Show your sound promo reel!

G

galustov

New member
Location sound recordists, post here your reels please. I'm guessing I'm not the only curious how others work sounds! Bests, m
 
There's no such thing.

What's the point in having a reel for location sound? By the time it's done, the sound has passed through the hands (and ears) of several other folks who have tweaked, edited, and occasionally replaced various bits and pieces. Sometimes, they've taken terrible audio and made it great. Sometimes they've taken great audio and absolutely destroyed it. But even between those two ends of the spectrum, the final product is not an accurate reflection of production sound if for no other reason than that it's been processed and then layered with Foley, FX, music, etc.

Sound recordists go on credit lists (a la IMDb... and, of course, a resume).
 
Alex,
It's the "new" generation.

I constantly see new directors asking for reels from sound people. Even post is 99% BS, unless you were the only person on post. And even then so much has to do with what the director wants or can be pushed in to.

It's a team sport. The only real info that you legitimately can get from a reel is how polished the projects were.
And as a picture editor how well you can cut a reel.
 
I think I mentioned once in a post on safety that doing the recording for that I managed to dislocate pretty much every joint on two fingers.

Who said sound was safe!
 
Alex H. said:
There's no such thing.

What's the point in having a reel for location sound? By the time it's done, the sound has passed through the hands (and ears) of several other folks who have tweaked, edited, and occasionally replaced various bits and pieces. Sometimes, they've taken terrible audio and made it great. Sometimes they've taken great audio and absolutely destroyed it. But even between those two ends of the spectrum, the final product is not an accurate reflection of production sound if for no other reason than that it's been processed and then layered with Foley, FX, music, etc.

Sound recordists go on credit lists (a la IMDb... and, of course, a resume).
Click to expand...

how is that any different than a DP's work going through a post process?
 
sonofaresiii said:
how is that any different than a DP's work going through a post process?
Click to expand...

Very few if any visual elements go through the kind of metamorphosis that sound does.

So maybe a DP on an all green-screened SiFi epic would be close. But even then you don't clone out single characters for issues (as you do with ADR on the sound side).
 
My problem with trying to do an audio reel, is most of my stuff gets put under an NDA. Even though I have the raw audio from Scorsese's interview, I cannot use it. Same with Ashley/Mary Kate Olsen's stuff and Joe Montegna's audio. Heck, back in school, I did a bit of uncredited post work for Jurassic Park III, but I cannot prove it except for the nice mounted poster I received.

And for anything "notable", I turn audio over to the production, we back it up in two locations, and then the card is formatted. And as much as I would want to keep a copy of the raw audio, I like knowing my reputation for being discreet and trustworthy with client's work more. Sure, a lot of people don't care, but when they see how I treat their files and protect their stuff, it garners me good will and future work. Even if I am not under an NDA, I still treat the audio as if I was.

I have never liked the idea for having an "audio reel". And every time I get asked for one, I make a point of educating them why an audio reel for a location guy does not make sense for the reasons people are talking about. Now for someone who does post.......that I can see.

But for the location guy........we would have to have some kind of disclaimer if we were honest about our reel: "Okay this cut I am using has had heavy ADR, which I had nothing to do with. And in post, there was heavy EQ, compression, and reverb applied to fit the ambience of the scene. The music bed you hear, I had nothing to do with, as it was added in post. Basically, the director knew this was a horrible location for sound, and my job was to get a great scratch track to rebuild the audio from." Or something to that effect.
 
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Okay, but that's still the equivalent of saying "yeah we green screened this part and the producer didn't want to spend the time to properly light the screen, this other shot was really cool but the DIT didn't use our images and went off on his own way and now it looks like mush, I exposed here for the highlights really well but then they decided to just crush all the blacks," etc.
Yes, sometimes the work is heavily modified in post-- frequently, in fact-- for both images and sound, you can simply not put the "bad" sound as part of your "reel," and ultimately the trick is whether or not you can competently get some sound, just like getting images, that are able to be modified in post. If I blow out a scene shooting, it's gone and post isn't bringing it back. Similarly, if audio is heavily distorted, it's not coming back either.


-just trying to stimulate an interesting discussion, don't take anything personally
 
LOL, I don't.

But let's look at demo reels for DP's and Camera Op's. I have viewed a ton of them, and one aspect I see in them is the audio is stripped out and a music bed laid in.

The way I see it, that is done to focus the viewer on the visual aspect of the demo and showcase that ability. Audio on the other hand, cannot treated the same way. It is invariably tied to the visual. I cannot strip the visual off and lay in a video bed because it wouldn't make sense. So I am tied to a product that I might not like visually but the audio was stellar. Many people cannot separate the two in their minds and would judge the audio from the visuals.

Let's use this example: I do audio on a location that is very noisy and fits the visual perfectly. I have captured the audio image spot on, with a good mix of BG noise/ambience, dialogue was awesome. But, the DP totally blew the shot, color was off, camera was soft focused, lighting was odd, all of the above. I don't have the option of separating my work from what would only hurt me like a visual guy can do.

So what is an audio guy to do?
 
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Doc, even for post it really doesn't make much sense. What a lot of folks in post do (that need reels for say ads) is basically a montage of clips from the finished films. You are not really demoing your work but that you have worked on projects that had high standards (and in theory you weren't fired for being a wanker).

I've worked on low budget films with very sound friendly directors that ended up with some really nice work, but mostly they look low budget so, not so great for a reel. And with decent budgeted films with directors who were not into sound at all and cut out anything interesting. I'm not talking about anything overly creative here but directors who insisted on ONLY hearing what they can see in the frame or what they remember from the set. Both are just bad perspectives on sound and you do what you can but all your going to want to talk about after that is that you worked on a higher profile project and survived.

As to NDAs etc. Even if you had the OK I'm not sure it would be a good idea to play raw footage for anyone naive enough to ask for a reel from a sound person. They are not going to know how to evaluate it and nobody is going to know how hard it was to get the recording. Is it OK but a miracle that you got anything or is it OK but conditions were ideal. I know which one I would put more weight on but how would I know which was which.

We actually talked to lawyers for a studio about using clips from the finished film in "reels" and they were surprised we even asked. Their response was "of course you can use it in a reel, you worked on it didn't you?".

I'm pretty sure the reaction to that question if it were about raw footage would not have been the same. The NDA pretty much cinches it but everyone is paranoid about unvetted clips getting out to the public. And you are dead on on discretion. The same holds for post. The quickest way to get off of peoples list is to not be discreet. You are "in the know" about a lot of stuff that would be unflattering, embarrassing, or just look bad. Most of this only others in the industry would get, small things but important. Folks who hire you need to know you won't be blabbing about things you shouldn't.

That is why those tell all books get so juicy, it's stuff folks have been dying to talk about for years but can't till they are retired and aren't going to work again anyway!
 
I've noticed you see people asking for demo reels that are still (not to be insulting) in the lower levels of work. When it comes to working on TV or video games, I've been asked to do a "test edit" where they give me a bit of picture, and I cut my sound to it, and they check it out. When you get to a certain level, people know just by your credits you do good work. It really comes down to the interview process and if you'll fit in with the existing team. The entertainment industry is a small world, so references can come into play and word gets around if you are good to work with or not. When I've been asked for a "demo reel" when I was doing production stuff, I just usually stayed away completely.
 
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