Post production sound

[Chamber005]

So I'm a ways off from having to cross this bridge, but I'm trying to keep everything moving at a steady pace.

Basically I'm wondering about post sound work. I have a person doing the actual recording of the sound, but as for the final mixing, etc. I don't think he's going to be my guy. Doesn't have the kind of professional set-up I think he'd need to make the thing shine. Also, he's not an "artist", ya know? He doesn't have that perspective. More of a tradesman.

So I guess I'm just wondering, overall, since I'm not going to be using my on-set sound person to do the post work, what exactly am I having the person in post do?

Can I give them the edited footage (obviously with dialog already synched) and they'll do all of the foley work and final mixing?

And who should I be hiring for this position? What exactly is their title? Sound designer?

I'm really trying to throw as much of the budget as is possible at the sound so that the final mix is as close to professional-sounding as we can achieve.

Thanks!

 

[Alex H.]

What NLE do you use?

Typically, you'd send a reference Quicktime video (compressed to a manageable size) and either an OMF or an AAF. Both OMF and AAF are file types that allow the audio from your edited project to be exported, tracks, regions, and placement intact. Your post sound designer will then be able to import the OMF/AAF and create a (nominally ProTools) session that looks almost exactly like the audio tracks from your NLE. The video will then be imported, lined up with the audio, and the work will commence with things like this:

- Edit dialog for smoothness and continuity
- Edit nats/ambience
- Edit any FX already in the project
- Add FX (pre-recorded) or Foley (recorded live-to-picture in post)
- Smooth out any music edits that exist, add music if needed/requested
- Add EQ/compression/etc. as needed
- Mix all tracks down to a stereo image
- Any mastering processing (compression/EQ/limiting)
- Bounce a WAV out that is then sent back to you.

You'll get the stereo mix WAV, replace the audio in your project with the mix, and then master your finished project to tape, video file, DVD< etc.

That's the quick and dirty version. Those list items may not happen in that exact order, depending on the individual's workflow. On the big-budget features (and even some low-budget by Hollywood standards), many of those list items have their own people/teams that work on them. It's a process of editing, sweetening, and mixing.

In the indie world, these are usually done on a much smaller scale, often by one person, and in much less time. Look for some one with his/her own *DAW who knows how to mix for film. The beauty part nowadays is that it doesn't even have to be local. With the Interwebs, and with the convenience of file transfer, you can send the OMF/AAF and reference video across the country in seconds, and they can send the mix back in seconds. I have my own FTP site, so when clients are out of town they can post their OMF files straight to my website... it really is very handy.

*Know your sound designer! I got roped into an indie feature a couple years ago, finishing up the Final Cut edit. It was sent to the composer, who insisted on mixing it as well. There's not enough room here to tell you what all was wrong with the audio when it came back, but suffice it to say that it sounded like crap. Somehow, there was an added noise floor, even in the silence/slug (?!). He also mixed in "5.1 surround," but the surround stems were out of alignemnt, and the film never warranted a surround mix. When I got my DVCAM master reel back, it was saturated with cigarrette smoke (label was yellowed, too). His sound work is awful, just awful. The producer/director is green, and didn't know any better. This is just the tip of the ice berg... there is so much more I could say. The project came back a couple months ago. I'm mixing it this time. Just be sure to listen to examples of work if you can... and listen critically. Had we really studied other samples of this guy's work, I'd have been mixing it the first time.

 

[Chamber005]

What NLE do you use?

Typically, you'd send a reference Quicktime video (compressed to a manageable size) and either an OMF or an AAF. Both OMF and AAF are file types that allow the audio from your edited project to be exported, tracks, regions, and placement intact. Your post sound designer will then be able to import the OMF/AAF and create a (nominally ProTools) session that looks almost exactly like the audio tracks from your NLE. The video will then be imported, lined up with the audio, and the work will commence with things like this:

- Edit dialog for smoothness and continuity
- Edit nats/ambience
- Add FX (pre-recorded) or Foley (recorded live-to-picture in post)
- Smooth out any music edits that exist, add music if needed/requested
- Add EQ/compression/etc. as needed
- Mix all tracks down to a stereo image
- Any mastering processing (compression/EQ/limiting)
- Bounce a WAV out that is then sent back to you.

You'll get the stereo mix WAV, replace the audio in your project with the mix, and then master your finished project to tape, video file, DVD< etc.

That's the quick and dirty version. Those list items may not happen in that exact order, depending on the individual's workflow. On the big-budget features (and even some low-budget by Hollywood standards), many of those list items have their own people/teams that work on them. It's a process of editing, sweetening, and mixing.

In the indie world, these are usually done on a much smaller scale, often by one person, and in much less time.

I'm just using CS4's Adobe Premier Pro.

So you're saying I shouldn't clean up the dialog tracks at all on my own, right (using Soundbooth)? I should leave that up to the guy with all the fancy equipment? On my end, for sound, I should just synch and edit?

Should I put the foley stuff in the mix where it belongs or should I just give him a long wav list of all the foley sounds recorded on set and give him something like a time cue sheet? It seems like it might make sense to give him the sounds separately just in case he has a better sound on file that might sound more robust than the one we recorded.

And do you think I should grab someone here in Chicago or do you think I should grab whoever is going to be the best at the best price (using online sources, etc)?

 

[Alex H.]

I'm just using CS4's Adobe Premier Pro.

You can export your audio to an OMF.

So you're saying I shouldn't clean up the dialog tracks at all on my own, right (using Soundbooth)? I should leave that up to the guy with all the fancy equipment? On my end, for sound, I should just synch and edit?

Don't do anything destructive (in other words, anything that cannot be undone by your sound editor).

Should I put the foley stuff in the mix where it belongs or should I just give him a long wav list of all the foley sounds recorded on set and give him something like a time cue sheet? It seems like it might make sense to give him the sounds separately just in case he has a better sound on file that might sound more robust than the one we recorded.

If you put your FX (it is not Foley... and that's a capital F... unless it is recorded live to picture in post-production) into your edit, they will export with the OMF. That's a lot less of a hassle for the next person to handle than a disc of WAV files and a spot sheet. If your sound editor/designer has better FX, s/he can always replace what's already in the project.

And do you think I should grab someone here in Chicago or do you think I should grab whoever is going to be the best at the best price (using online sources, etc)?

Depends on what you can find in Chicago, or elsewhere.

 

[nyquist-x]

Well, there are several things that you´ve to consider when doing sound for films, like:

What kind of material are you filming (action . drama . indie . short film . long film)
Foley (can be used or you can use library sounds)
ADR (can be used or not)
Sound designer (record and create sounds)
Music (recorded or royalty)

All those things sadly depends on Timming and Budget and if you´ve both and a crew of professional people, it´s very probably that you´ll end with a good soundtrack.

I think that at least, you need an Sound Designer who can provide all sound that must be used, a Foley Artist to complement with picture what sound designer can´t achieve, a Editor who can work on SFX, Dialog, BG´s (if you can have 1 editor for each task, better) and finally a Mixer Engineer (or re-recorder mixer) and the Sound Supervisor.

Probably the best way to couple a project with the sound guys must be using OMF´s from the edit suite and bringing the location sound files to the editing suite.

Of course, this kind of issues are very different from project to project (depends on the scale). Here in Argentine we´re very used to doing several things at once, like cut SFX, cleaning dialog, editing and mixing... all the same sound person!

Hope it helps.

 

[unclebob6958]

Hey Chamber -

I'm one of the does-it-all audio post guys for the indie community. C2V gave a pretty good summary of the process, and as NyQuist said it's all a matter of your time frame and budget.

The person in charge of all things audio is the Supervising Sound Editor. S/he is in charge of all of the sound editors and is the audio liaison with the director and also with the composer and score recorders/mixers. The Sound Designer, who may or may not be the Supervising Sound Editor, is in charge of the artistic approach and tone or mood of the sound. On the film "Titanic" Christopher Boyes was the Sound Designer and Tom Bellfort was the Supervising Sound Editor. Ben Burtt was the Sound Designer and the Supervising Sound Editor on "Wall-E." Ben (as well as many others like Randy Thom) is a very hands-on guy, capturing and creating sounds himself; he was even Wall-Es voice. It is not unusual for either the Supervising Sound Editor or the Sound Designer - or both - to be the Rerecording Mixer.

Guys like me offer a range of services to the low/micro budget community. My least expensive (and most popular) option is the "Fix 'n' Mix" - clean up the dialog, very basic sound FX, spot the music and mix. I also do the complete package - clean/edit the dialog, ADR, Foley, Sound FX, Music Editing and the final mix. It can be a long and, at least to the low/no/micro budget crowd, very expensive process. One thing that they always seem to opt out on is the Foley, which, aside from a mix on a real mix stage, puts the final touches on the sound of a film and gives it that professional polish.

The smaller your budget the more you will have to do on your own to save money such as spotting all of your wild FX and the music so your audio post guy/gal won't have to do it. As with everything else involved with filmmaking audio post involves quite bit of preplanning; in fact, you should be considering the overall sound of your film during preproduction.

 

[nyquist-x]

you should be considering the overall sound of your film during preproduction.

So true... sad that not everybody thinks like that :kali:

Well Bob, I must admit that I´m one of those one-man-band too. In the positive side, I work mostly for TV ads, so, it´s not as hard as a movie or shortfilm (less channel count). I record the Voiceover talents, run the ADR´s sessions with actors/actress, spot sfx from libraries and recording some foley too when needed (we´ve a very small vocal booth with no appliances at all), sometimes the director ask for a specific kind of music, to present the offline cut of the movie, so I´m in charge of that too, and almost in every work I´ve to create a combined sound for a specific cue, so, that would be sound designing (or a little try at least). I always premix as close to the final result, because I find that the workflow is so tight when you leave the client´s comment/changes to the end of the process, so, when offline is approved with a almost fullmix, we remix and go to online.

In the negative side, I hardly get satisfied with the result or hardly have the time to create something original, there´s almost no space for experimentation.

One of the things that I learned the hard way, it´s that a professional result is a combination of excellent professional crew (+ a lot of people involved in the audio process), good time managment, budget to fulfill the creative need of those pros and good gear, that doesn´t limit the creativity of the audio guys. Of course, this equation doesn´t seen often, even in the really pro studios (Fox, Skywalker, Warner).

The other day I saw a webinar from Avid site, showing the workflow on Pro Tools (using ICONs) and templates of Scott Webber - ReRecording Mixer of LOST. Well, that video really show how the pro´s manage to deliver on time!

http://forms.avid.com/forms/posticonweber?INTCMP=AV-IN-DBSW4

Fernando

 

[Chamber005]

Hey Chamber -

I'm one of the does-it-all audio post guys for the indie community. C2V gave a pretty good summary of the process, and as NyQuist said it's all a matter of your time frame and budget.

The person in charge of all things audio is the Supervising Sound Editor. S/he is in charge of all of the sound editors and is the audio liaison with the director and also with the composer and score recorders/mixers. The Sound Designer, who may or may not be the Supervising Sound Editor, is in charge of the artistic approach and tone or mood of the sound. On the film "Titanic" Christopher Boyes was the Sound Designer and Tom Bellfort was the Supervising Sound Editor. Ben Burtt was the Sound Designer and the Supervising Sound Editor on "Wall-E." Ben (as well as many others like Randy Thom) is a very hands-on guy, capturing and creating sounds himself; he was even Wall-Es voice. It is not unusual for either the Supervising Sound Editor or the Sound Designer - or both - to be the Rerecording Mixer.

Guys like me offer a range of services to the low/micro budget community. My least expensive (and most popular) option is the "Fix 'n' Mix" - clean up the dialog, very basic sound FX, spot the music and mix. I also do the complete package - clean/edit the dialog, ADR, Foley, Sound FX, Music Editing and the final mix. It can be a long and, at least to the low/no/micro budget crowd, very expensive process. One thing that they always seem to opt out on is the Foley, which, aside from a mix on a real mix stage, puts the final touches on the sound of a film and gives it that professional polish.

The smaller your budget the more you will have to do on your own to save money such as spotting all of your wild FX and the music so your audio post guy/gal won't have to do it. As with everything else involved with filmmaking audio post involves quite bit of preplanning; in fact, you should be considering the overall sound of your film during preproduction.

So what are cost approximations with post-production sound stuff at the different tiers?

 

[DrDave]

Different people use different software packages and use different mastering techniques. Some of the higher end daws are designed to work with video, and some of NLE's have pretty good audio features. Vegas and Premiere both have good sound apps, although I don't use them except for a little gain tweaking. Many of these NLEs run DX or VST plugins that form the core of a mastering studio. One question you need to ask, are there any really difficult noise removal issues? Then you may want to go with someone who has access to a Cedar system or experience with Spectral Analysis for noise reduction. Another question is whether you need a lot of acoustical modeling, like in and out of cars, phone booths and so on. Ask for a sample of these kinds of work, like removing a sneeze or a car horn, but send in your own sample, obviously.
Some people will give you a package price, others will charge an hourly rate. Some will charge an hourly rate and subcontract it out, so it is sometimes nice to go with a smaller outfit. Often, however, the smaller companies do not have access to the very expensive toys. It is an interesting question whether a package deal is a good deal or not, after all, the people most in demand would simply charge a high hourly rate. As to what that rate is, ask around, but I would imagine the low would be 65 and the high would be 250. If you are hiring a "team" you will pay a lot more, but what are you getting? Half the movies have bad sound and bad music. I'd love to have the "Pirates of the Caribbean I" guy do my surround mix, and the "Kill Bill I" crew do my sound effects, but I'm sure it is too expensive, so I'll do it myself

 

[Alex H.]

So what are cost approximations with post-production sound stuff at the different tiers?

This also really depends on the project, too. Are you planning for a feature, or short, or is this something for your webisodes?

And worthy of note, ADR is the only thing that is much harder/more expensive to do remotely. That may be something that you find yourself better off hiring for in town. Even at that, if you find your audio post services outside Chicago, you can send the ADR session out to the post facility (it's much easier if you have the ADR facility and the post mixing facility on the same system).

 

[unclebob6958]

So what are cost approximations with post-production sound stuff at the different tiers?

I'm not going to post my rates; sorry...

At the "Hollywood" level it's 2.5% to 10% of the budget, figure anywhere from 10 to 60 man-hours per linear minute of film. So for a 100 minute film that's 1,000 to 6,000 man-hours of audio post work (at least that is what I've been told). Of course, you'll have a team of dozens of people getting the job done in three months or less. Just for fun, Skywalker Sound has 36 sound editing rooms, six dubbing stages, a scoring stage and a 300 seat screening room plus Foley stages and ADR suites.

At the low/no/micro-budget indie level people like myself just try to shoehorn as much as we can into the budget. You have to keep in mind the limitations under which you and your sound supervisor/designer are working; you have a small budget; your sound supervisor/designer does not have a multi-million dollar facility with a multi-faceted staff. You also have to consider the type of film it is; a drama is much less sound intensive than an action/adventure film, a period piece requires period sounds, etc. The quality of your production sound will have a huge influence on your audio post budget; crappy production sound means extensive/expensive noise reduction and probably long, tedious ADR sessions with talent inexperienced with the ADR process (and you will probably end up with sub-par ADR dialog performances). If you are under time constraints there is only so much that can be done unless you want to spend more money. You are probably not going to mix in a true rerecording/dubbing room, which is, in essence, a theatre with a huge mixing console (hooked into a massive Pro Tools system) in the center of the room.

I'm starting a feature after the holidays, as a matter of fact. After importing all of the files and setting up the primary OMF session my first step will be the clean-up and editing the production sound. While doing that I will put together the ADR cue sheet and my sound effect & Foley cue sheets. I'll then prioritize and begin putting together my sound set. I'll just keep adding the layers in order of priority (rough mixing as I go) until three weeks before the deadline. The score and source music are due then which is when I begin the mix. I pre-mix for two weeks and then another week with the client for the final mix. It's as simple as that and immensely more complicated.

I hope that this has been a help.

 

[Noiz2]

I like Bob and some others here do a lot of one man band micro budget shows. Bob was about right with the rates, average for "normal" budget Hollywood features is around 5% of the total budget. At The Saul Zaentz Film Center (English Patient, Amudaus, most John Waters films, Mosquito Coast, Dead Poets Society, etc) which did a pretty wide range of films the lowest budget template they had was for $125,000 not counting music rights and Dolby licenses. You could get on their mix stage for $350/ hour, Skywalker's rate was around $450/ hr at the most discounted. Titanic was around $1,500,000 for the sound post.
I talked to Randy Thom once about post sound time and we came to the numbers of 15 manhours per screen minute for editorial as pretty average and then whatever you spend mixing, usually three to four weeks if your on a mix stage (though I did a feature in two white knuckle days once (but we did about 150 hours of premixing at my place first)). All of this is based on aiming at a "Hollywood" sounding film, if that isn't your goal then things will be different.

My rates vary all over the place but are not (unfortunately) very close to the good old days at the Ranch et all. I have yet to do one on an hourly, and even BIG films are bid at a fixed amount for X services (and then they almost always have stuff added). The editors and staff are working on an hourly but the producer is paying based on the bid. My bids are based on the amount of work involved and the time frame (if you want it cheap then your deadline needs to be really flexible so that I can take on other paying work if it shows up). And the quality of the projects and the individuals involved also will effect the price.

Music and film mixing are different beasts. So someone who does a lot of pop music mixes is probably not your first choice, unless they have also done a lot of film mixing.

NLE's are NOT decent sound post workstations.
Foley is capitalized because it's someone's name and by tradition.
Foley is important but you can cheat a lot of it with FX work and even big films don't usually schedule much Foley time. Foley can also be a big time saver if you can get it done well. I've done a lot of ad's with a friend and when he built his studio putting in a Foley room was a top priority. We have often done more Foley for a 30 sec ad than is done for a lot of features.
"Sound designer" is a kind of meaningless title in film. It has a well defined meaning in theatre and I was quite surprised that there really wasn't a similar role in film. Skywalker's definition is closer to a hired gun FX creator than the person with the "vision" of the film. It of course changes a bit person to person but in general the person that works with the director on the over all "vision' of the film sound track is the Supervising Sound Editor. That will shift more to the Lead FX editor (or poss. sound designer) if the SSE is not an FX editor (some are ADR and or Dialog editors). Usually where the SD is more in the drivers seat they are also the SSE and often also one of the Mixers. Big film use two or three mixers on the final and sometimes many more on the premixes.

One reason that a lot of Sound Dsigners are also mixers is that up till a few years ago the Sound Designer was ineligible for any of the sound categories at the Oscars. Gary Rydstrom, probably one of the best known Sound Designers has eight Oscars, but they are all as a mixer. Chris Boyes would not have been eligible for the Oscar on Titanic if he hadn't also been one of the mixers (he did some of the premixing).