What is this damned roar?

S

scottfs

Well-known member
I've posted on this before, because I hate this, and it pops up in much of my work.

Now here is an excellent example of what I'm talking about, at minute 1:38 in this academy-award winning short:

http://www.rsafilms.com/usa/projects/featured/the-phone-call-directed-by-mat-kirkby/

This electronic 'roar' or noise is just terrible. I don't hear it in Hollywood blockbusters. I don't hear it when I hear I listen to Vladimir Ashkenazy's rendition of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata on my pristine CD.

How can I get rid of this?

Thanks all
 
On my laptop, all I'm hearing is a little "room tone", because they probably had the mic cranked up a little since he's not speaking loudly and he's in a quiet room.
 
It sounds like normal "room tone" to me.
1) If you are recording dialog live during shooting, then use a better microphone and/or closer, or select a quieter location.
2) If it is mixed-in during post, don't crank up the "room tone" track so loud.

If this sounds like a sudden "roar" to you, then perhaps you should review how accurate your monitoring system is.
Or re-evaluate your concept of what a proper soundtrack mix should be.
 
I can hear a small amount of what sounds like HVAC noise in the background, but it is pretty subtle and fits naturally with the scene. It isn't distracting.

- Greg
 
It's 'room tone's I suppose, but it's an artifact of electronuc recording. Classical CDs are probably recorded on equipment far superior to what happens on set. It's very annoying to me. Makes it sound so artificial. Isn't it possible to subtract this room tone out of this, and make the 'floor' silent?
 
Music recording studios are dead-quiet because that is what customers expect to hear (or NOT hear).
A film/video sound track with dead-quiet background would sound artificial and would not be accepted by most audiences.
Even if we have studio-recorded dialog with a dead-silent background, we still make an isolated recording of the location "room tone" just to have something to add back into the mix to make the track sound more natural.
 
scottfs said:
It's 'room tone's I suppose, but it's an artifact of electronuc recording. Classical CDs are probably recorded on equipment far superior to what happens on set. It's very annoying to me. Makes it sound so artificial. Isn't it possible to subtract this room tone out of this, and make the 'floor' silent?
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Its not an artifact of electronic recording.
As everyone else has stated, its the sound of the room captured by the mic (HVAC). The person was soft spoken so the gain was turned up and the sound of the room came up as well. I didn't find it distracting or a roar as you describe it. Sounded pretty natural and was blended in well to my ear. If a lav were used you would hear less room tone but its a different kind of sound compared to a boom, and if the gain is raised you might here something else you don't enjoy like clothing noise. Noise reduction software tools can take out a lot of this kind of ambiance, but you have to be mindful of artifacts if you're not monitoring carefully and/or go for too much reduction. If you record on location you'll always have something in the ambiance, its not a sound studio as Richard has pointed out.
 
scottfs said:
....

How can I get rid of this?
Click to expand...

It sounds fine and there is no reason to eliminate it. But if it bugs you, you can get rid of it by re-recording the actors lines in a dead quiet environment. That's what the major studios do. It is called Automated Dialog Replacement (ADR). It is a painful process. It is difficult to do with some actors, who have difficulty redoing their lines. It also is difficult to do without special software like ProTools. Even though it is called 'automated' there is nothing automated about it.

The way I do it is this; Each line or part of a line is identified as a part to be recorded. I have typed out exactly what they say, which is not what is in the script. It is important to get how they said it correct. They may say 'sumptin' instead of 'something' or say a wrong word from the script, but it worked so the director kept it. You need to know exactly what was said, and make sure the actor redoes it that way. If it is a character part, they will put a lot into saying the lines. Getting them to get into the 'moment' of that take, when they are not in costume, they don't have an actor to play against, and they are not in the same set, takes a bit of doing. The actor is in a quiet studio with headphones. For some actors, seeing themselves say the lines is a hindrance; for others, it helps. The line is played in a loop and the actor hears it over and over again. They say the line along with what they hear. When they seem to have it, the record button is pressed. They continue to say the line several times until you have either a good line, or for actors that just can't do it, enough pieces from several lines to piece it together.

After the ADR session, the good take is played against the picture in Protools. If you have an actor that is good at this, you have a good line and can use it as-is. If you have an actor that just isn't capable of getting it right in one take, then you will end up taking snippets of each line that are good and piece them together. Then you will make adjustments on a per syllable basis to slide the actors line around to match the mouth. Oh yes, its a treat.

The problem with all of this is that you have now eliminated all the sounds in the scene. So now you have to re-create those as well.
 
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scottfs said:
I've posted on this before, because I hate this, and it pops up in much of my work.

Now here is an excellent example of what I'm talking about, at minute 1:38 in this academy-award winning short:

http://www.rsafilms.com/usa/projects/featured/the-phone-call-directed-by-mat-kirkby/

This electronic 'roar' or noise is just terrible. I don't hear it in Hollywood blockbusters. I don't hear it when I hear I listen to Vladimir Ashkenazy's rendition of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata on my pristine CD.

How can I get rid of this?

Thanks all
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It's interesting how many people don't hear anything.

I would lay money on traffic, but there may also be an approaching jet. It was probably not added in post because the increase in volume and where it starts doesn't help the story so it is probably on the production track.

My #1 scenario is that there is a stop light outside that window not far away and it turned green so the traffic started up.
My #2 is that the take the director wanted had a jet in it and they did their best to ease it in on the cut.

Both are pretty common production track issues. They are not electronic noises and have nothing to do with equipment.

A lot of directors "don't" hear sounds like that because your brain is the best filter ever made and can quite literally make things it isn't interested in disappear. It is also very easy on set for less than very experienced sound people to let their brain filter out environmental noises as they focus on the dialog and be quite surprised by all the junk on the tracks later. A mic doesn't filter the way your brain does so it captures the sounds you heard along with those that you "didn't".

If you haven't heard anything like that in a big budget film you haven't seen enough films. But it is a lot more rare because you generally have excellent sound teams doing the recording and excellent teams doing the post and if all else fails you have the $$$ to ADR the lines. You still get it occasionally because even some $$$ directors don't "hear" it and won't spend the money to ADR, or they do hear it and still want THAT performance. In most cases you can fudge it into the background you are creating and if the story is good people are not listening that hard to the BG anyway.

Music recording and post is a completely different universe than film. You are usually in a studio and it's very quiet, nothing like location filming.

To get rid of it you basically should not record it in the first place. Have a sound person who really listens and don't use takes that have sound issues.
Once it's in a track you need your options are limited.
You can try noise reduction but that is generally not very effective on "noise" that is constantly changing as cars and jets are. So usually you are left with working it into your background tracks or ADRing the scene.

In this film they could have established some traffic early and added some to the rest of the scene and the traffic on the production would have disappeared into the mix.

I did a feature a long while ago that had a quiet little scene. It was close to a road that isn't scene but hardly has any traffic... Till the day of the shoot and the city ran a detour to that street and it was nonstop cars. I added ins and outs for the cars that ended up over dialog and it smoothed it out and it sounded "fine" except that it sounded like they were talking next to a busy street and it was shot so that it looked like it was far from a road. So it sounded weird to have all this traffic. So we ADR'd the whole scene.

A before and after clip is here http://scottkouesound.com/Info/clips/Clips.html
 
I didn't record this film (wish I did). But I still say this noise is from the sound gear as well as ambient noise. It bugs the hell out ofe, and takes me out of the film. Yes, I Mike as close as I can and don't clip, etc.
 
scottfs said:
I didn't record this film (wish I did). But I still say this noise is from the sound gear as well as ambient noise. It bugs the hell out ofe, and takes me out of the film. Yes, I Mike as close as I can and don't clip, etc.
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Apparently the 2 seconds which bothered you so much didn't bother a whole lot of other folks since this film was the 2015 Academy Award winner for the "Best Live Action Short Film"
 
Richard Crowley said:
A film/video sound track with dead-quiet background would sound artificial and would not be accepted by most audiences.
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A case in point. I was channel-surfing last night and came across some old black-and-white movie from 1938 called "The Ghost Goes West". The scene involved a woman driving a car up a driveway to a house. There were clothes on a clothesline flapping in the breeze. But the car made no sound at all. Admittedly, she had the radio on, but that wouldn't have drowned out the sound of the motor. Also no sound when she got out of the car (except when she closed the car door) and walked up the stone steps in her high heels.

It was surreal.

You can watch the entire movie on YouTube. The scene in question starts at about 15:38.
 
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scottfs said:
I didn't record this film (wish I did). But I still say this noise is from the sound gear as well as ambient noise. It bugs the hell out ofe, and takes me out of the film. Yes, I Mike as close as I can and don't clip, etc.
Click to expand...


Well all I can say is you asked the question and got answers from folks with years of professional experience and none of them agree with your assessment.

Doesn't mean your wrong but why ask if you won't believe any answer that doesn't agree with your original assumption?
 
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