Question about doing room tone.

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ironpony

Carbonite Member
When I am suppose to record room tone, do I still leave all the appliances in the room switched off, as I would while recording dialogue, or am I suppose to turn them on? Another thing is, what if I don't particular like the room tone as much in the location? Can I choose the room tone of a different room, other than what we shot in, or must I use the tone of that same room? Thanks.
 
Unless you're in one of those special acoustic chambers no place is truly silent. Room tone adds that subtle "curtain" of background that makes things believable. You don't HAVE to use the same room for background, but if it's too acoustically different it will be noticeable. You definitely DON'T want cars, appliances, machinery, barking dogs, airplanes, spouses, etc on your either your tone or dialogue track. All these should be added as separate tracks in post IF they add to the scene.
 
Well there is once scene I had to ADR, cause we couldn't get a sound guy for any of the days the location was available. So I decided to go crazy and shoot without a guy, video only. I was acting in this shot as well as directing, so I couldn't hold the mic. Me and the other actor recorded our lines in a room with carpet, since all my dubbing equipment is there, and I plan to make to add reverb, since the location was wide and had no carpet in. But I can still go back and record the tone of that non-carpeted location, but would that help?
 
Don't confuse room tone with ambient sound. Try an experiment ... in as quiet a location as you can muster, record yourself saying "My ... dog ... has ... fleas." pausing a few beats between each word. Next record the same phrase speaking normally without pauses, drop the track into your editor, and add pauses between the words by cutting and slipping the remainder forward leaving silence in the gap. Listen to the recordings. You notice the one made by editing the speech sounds 'dead' in the gaps between the words compared to the one made by actually pausing the speech itself as it was recorded. That's room tone in action, the unique 'sound of silence' in the space. It lets the editor cut up the original scene and bridge the gaps with 'silence' that reflects the character of the space where the recording being edited was made. Room tone should be recorded in the same location as the original dialog, with all the people and equipment in the same place, and with the same mics and audio chain, as was used to record the original dialog it's going to be used to tie together. All the conditions should be exactly the same as the original dialog take except that no one moves or speaks. The best way to it is immediately after calling 'cut' the director has everyone hold their position keeping still and quiet for 30 seconds or so while sound continues to roll.
 
Steve House said:
Don't confuse room tone with ambient sound. Try an experiment ... in as quiet a location as you can muster, record yourself saying "My ... dog ... has ... fleas." pausing a few beats between each word. Next record the same phrase speaking normally without pauses, drop the track into your editor, and add pauses between the words by cutting and slipping the remainder forward leaving silence in the gap. Listen to the recordings. You notice the one made by editing the speech sounds 'dead' in the gaps between the words compared to the one made by actually pausing the speech itself as it was recorded. That's room tone in action, the unique 'sound of silence' in the space. It lets the editor cut up the original scene and bridge the gaps with 'silence' that reflects the character of the space where the recording being edited was made. Room tone should be recorded in the same location as the original dialog, with all the people and equipment in the same place, and with the same mics and audio chain, as was used to record the original dialog it's going to be used to tie together. All the conditions should be exactly the same as the original dialog take except that no one moves or speaks. The best way to it is immediately after calling 'cut' the director has everyone hold their position keeping still and quiet for 30 seconds or so while sound continues to roll.
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What if there is a big refridgerator on set and it makes humming sound (it will also be in shot), when rolling the sound guy turned it off for clean dialogue, and recorded 30s roomtone. question is, when doing the sound mix, do we add a tiny bit of the refridgerator humming? if there is only clean dialogue and clean roomtone, will the audience wonder why that refridgerator is so quiet and might say: I want to buy one of that!
 
A refrigerator that is supposedly running in the scene is neither room tone nor ambiance. The sound of the refrigerator is an FX, recorded as a clean track completely separate from both the dialog and the room tone tracks and added to the scene during the mix in post, positioning its sound in one of the FX stems. For that matter, the actual refrigerator seen on camera might as well be a completely non-functional dummy as far as the sound recording is concerned.
 
Go back to your prior threads on this and then hop up and reread the sticky on post. I'm not being short here but this is the third or fourth time you have asked a variation on this question.

Room Tone is to fill in holes in dialog after editing and should sound exactly like the set did during shooting. The whole point is for it to match.

EVERYTHING else you hear was added after the fact.

Some new filmmakers try to record everything when shooting, this is a BIG mistake and will cause you endless grief in post.
 
Noiz2 said:
Go back to your prior threads on this and then hop up and reread the sticky on post. I'm not being short here but this is the third or fourth time you have asked a variation on this question.

Room Tone is to fill in holes in dialog after editing and should sound exactly like the set did during shooting. The whole point is for it to match.

EVERYTHING else you hear was added after the fact.

Some new filmmakers try to record everything when shooting, this is a BIG mistake and will cause you endless grief in post.
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Thanks mate, and sorry about that. I'm just a bit stressed because I have a shoot the day after tomorrow and I'm the sound guy!! I just feel that I can't let the forum and all of you down!
 
Room tone and why it is essential according to Woody Woodhall
note the very last sentance

Room tone sometimes to referred to as room noise,is a recording of the natural sound of any particular place that is being recorded in.
Room tone is the recording of the sound of the space but with no talking,no movements,and no sound other than itself.
Room tone is essential to properly edit the location sound tracks. For example in the best take of a scene there is a loud crash that happens between the the lines of dialogue. An editor will take a small bit of Room Tone and paste it over the crash. If the crash or offending noise is just lifted from the track, a gap,a bit of true silence will make the track feel as if something has "dropped out". which in turn takes the audience out of the viewing experience.
It is also used when adding recorded lines of dialogue into the sound edit of the location recordings. The sound mixer can blend the room tone and the new recordings creating the illusion of a seamless edit and replacement.

I think we can all see its easier to record and log a minimum of 30 60 seconds of room tone than in post trying to find usable frames of clean room tone it can take many hours or even days to create room tone for a project a waste of time and money.
lastly remember room tone must be free of any noticeable noises;oddly the recording of the room must be silent.
 
I'm just a bit stressed because I have a shoot the day after tomorrow...
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It's OK. Your jumping off the deep end a bit.

Since you will, I'm sure, be asking a lot of questions you should probably keep in mind who is answering.

So I came out of big budget american films, before doing a lot of smaller work. So my work style is based off of that. Personally I think most small films would benefit from working more that way.

But there are things you can/have to do on a low budget film that you can't do on a big budget film. For instance I am never going to play the raw dialog track back for the director. In a big budget you are so you have to make the raw dialog track beautiful. Fill all the holes, fill RT under ADR, etc. On a low budget I never make a RT track, I generally don't add RT under ADR, I don't nec. fill holes.
BUT I also do full backgrounds and ambiences. I fill holes in back and forth dialog but I don't fill in where there isn't dialog. The backgrounds and ambiences are filling the holes. If after they are in there are places where the lack of RT is noticeable I then will fill in.

Depending on how you work this will either not work for you or it will save you a ton of time. It won't work if you don't do a full sound post.

I generally allow for eight to sixteen tracks of backgrounds and ambiences. Then there are maybe four Foley tracks and ??? FX tracks. The FX tracks vary hugely with the show. If you are building up some big FX then you can have a really large track count. On ads we were averaging 80-100 tracks of FX only.

But your in the UK and they tend to have (even on large budget films) much smaller crews and much faster turnarounds. So they are obviously doing something different than a big budget Hollywood film.

Anyway any question you ask you will probably get three or four different "definitive" answers. None may be "wrong", they most likely are just different styles. You need to make sure you are following advice that matches the way you are or want to be working.

So while I generally don't use much RT and what I do use is generally just stolen from some dead air close to where I need it, that would not be a good choice if you are not going to do full backgrounds and ambiences. It would actually sound really bad.
 
Here's a nice informative video on room tone (taken from Gearslutz):

https://vimeo.com/25578746

The editor was the DX editor for X-Men.

I've gotten used constructing roomtone from gaps between words or phrases, consolidating them, looping them, and reversing it to make it seem longer. I do automate the roomtone on DX tracks down in between phrases and mesh it together with the BG tracks. Half the time I'm trying to hide it unless it's a scene taking place in the middle of the night with 2 people whispering to each other in bed...
 
Okay thanks. Well if room tone has to match the set, then I best use the room tone, from the set and no other. However since I did ADR, I have now two room tones. The one from the set, from the original dialogue, and the one from where the ADR was done. Do I throw in both?
 
IronPony, or Harmonica44, or whatever you're calling yourself... Have you read "Dialogue Editing for Motion Pictures" by John Purcell as of yet? You said you bought it a while back, or your sister bought it for you or something. 99% of the answers about room tone and the rest of dialog editing are there.

Your big problem is you keep asking the same questions in different places in different ways hoping for different answers. Audio editing requires - yes, requires - a set of nice speakers and a treated room. Also, if you would actually spend some time with an experienced audio post editor (who will have nice speakers and a treated room) I'm sure that the light bulb would go off.
 
ryanjf said:
Here's a nice informative video on room tone (taken from Gearslutz):

https://vimeo.com/25578746

The editor was the DX editor for X-Men.
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Nice link. As I mentioned about styles, this is how a big budget film dialog edit is done. Your tracks are going to be played bare on the stage and it needs to sound smooth and finished with nothing else added (or your looking for work...).

If you are the editor/mixer on a no/low budget you don't need to play your bare tracks back so the amount of fill you need can be a lot less.

Even then it does really have a lot to do with the show. Depending on what the RT sounds like and what you are adding in ambience Background and FX you might still need to do a bunch of fill.

I used to work the big film way on no budget films but they often do not pay enough attention to what the location sounds like so I found I was spending a lot of time getting rid of the "RT" that was in the dialog and voluming out the fill also. And it sort of hit me that I was spending time to create something that I then spent time getting rid of.
 
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