SHORT: Unbound

C

cinematical

Well-known member
My intermediate production project at USC. Shot on 16mm film with an ARRI-S (telecined to DV), sound MOS. Shot over 3 weekends in Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Mountain foothills. Total budget: $1500 ($1000 for the location). Crew size never exceeded 4 people on any one shooting day. If you can, turn the volume up, or even better, put on some good headphones and turn the volume up -- the sound design is key. Let me know what you all think!


 
sound editing is good, also the ADR

only in the house when he wakes up it sounds...empty.... some general room tone could be usefull, sound of outside life (birds, wind). But that was maybe a choise ?

I
 
Yeah, it was a choice, but one that I would probably change if I went back and did it again. I wanted a sense of stillness in that scene, but it came across as, like you said, emptiness.

The big reason I tell people to turn up the sound or use headphones is to try to push the bass up. The disappearing sound effect works marvelously in a big theater with a world-class sound system (like we're instructed to mix for), but tends to fall a bit flat in lesser setups -- particularly on puny computer speakers.
 
cinematical said:
Yeah, it was a choice, but one that I would probably change if I went back and did it again. I wanted a sense of stillness in that scene, but it came across as, like you said, emptiness.

The big reason I tell people to turn up the sound or use headphones is to try to push the bass up. The disappearing sound effect works marvelously in a big theater with a world-class sound system (like we're instructed to mix for), but tends to fall a bit flat in lesser setups -- particularly on puny computer speakers.
Click to expand...

silence is sound also... But silence is not...silence...

For example, when people sit in a room and nobody is talking and just sitting, they say "it's silent here"... But then I can easely hear 3506534064685406435453453437374347307 different sounds. (outside, the heater, roomnoise, a bird, a moawing cow...a cat flatted by a car...).

So "silence" is not "silence like nothing, rien, nada, zero". But always has some "noise", "roomsound".... sounds of lamps maybe...

about the mixing: forget low sounds for pc speakers... leveling up doesn't work...
What you actualy need is some different "low" sounds...which are not that low but are more in the mids... to give a kind of same "feeling"...
For theaters, dvd, tv, pc...you have actualy 4 different mixes. So the "low" sounds you feel in theater, you won't feel when watching the same movie on dvd or pc... But they don't care...because they wan't you to buy tickets for theaters :-p
 
The funny thing is that the problem here (the bass not translating in the effect) stems largely from how nice the mixing facilities are at USC. The school just opened up a brand new, state-of-the-art cinema complex, including several fantastic mixing rooms. Of course, things will never sound as good as they did in that room. If I could, I'd love to go back and mix a version for how it is usually viewed and heard, with, like you said, some more mids to make up for the lack of bass.
 
Also, if anyone's going to be in the Tacoma, WA area next weekend, you should come check out the film at the Tacoma Film Festival!
 
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