Sound Mixing By Oneself

[tomflint]

Hi all, I'm editing a feature film which I shot last year and have just locked picture. I'm now ready to move on to the sound mix and I was wondering how best to approach it. I'm aiming for festival distribution so the sound needs to be crisp and calibrated to play on the big screen. Here's what I'm thinking...

First, I'd like to work on the sound myself and get the film to a solid-sounding rough mix by using FCP and Soundtrack Pro. I'll be mixing it at home with some average computer speakers so the levels won't be perfect, but the different soundtracks (ambient, sound effects, dialogue, music etc.) and transitions will be set up where they're supposed to be on the timeline. Then, when I'm happy with how it sounds to my own ears, I'll hand it off to a professional mixer and have them clean it up so it'll be able to play on a big screen. I know the best-case-scenario would be to hand it off to a sound mixing studio from the beginning, but I don't have the funds for that so I'd like to get as much done as I can without damaging the quality of the film which will presumably save me some money. Does this sound like a good way to go about doing it or am I heading in the wrong direction..?

 

[GaryNattrass]

Personally I would not try to mix anything in FCP or soundtrack pro, you can use it to track lay and adjust levels and then export all the tracks ready to be mixed in a pro set-up.

I track lay everything in FCP these days and you can lay up dialogue FX and music tracks to pretty much the complete sound scape and then export it like I do to OMF so it can be imported into pro tools or a bespoke audio editor that is designed for the purpose, mixing can then occur and the final stems (dialogue, FX, music, M&E and final mix) can be then re-layed onto your FCP time line for final delivery.

If you try mixing it yourself at the edit stage it will probably just take more time un-picking what you have done, I use the above workflow for everything I do and whilst I have my own digidesign 002 and pro tools set-up as well as FCP I can pretty much do most things at home.

If you track lay in a disciplined manner then any audio mixer will be able to mix things very quickly so say for example assign eight mono audio tracks for dialogue, four for mono FX, another eight for stereo FX and a further four for stereo music.

Personally I do not checkerboard every single audio clip and tend to keep each actor on a track within a scene and then checkerboard different tracks for the next scene, the same goes for FX or any dialogue or audio that may need special FX like reverb or telephone eq etc.

The key thing is to use you low cost FCP editor to make sure that all the audio tracks are pre prepared ready for mixing and then it should be a fairly easy job to complete a final set of mix stems, note you may not need separate dialogue, FX and music stems but the mixer will find it easier to do these first and will then be able to make you a final mix and M&E (mix minus dialogue if required)

YOu will also find this a far more creative workflow as it will allow you to concentrate on getting the elements of the audio soundscape right first in the edit and then sit down and concentrate on getting the balance right, personally I always do a dialogue pre mix first so I can make sure that the dialogue tracks are clean and balanced and then I add the FX next and the music last. That is why doing split stems within the audio edit and mixing package can help as you can end up with just a few faders with a dialogue, FX and music pre mix to be balanced as a final mix pass.

 

[Allan Black]

Tom, I'd find the 'professional mixer' now, before you start, and have him come in and show you what he wants to receive to be able to work with.

Also have him come by at progressive stages to inspect the project. He can make his notes, keep you on track and his actual final mixing time should be shorter with a better job overall.

Cheers.

 

[Noiz2]

Tom,

There are basically two tracks to go on. One is you just clean up and mix production and some music, the other is to do a feature film like sound post. What you are talking about sounds mostly like the first. In which case you can probably do a decent job and then pass it off to someone to polish up the mix a bit. That will give you a very "indi" sounding track, but that may be what your looking for? Some films do well with that.

If your looking for something a lot closer to a "Hollywood feature film" sound then you really need to hand it off to someone who knows how to do that, or maybe work with them.

In either case I don't think you want to go to a mix stage unless you know someone and can get a deal. An experienced editor / mixer can get you close enough in a edit room (and you can probably get a "big screen" test screening at some local venue for not much). It make very little sense to pay for a mix stage that isn't set up for big screen films to mix a big screen film. You need the space and size or your compensating mentally. And an experienced editor/ mixer can do that just as well on a smaller system.

Not sure what the rates are where you are but in a pretty cheap market in the states (SF Bay area) the best deal you could probably get on a staffed mix stage (with out connections) is $450/ hr with an 8 hour min. If you have premixed the hell out of your film a feature can in a pinch push though a final mix in two days. But those are VERY tense days, and you have to have the film virtually mixed before you hit the stage. You can get an editor /mixer to do a much better job for that rate.

STP is a sucky DAW for film work. It's pretty decent for what it was designed for which is pretty much filling the sound track needs of wedding videographers. As far as it goes it's OK but using a lot of tracks is a problem, and that is what you really need to do is use LOTS of tracks. Since all tracks are the same size you can't really use more than about twelve tracks effectively. So in my first track it will work well, in the second not.

In the second track you personally would also suffer from a lack of tools (sound plugins are not cheap, nor is a decent DAW for film work), experience (you will learn some as you go but it's not so easy learning on your own, most experienced editors spent a lot of time learning from more experienced editors on the way up), and a decent library and recording capability. Any experienced editor has a nice library of sounds at their disposal, and has a recording kit ready to go off and record what they are missing. You would be starting from scratch with sounds.

I've spent my carrier working in the second track, but there are plenty of films that actually are better off going the first track. One is not necessarily better than the other but a film that really needs the big budget treatment suffers greatly if it doesn't get it.