Protools or your audio editing program's timecode.
 
David Yewdall's book "The Practical Art of Motion Picture Sound" is an excellent place to start.

Of course, we could all fill pages with tips, tricks and tutorials. If you have more specific questions, there are plenty of folks around here who'll be happy to help. Here are a few rules to get you started:

Out of synch = out of work
If it sounds right, it is right.
Always double-check that the reverb is being printed to the stems, rather than just to the master output.
Your mix will only ever be as good as your monitoring setup.
 
Thanks. I am past beginner for audio mixing. I actually do recording engineering and mixing and stuff for bands.

I am just trying to figure out the workflow to go from a final cut file to pro tools to do audio and then back to final cut again.
 
Well first don't make the mistake in thinking that mixing music and mixing a film are the same skill. They have a lot less in common than you would think.

Since your on a low/no budget and you have no idea what conforming is (I took a leap there but I would be surprised if you know how to conform given the question) You want to work only with the finished LOCKED picture. That is the way 90% of lower budgeted films work. It's hard and expensive to conform to picture changes. On a feature like your describing, if I'm the only editor I would do it in one big session in ProTools. I will group tracks of similar types (Foley, ADR, Dialog, FX, Music) and I will usually bus them all to their own submasters and bus those to a PrintMaster track. I will often be collecting sounds and spotting to a rough cut but I don't actually start working till I get the final cut and OMF.
When you done editing, mixing etc. You take your PrinMaster (which is the same length as the video) and bring that back to FCP. Snap the heads together and you should be good to go.

You don't want to do any audio work in FCP. FCP's audio functions are not up to the task. That's not a cut FCP is a picture editing app.

TC is actually not that big a deal in a file based Audio post work flow. If your dealing with transports and tape decks its a HUGE deal, but FCP to PT and back your not going to be using TC to sync anything.

I would also take a trip over to the DUC and look at the post section. Films are mixed by ear in calibrated rooms. So it's very important to set up your playback system correctly.
 
You've gotten lots of good advice already. Here's some from a guy who does lots of low/no/micro budget indie stuff in PT LE.

The first problem I have is track and processing power limitations, so I set up sessions for each aspect of audio post - dialog, Foley, sound FX and music.

The first thing I do is work on the production sound, which is usually fair to poor. I request the OMF with ten (10) second handles; there usually aren't any room tones so I have to create them from those few extra seconds here and there. Planning ahead here is important as you may have multiple scenes in the same location. I first separate the individual clips by the noise, the top tracks are the "best" and the lowest tracks are the "worst." Then I do the noise reduction. When clean-up is complete I re-organize by character (in a new session) and run a reference mix. During the dialog work I also put together my cue sheets for Foley and sound FX.

I create a Foley session and pull in the reference dialog mix; for me Foley is the most tedious because I have to do it all by myself - set up the props and the mics, run into the control room and hit record, run back out and do the Foley, run back into the control room and listen, run back out and choose different props or move the mics, run back into the control room and hit record... I generally do one character at a time so that the Foley work is "in character", so to speak. The Foley tracks are organized by character as well.

The next session is the sound FX, it's the most fun so I save it for last.

Hopefully the score and songs are ready to by spotted by this time. I set up a music editing session and get cutting.

When all this is done I import the organized tracks from the dialog, Foley, sound FX and music sessions into "master" session and start tweaking.

This is a very simplified overview; much depends upon the individual project. I may have numerous Foley sessions, especially if there is lots of ADR (separate sessions as well), or sound FX sessions by type - weapons, vehicles, etc.

When it comes to mixing on dialog heavy narratives I can usually do one long mix, if the project is more action oriented I may have to break it up by reels or just by scenes where the sound FX and Foley are especially heavy but have little dialog.

My favorite projects are when I can do all of the "donkey work" at home and then bring all of the sessions into someplace nice for the final tweaking and the mix.

Your first feature is exciting and tremendously scary. The good thing is you can screw up a thousand times and no one will know; none of the mistakes make it into the final product.
 
Thanks everyone, the last two groups of feedback have been very helpful. Luckily I can do a lot of recording out of my own home studio. I have studio monitors and decent equipment for recording. I will also be able to mix the entire filim on a pro tools HD setup in a beautiful editing room. Doing separate sessions for foley/ADR/SFX and then having another session to mix the entire thing seems like the most logical to me.

Thank you everyone for the help so far. I'm really excited to mix audio for a feature film.
 
UBob's method is actually closer to traditional "big budget" audio post flow. On a "big" film you generally have different editors for FX, Foley, Dialog, and ADR. THose all get premixed to stems, the premix stems are brought to the final mix. So the final is mostly mixing the premixes and adding music and "fixes". I'm on a HD system so I'm not so worried about track count and find it easier to have it all in one place, but I still work on it basically with the same flow as UBob. A downside to my flow is that it is easy to "cheat" and do some fun stuff and procrastinate doing some of the boring/ frustrating dialog repair. I haven't dealt with production the same way as UBob (two separate sessions) but it makes a lot of sense, so I think I'll try that on my next film. Plus it would force me to focus on the dialog... I also usually pull what production FX (if any) that I think are usable or I need to replace down to a PFX track. Often non of this gets used but I want it as a reference and I don't want it in the dialog tracks.

One big savings that is sometimes possible with micro budget films is that often the music is already in place. So if you KNOW the music is going to dominate a scene you can go light on things like BG's that you would have to pull down anyway and focus on things like Foley that can cut through with out stepping on the music. Traditionally everything gets covered and then all the work you did on scenes with BIG score are wasted.

Also I've said this elsewhere but audio post takes TIME. Low budget filmmakers rarely realize or budget for the amount of time it takes to do a good post sound job. I have talked to people up and down the scale and my own experience is that for that "Hollywood" polished sound it takes 10 -15 man-hours per screen minute in editorial Plus mixing time. Your probably never going to get that and there are ways to maximize your bang for the buck but your still looking at probably 5 hours per screen minute. If you don't have a lot of experience and you don't have a big sound library and you don't have relatively easy access to a way to do Foley and ADR then the number starts creeping up.

One cheat that often works really well is to do semi wild Foley and ADR. If the ADR scene is in a room and you have a room that is sort of the same in your house/ studio do the ADR in that room. You will save hours of trying to make it "fit" the rest of the sound. Foley is often even easier. You can set op the mics, or use a portable recorder and play back the video on a laptop or iPod. If you record it in the right space you can often drop it in with little extra work. Of course all this depends on being able to record out of the studio and a quiet enough space so that the recordings don't have a lot of BG sound on them. I even did ADR in my back yard for one short. I live in San Francisco so I got luck with traffic but... That ADR dropped in and sounded like production with out processing, saving way more time than the setup cost. Even big films do this sometimes (Foley not the ADR).

Good luck

Cheers
SK


Kingshighway77 said:
Thanks everyone, the last two groups of feedback have been very helpful. Luckily I can do a lot of recording out of my own home studio. I have studio monitors and decent equipment for recording. I will also be able to mix the entire filim on a pro tools HD setup in a beautiful editing room. Doing separate sessions for foley/ADR/SFX and then having another session to mix the entire thing seems like the most logical to me.

Thank you everyone for the help so far. I'm really excited to mix audio for a feature film.
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