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WHAT IS AUDIO POST?
Figure 2-1 Audio mix facility at 42 Productions. Reproduced with permission of 42 Productions – Boulder, CO.
One of the primary goals of this book is to help you as a video editor to understand the audio post-production process so that when you find yourself in a position where you are working on audio (either by choice or because the budget requires it) you will feel comfortable with the different audio tasks. Instead of jumping right into the features and tools available in Soundtrack Pro, it makes sense to present portions of the entire process to help you connect with the audio engineer’s perspective. This is important because it will help you to understand the language and work-flow of the audio post phase. It will also help you to understand the best-practice considerations to follow in case the audio ends up in the hands of an audio engineer later in the project. Keeping things organized according to how an audio engineer might do it will help such a transition proceed smoothly.
David Bondelevitch
I have invited David Bondelevitch to write a few pages about the audio post process. David is a veteran in the film industry and recently joined the faculty at the University of Colorado, Denver. You will find a full biography at the end of his section, along with a selected project history. I think you’ll find his descriptions of dialog editing, music editing, and sound effects editing very informative. Most importantly, though, you will get a very accurate idea of how an audio engineer thinks and acts throughout the post-production phase. Keep in mind that these sections were written in an attempt to describe the traditional post-production process in which there is an editorial team working on picture and then, once the picture is locked, the entire project passes on to the audio team.
One other thing that you will notice immediately is that there are notes in the margins of the page. These briefly describe how the Final Cut Pro/Soundtrack Pro integration aids in the efficiency and strength of the audio post-production workflow. There are aspects that, when going from AVID to Pro Tools or from Final Cut Pro to Pro Tools, either don’t exist as options or are more complicated.
Dialog Editing
It is not necessarily the concern of the picture editor to worry directly about the dialog editing. However, in order to accommodate the simplest workflow possible, it is best to talk to the sound editors about how they would like their dialog delivered, and attempt to deliver the best tracks possible.
Of course, in order to export the material properly, it must be imported properly. It is extremely important that the picture editors import the material correctly into their non-linear editing system so that the sound materials are of the highest quality to begin with, which will mean that there will be no need to re-digitize the materials later in the process.
The correct decisions rely on a number of outside factors:
- How the material was recorded in the field;
- How the sound editors will be working;
- How the final project will be delivered.
In general, the decisions you will be making will be to do with the following:
The standard for file format has become .BWF (Broadcast Wave Format) but, again, you should confirm this with your sound editorial crew. Note that .BWF is essentially the same as .WAV (except that it includes added metadata which may be very useful to the sound crew, such as Scene, Shot and Take numbers). So if you cannot use .BWF as your option, .WAV is usually a close second.
The next most likely format would be .AIF, or AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format), which is the standard on audio CDs. It is also possible that editors working on older versions of Pro Tools may request SDII (Sound Designer II) files. You should avoid working with any data-compressed formats. These include but are not limited to MP3, MP4, AAC, or some types of WAVE files. These will create audible artifacts which may create problems that are not easily rectified if a distributor later complains about problems on the sound tracks.
File Formats
When sending a sequence from Final Cut to Soundtrack, you don’t need to worry about the file formats because Soundtrack is able to use every file that is useable in Final Cut. This applies to file type, sample rate, and bit depth. This is because Soundtrack uses the exact files that exist on the Final Cut sequence.
For sample rate, you should choose the highest sample rate available (pending approval of your sound department). In general, the standard in film/television is 48 kHz. However, on some older non-linear picture editing systems, the only option may be 44.1 kHz. For bit rate, you should again choose the highest resolution possible. On most projects, this is 24-bit, but on older non-linear picture editing systems you may be limited to 16-bit. Channel format should be split-mono wherever possible because Pro Tools and most other editors will deal with two split-mono files (left and right, rather than a single stereo file) in a much better fashion. (Note a possible area of confusion here: stereo and split-mono both have two tracks, left and right; the difference is just a matter of how the software stores and reads the files.)
Production sound should be imported with as many files as is feasible. It is now common to split production tracks over eight or more tracks in the field. If possible, the picture editor should import and edit all of the tracks, even if they are only monitoring one track, such as a ‘dailies mix’ (which combines all other tracks), or a boom track, where the rest of the tracks are individual wireless mics. This will allow the most choice later on when editing sound. If this is not feasible, it is possible to edit only the mix or boom track and import the other tracks as needed later on, but this is usually much more labor-intensive than importing them directly early in the process. Note that music should always be imported and edited with both tracks, even if the file format is two mono files (left and right)!
Track layout is perhaps the most complicated question of all, and is the most subjective choice. Picture editors will tend to cut three categories of material:
- Synch production dialog;
- Additional sound that is intended to be kept but did not come from synch production dialog, including voiceover, wild sounds, additional sound effects, or music that has been placed by the picture editor;
- Temp materials that are intended to be replaced later on by the sound crew, which may include any of the elements listed in point two.
It is extremely important that the picture editors make clear to the sound editors in which category each sound falls, and the easiest way to do this is by separating the tracks as listed above, so that a temp effect is never on the same track as something that is intended to stay, and an added line is not placed on the same track as production sound.
Most sound crews will want dialog, music, and sound effects kept separate from each other as much as possible. Also, most crews will want all of the temp materials as well, not only as a reference for replacement, but also because occasionally the temp material becomes permanent, so it pays to keep it throughout the process, even at the final dub.
Organization
Organization is important even when working with Final Cut and Soundtrack. In fact, I recommend an extra layer of caution because all too often a video editor will plan on working in Soundtrack and assume that the material will never leave it, thereby introducing the chance to employ a certain amount of ‘laziness’ in organizing audio tracks. It almost always happens that the project ends up being sent to an audio engineer who has an impossible time figuring out the mess.
Within these three groups, it is also important to keep tracks as consistent as possible, especially on materials that are intended to be kept and not replaced. If you have voiceover, sound effects, and music, it is best to keep these on separate tracks, as they are likely to be covered by three different crews!
I fully understand that the more sound tracks there are, the more difficult it is to edit picture. For this reason, many editors will deliberately limit themselves to four tracks. This may be functional for editing picture but, when exporting material, it is necessary to split the tracks to a higher degree. This job of track-splitting is frequently handled by an assistant editor. In some cases this is a poor choice, as an assistant may have less experience and does not understand the basic concepts necessary for preparing the tracks properly for a sound editor.
Once the tracks are prepared, they are typically exported as an OMF (open media framework) file, with media embedded. One important choice that must be made is the number of ‘handles’ to be added to the media.
For dialog editing, the most important part of the job is to mask the audio edit point so that there is no clear sound change on the picture change. This is usually done most effectively by creating the longest sound cross-fade possible across the picture edit. In order to do this, the export must have lengthy handles. If each take is its own sound file, the setting should be to export the entire file for each edit. This not only allows for long handles, but also allows the dialog editor to search the remainder of the take for other material, such as ‘fill’ or alternate lines to replace a bad section of audio.
Handles
One of the best aspects of sending Final Cut sequences to Soundtrack is that you never have to worry about handles because Soundtrack references the same media that Final Cut referenced, and always in its entirety. The only exception is if the Final Cut sequence is ‘media managed’ before sending to Soundtrack; be careful in this case to create long handles.
If the sound files are not imported as separate takes, importing the entire file for each edit may be impossible, as many very large files would be imported. In that case, it may be necessary to choose the length of handles, for example ten seconds. Again, in this case, you should speak to the sound crew about their desires.
If you will be editing the sound yourself in your non-linear editing system (or Soundtrack Pro), you will want to split your tracks even more carefully. The tracks edited in category one above (synch production dialog) will need to be split on 8 – 12 tracks of their own.
When splitting production sound, it is very important to split the tracks by ‘angle’ and not by ‘character.’ The basic idea in track-splitting is to make it as simple as possible for the mixer. If the mixer is inserting processing (such as EQ [equalization], compression, or reverb) on a track, it is easiest to drop it onto a track and leave it there. Most of the processing on production dialog is done to remove extraneous background noise, which can shift drastically when the camera moves on each angle choice. So, if you are allowed eight tracks for splitting dialog, the track alignment would often be to split the dialog by shot amongst those tracks. Since shots are frequently identified by letter (49A and 49B are two different angles in the same scene), it is not uncommon to use letters to identify the tracks.
In addition, it is common to split sound effects from production (PFX) on to their own tracks, often using two tracks for overlaps, so that the mixer can choose to replace these with the sound editors’ work at the mix if desired.
It is also typical to split out lines that are expected to be replaced in ADR (automated dialog replacement). It is important to leave these in the edit for several reasons, the most obvious being that the actor must hear the original lines in order to loop them well, but also because it is very common that the production ends up being more desirable than the ADR, even if it has some technical problems. In order to prepare the tracks properly, lines spotted for ADR must be moved to a separate track in case they are dropped, and must be filled with production background noise so that there is not an apparent ‘hole’ in the track. Yet they must still be edited in such a way that the lines are usable in the event the ADR is dropped.
There are rare occasions when tracks should be split by character, for instance in animation, where all the dialog is essentially ADR and there is no background noise, or where an entire character is expected to be re-voiced or has recurring specific needs (will be pitch-changed to sound like a robot, or is always radio-miked because he has a very soft voice), but, in most cases, it is more important to match shot due to background noise. Note that on many picture editing systems the audio monitoring setup is not accurate enough to hear the mismatches between shots, so you should not assume ‘everything is okay if I put it all on one or two tracks.’
Music Editing
After the editing of the production sound, the sound element that a picture editor is most likely to deal with is music. This can be for a number of reasons.
Musical Sequences
This does not necessarily mean an old-fashioned song-and-dance sequence; it might be something as simple as a scene in a bar with a band onstage and people dancing to the beat, or cheerleaders dancing rhythmically at a football game. In either of these examples, decisions on how to deal with them should be made long before the shoot. Typically some type of playback is used, which requires careful planning and, typically, additional equipment.
Using playback ensures that the tempo will always remain consistent so that the same part of the song happens at the same time on every take. It also helps keep people in tune if you are recording a singer or other musical performers. Ultimately this will make editing picture much easier. If you do not use playback, picture editing becomes extremely difficult because every edit will also be a music edit and, without playback, tempo and pitch will drift from take to take (or even within takes), making it almost impossible to make an edit.
In order to do playback, music (or temp music) must be chosen (or at the very least choose a tempo and create a click track for dancers). If it is new music, or is to be a new performance, it must be pre-recorded. That music must be played back for the performers being filmed, but, if there is dialog or other music that you wish to record in the scene, the playback music must be kept separate. This necessitates in-ear monitoring for the performers, which not only means more equipment rented, but creates a much more complex job for the production sound crew. It is therefore common to have a second sound crew on the set for these scenes, to handle playback.
Apple Loops
Soundtrack has a large collection of royalty free music beds in various styles that can be used as place holders or sometimes even as the final track. The tempos can be adjusted, along with the pitch. It’s nice to have this tool in the toolbox.
If it is a simple dance sequence, another way of dealing with it is to use a ‘thumper’ track, which is playback of a very low frequency thump instead of a typical click track. This can be played through speakers and filtered out using a high pass filter.
Music-driven Sequences
Some sequences cannot be edited without music, such as a music montage, so the editor will look for a piece to use over the scene.
Thumper Track
This is another item that can be created in Soundtrack and then exported to tape or a portable playback system for location shoots.
Sequences that Benefit from Music
Overall pacing of a film is very reliant on music, so many picture editors will cut ‘temp’ music in necessary scenes to see if the overall pacing is working.
Test Screenings
This is probably the most significant reason for using temp music. Test screenings (or ‘preview screenings’) are screenings of the rough cut of the film for an invited audience of average movie-goers who are in the target demographic for the film. The studio and distributors consider these screenings to be extremely important.
Temp Music
This is another great use of the music library included with Soundtrack.
They require, however, that people who are not used to seeing a work-in-progress judge the effectiveness of the film as a whole. As a result, editors try to ‘finish’ the film as much as possible, and one relatively simple way of doing this is to add temp music to any scene that might have it later on. This can either be beneficial or ultimately harmful to the film, if it is not done very carefully.
The Music Crew
There is a whole music crew that can provide support for the process. However, for many reasons, the music crew may not have been hired while the film is being cut. Following are some of the roles who may be able to help you.
The Music Supervisor
The job of the music supervisor is to oversee all elements of the music in the film. I highly recommend hiring the supervisor as soon as possible, especially if there is any music or musical sequences written into the script or that arise during filming. The music supervisor is usually paid a flat salary, so it makes sense to hire them as soon as possible. They can help you choose music that is both available and affordable (you’d be surprised how much music is unavailable, or which would cost seven figures or more for a single use).
One of the biggest mistakes that can be made with temp music is placing a song that you could never possibly obtain, then falling in love with it. The longer you hear that song with the film, the harder it will be for you to find a satisfying replacement that is both available and affordable. Remember that you may be watching your film with your temp music for months during the editorial process, and you may test screen it repeatedly to good response from an audience. A music supervisor can be very beneficial here because they can discourage you from placing inappropriate artists and suggest many alternatives.
The supervisor can also help you find a composer, budget all of your music, including the licensing of songs, plan your scoring session, and hire a music editor.
The Music Editor
The music editor has a complex job that is hard to describe in a single sentence. Generally the job covers several different categories, but the one that relates most to the picture editor is the editing of temp music. Depending on the budget, schedule, and preferences of the picture editor, the picture editor may do the first pass of editing temp music on the film.
Some editors would prefer not to deal with music at all, but it is now an expected part of the job. Other editors enjoy shaping the film through the use of music. However, if there are test screenings this may be too much work for the picture editor, who has many other things to deal with, so a music editor may be hired for this task. There are editors who specialize in temp tracks, and they may be able to ‘feed’ the picture editor with music to be used as they cut picture so that the process becomes interactive, or the editor may simply hand over cut sequences to the music editors for them to add music.
I should point out that some people (especially composers) think of temp music as a hindrance to the film and not a help. There is an element of truth to this. One problem is that people sometimes add a musical style that they could not possibly afford, such as using John Williams’ orchestral music on a film that has a tiny budget. Since music is one of the last parts of the filmmaking process, it is not uncommon that, even on moderately budgeted films, there is very little money left for recording a score. It is important to keep this in mind. If you can only afford a synthesized score with a few live instruments, it is probably better to temp the film with similar music and not to use a large orchestra.
Royalty Free
Apple Loop music beds make a perfect tool to temp out a score because they have a good mix of quality and variety. If you find a combination of loops that really works, you can use it in the film without worrying about rights. The loops also contain a wide variety of quality that might match more closely to a low budget score.
For this reason, it is beneficial to have members of your music crew assembled as early in the process as possible. Although some composers enjoy helping with temp music, many prefer to have nothing to do with that part of the process.
The Composer
Like the music supervisor, the composer is usually paid a flat creative fee (or is on a package deal), so it is best to hire them as soon as possible. Unfortunately, the composer is often hired very late in the process, which may limit their involvement. In addition, the composer usually likes to work with their specific music editor, so it may be to your benefit to hire the composer’s music editor to do the temp music, to create a sense of consistency and continuity in the transition from temp music to final music. If you have not chosen a composer when you start temping, it is likely that you will have to hire two music editors.
I strongly recommend that you hire your composer by the time you have your first rough cut of the film. They will be tremendously helpful in the final stages of shaping the movie, and it will give them time to write the music well. Many features now have over an hour of original score music, and it is not feasible to think that a composer will write more than a few minutes of good material in a day. You should try to budget at least a month of time for the composer to work with the finished, locked picture, but in this day and age that hardly ever happens. It is not uncommon for a composer to have much less time to write a large orchestral score. This undoubtedly means the music will not be as good as it might have been, and might even necessitate the hiring of additional composers to complete all the music in time. Needless to say, this may result in a fractured, inconsistent score.
Sound Effects Editing
Sound effects are generally the last thing a picture editor does on a film, and only when necessary because the production sound is not usable or is nonexistent. They fall into three separate sub-categories:
- Background effects (ambiences);
- Synch effects (also called ‘hard effects’ or ‘cut effects’);
- Foley.
Background Effects (Ambiences)
Backgrounds are sounds which cover the length of a scene, without any specific synch relationship, and which are used to help establish location (and time) for the audience, as well as establishing mood for the scene. They are a subtle aural cue to the audience as to when a scene has changed. For this reason, the sound change should almost always match the picture change. If the picture change is a cut to a new location, backgrounds should be a hard cut on the exact frame of the picture cut. Occasionally people will put a short fade in to ‘soften’ the transition; this fade is normally very short, as little as one frame.
It is extremely rare to pre-lap or post-lap a background sound. Doing so breaks the reason for their existence: to explain scene changes to the audience. Transitions across scenes with a background sound will usually confuse the audience into thinking that they are still in the same location and time. If you wish to use a transitional sound, a specific featured synch sound effect (like a train whistle), a music cue, or dialog generally work better as transitions.
Ambient Loops
Soundtrack ships with a collection of decent ambient audio files. It is not 100% comprehensive but there is enough there to get you started.
Common backgrounds include birds, wind, traffic, and crickets. Changing backgrounds is an excellent way of implying a scene change. Birds are a universal identifier for daytime. Crickets are a universal identifier for nighttime. If a time ellipse occurs as a dissolve from afternoon into night, typically the dissolve would be accompanied by a fade from birds to crickets to match the dissolve. If it is a short time ellipse, it is still best to change the backgrounds, even if it is in a very subtle way, such as switching from rush-hour traffic to light suburban traffic. If it is continuous time but a location change, such as interior to exterior, you may want to use the same backgrounds but simply shift the mix to feature different elements in different ways.
Another common background is ‘walla.’ This is similar to Group ADR except that it is deliberately recorded in such a way that there is no intelligible dialog. (Actors may speak gibberish instead of dialog.) There are two reasons for this. One is that you do not want the background chatter to be distracting by including real words. The second reason is that walla can be left in the foreign mixes without having to be replaced. Group ADR is used when you specifically want to hear real dialog instead of walla.
Sound effects are often your best dollar value in production. Remember that you can create a full 360-degree world with sound. Do not limit yourself to the obvious: that which you already see. Remember that surrounding any room, even if the windows are closed, there is always a full world outside. Be creative and think outside of the box literally.
Note that backgrounds are normally recorded in stereo or in multi-channel formats. This helps to give the illusion that the background sounds are surrounding the viewer. It also helps to keep the center channel reserved for dialog, so that the backgrounds are not muddying up the most important sound element.
Some background sounds will be intermittent and not really run the full length of the scene continuously. Examples of this would be an occasional crow caw or dog bark. It would be annoying for them to make noise through an entire scene, so an editor will cut them intermittently.
Surround Effects
Soundtrack ships with both stereo and surround sound effects. Some of them are really spectacular. If you are working in a surround audio room then try out some of the surround fireworks files. These are great to demo the capability of surround sound to potential clients.
One important note: backgrounds are both very important and very difficult to do properly. Many filmmakers fall in love with the pristine, quiet sound of their production track, and are suddenly distracted by anything new that is added. In reality, these are very important sounds to have for creating a real world for the characters. Good backgrounds should make the audience feel like they are in the environment of the movie. Weak backgrounds will allow the production track to sound like it was recorded on a sound-stage and will be counteractive to involving the audience. Poor choices for backgrounds would include ‘room tone,’ which is typically a fan or air-conditioner. These are the types of sounds (white noise) that most people find annoying. If they were to occur in the production sound, we would normally try to filter them out, so why would you want to add them back in? Occasionally it is necessary to add sounds simply to help smooth out the edits in the production dialog, and sometimes a fan can help that, but typically we try to find more creative elements that add something to the scene as well.
Finally, remember that sound can be very creative. Backgrounds should do more than just take up space on the soundtrack and fill in obvious holes. Good backgrounds will also strongly affect the mood of the scene, much the same way that music does. You can get away with a lot in sound design that you could never do visually. The audience will accept the ‘wrong’ sound at the right time, especially if it is mixed in a subliminal way and there are also reality-based sounds. For instance, in addition to a cold wind in an interior scene, you may also add distant wolf howls, even though there is no logical sense for them. Most audience members will not even notice them consciously, yet will be affected subconsciously.
Synch Effects (Also Called ‘Hard Effects’ or ‘Cut Effects’)
Synch effects are, as the name implies, edited into synch with something on camera. It may be something very obvious like a door close, or it may have an implied synch, such as a person turning his head to react to an off-camera door slam.
Sometimes there is confusion about what is a background sound and what is a synch effect. In some scenes, the same sound may be a background through much of the scene, become a synch effect, and then become a background again. For instance, the intermittent crow mentioned above would be a background until the editor uses a close-up of the crow cawing as a cutaway in the middle of the scene. For that shot (and only that shot) it would be split onto a synch effects track, and then back to a backgrounds track for the remainder of the scene. Even if a character simply looks up to react to a particularly loud squawk, that would be placed on the effects track instead of the backgrounds because of the implied synch relationship.
Both backgrounds and synch effects can come from a variety of sources. The easiest sourcing method would be to find the sounds in an existing sound effects library. However, there are several drawbacks to this. The first is that most good sound effects libraries are fairly expensive. Buying several large libraries can quickly add up to tens of thousands of dollars. An equally important drawback would be the lack of creativity in using library effects. All else being equal, most editors would prefer to record their own unique material rather than rely on library material. Editors quickly recognize library material. Even the average audience member may recognize over used sounds (albeit subconsciously), especially since many of these sounds have been in the libraries for four or more decades and have been used in thousands of television shows. (There is one wind that is still widely in use that was recorded in the 1930s.)
Hard Effects
Look through the Soundtrack collection of sound effects in addition to other libraries. I am always surprised by sounds I find in the Soundtrack library that are perfect for specific uses. I have an additional library collection totaling over 250 gB, and the Soundtrack collection has sounds that are as good as those in any collection (although there is a wide range of quality).
In order to record your own material, however, you will need time and money. On episodic television, these are very limited, so it is typical to use mostly library effects. Of course, it is possible to use library effects creatively, by combining or manipulating them in a way that makes them unrecognizable and original.
Recording sound effects, particularly elements such as vehicles or weapons, is very challenging. For sounds that may be difficult to obtain or record, you may be forced to resort to a library. For simple backgrounds and sound effects (like doors), however, you may be able to quickly and easily record something unique for your film. On a big-budget feature, there may be a ‘second unit’ sound crew specifically for this purpose, who may get a month or more in the field recording elements for the film. However, this can also be expensive. Not only are you hiring a crew and renting their equipment, you are paying them for their time. If you have already invested in a library, you may be tempted to stick with those effects. Hopefully, though, you will have the time and money to record at least some original material. It makes a huge difference.
Sound effects may be recorded in mono, or occasionally in stereo or multi-channel. For sounds that take up a small physical space (like a door close), mono is usually fine. It can be panned in the mix if the door is on the left side of the screen. For sounds with a wide image (like a tank filling the screen), it is more typical to record in stereo, although matching the perspective of the shot may be difficult unless you bring a video monitor (or laptop) into the field to make sure you are matching any perspective change properly.
Foley
Some material is best suited to being recorded on a sound-stage while watching picture on a Foley stage (much like an ADR stage), so that Foley artists can perform the sounds. It is difficult to explain to beginners what should be recorded on a Foley stage and what is normally done in other ways. It all comes down to what is the best tool for the job, and how much money you can allocate to each method.
Foley artists are highly skilled specialists. Many of them have had training in dance or movement, and a surprising number of them are women. It’s always interesting to see a 98-pound woman perform the footsteps for a bulky action hero. But it’s all part of the magic of movies. Their work is such a specialty that they are very highly paid. In addition, a good Foley stage can be very expensive to rent. Foley artists generally have dozens or hundreds of pairs of shoes to choose from, and artists and stages generally have a mountain of props as well. Occasionally I see people trying to get their actors to perform their Foley. This is usually not the right choice and you should use specialists.
Recording Foley
Soundtrack has a great set of audio recording tools that make it a perfect solution for recording Foley. If you need to record only a few items while working in Final Cut, it is possible to send just those selected areas to Soundtrack and in short order you have an audio file open, ready for recording with video attached. This requires only a couple of buttons to be pushed.
In a perfect world, you might be tempted to record everything in a Foley stage. This is prohibitively expensive, so you must decide which material benefits the most from being performed to picture.
The most obvious example would be footsteps. Imagine having to go to a sound library and edit every single footstep in a movie into synch, one step at a time. It would be extremely time-consuming for an editor (and time is money as well). So in the long run it becomes more effective to pay a Foley artist to perform them for you. A good Foley artist will get it perfect on the first take, frequently without even previewing the scene! In addition, library footsteps usually do not sound right. You generally have a small number of steps to choose from, and they begin to sound redundant.
Footsteps
The Multipoint Video HUD (heads up display) makes synching sound effects easier than ever, but even it can’t handle more than a couple of footsteps. And that’s if you don’t take into account the fact that the footsteps in the Soundtrack collection are mediocre at best.
The second element normally recorded in Foley would be props (short for properties), which means the same thing as in production: anything that is handled by the actors in the scene. Picking up a pile of papers and shuffling through them to find one page would create a unique sound that would be hard to find in a library and even harder to cut into synch. So again it is more effective to do this to picture in Foley.
Typically all footsteps and props are Foleyed throughout an entire film. The most obvious reason for this is that they will almost certainly be needed for the foreign mixes of the film, since the production track with English will need to be removed, along with everything that is tied to the dialog. Since the Foley needs to be done for the foreign mixes, it is generally done before the domestic mix so that the filmmakers have it if they decide to replace or augment the production sound. (You will also need the Foley if you have to use ADR in any scene.) Typically a full Foley track is a delivery requirement for distributors.
Foley can be quite creative. If you are doing an action film and you need fist-into-face punches or body falls, you would not record the real thing. In addition to hurting your Foley artists, you would not get very good sounds. So you are forced to be creative. You can also use the ‘wrong’ sound for the right moment in Foley, and get a more emotional reaction. You could use a ping-pong ball to create the footsteps for a comical character, or use a sledgehammer to create the footsteps for a superhuman villain.
Some elements are almost impossible to record in a Foley room. Weapons fire, or anything that is dangerous (lighting a fire or shooting off a fire extinguisher full of chemicals, for example) should be avoided and recorded in the field. However, gun handling, gun cocks, loading, and dry firing of weapons can be done in Foley. Another element generally not done in Foley would be doors. There is only one door in the stage and it’s the door to the stage, and you don’t want every door in the world to sound like that. Foley is almost always recorded in mono and panned in the mix (if there is time).
For all of these reasons, one of the first things that sound editors do is to create a spotting list of every sound element in the film and decide how it will be done, whether recorded in the field, recorded on a Foley stage, or found in a library. Some elements, such as vehicles or weapons, may need to be obtained before the recording session.
Some elements may be covered by more than one category in an attempt to make sure you have choices, or in the hope that the combined sounds will be better than the individual sounds. It’s always easy to remove something if you don’t like it, but just about the worst thing that can happen to a sound editor is showing up at a mix and realizing a sound was not covered, or the director rejecting a sound and you having nothing else to cover it. This can grind a mix to a halt, which is a disaster. The dub stage is expensive and is at the end of production when money is running out, and the movie will have a release date or air date that must be met, so pressure to finish on time is usually high. It pays to be organized from the start.
Due to changes in technologies, it has become more common to record Foley (and ADR) in the field. This may sound like an oxymoron, but it is now possible to bring a laptop with you to play back a QuickTime movie and record footsteps, props, or dialog that may be difficult or impossible to record on a stage. There can be both benefits and drawbacks to this. You are no longer in the pristine environment of the stage, so you may get unwanted background sounds. Yet, it may be impossible to get the sound quality that you want if you were recording indoors.
Field Recording
Installing Soundtrack on a laptop makes a great tool for recording Foley and ADR in the field. Plus, you’ll be able to do a quick edit to make sure the resulting recordings are up to par.
Re-Recording Mixing
The mix (or ‘dub’) of the film is when all of the individual tracks prepared by various types of sound and music editors arrive at a dub stage, and the mixers find the appropriate balances between all of the elements. Mixers control the volume level, panning between speakers, equalization, and use of reverberation to help place sounds in proper perspective with one another. They may also use dynamic range compression, delay, noise removal processing, and other signal processing to accomplish this task.
Effects in Soundtrack
Soundtrack has access to the world-class effects collection of Apple’s Logic Studio. These effects include nearly every tool required in the mixing stage of your project. Of course, you can also work with effects made by other companies, as long as they are Audio Unit-compatible.
The final mix of the film is usually done by one to three specialists called re-recording mixers. For various reasons, the mixers are usually not any of the sound editors. Although this initially began as part of the Hollywood assembly-line process to streamline post-production (editors can turn over reel 1 of a film to the mixers, who can start mixing right away while the editors move on to preparing reel 2), there are other reasons for the mixers to be different people from the editors.
One reason is the highly specialized set of skills necessary to be a good re-recording mixer. Although editors also need many skills, the technical aspects of creating a good mix (compression, EQ, and noise removal, for example) are very demanding. In addition, mixers need to develop their ears very carefully to know when dialog is within acceptable level ranges and to hear other audible technical issues that can create problems when attempting to release or air a film.
Another reason is that it is often best for someone with no specific allegiance to any sound effects or music to come in and hear the mix elements ‘blind,’ that is, with no preconceived notion about what works best. A good mixer will bring new ideas to the table that no one else has thought of, even the sound editors.
Finally, especially with dialog, it is important to have new ears on the dubbing stage. The director has heard the dialog literally thousands of times from casting through shooting and editing. Even the sound editors may have heard it hundreds of times before the mix. A new mixer on the film will help protect the dialog for an audience who only gets one chance to hear and understand it.
Warning
As a video editor considering the possibility of working on your own audio, you need to be careful that you keep fresh ears. You can do this by taking frequent breaks and by enlisting the help of others to listen in. You can also use reference tracks to help keep perspective. Keep other projects close by so you can compare what you are doing with them.
In Hollywood, there have traditionally been three mixers who usually split the work as follows: dialog/ADR mixer, music mixer, and sound effects mixer (who usually also handles background sounds and Foley). This makes a lot of sense in some ways, as the sheer number of tracks allows a good split and each of these categories has its own specific needs in the mix. In a three-mixer dub, the dialog mixer is usually in charge and sits in the middle, as, by definition, dialog is the most important element when present. On some occasions, the mixers split the material differently, especially if the music mix is fairly simple, so that the music mixer is given additional faders, typically from background effects or Foley.
In recent years there has been a trend to move towards less mixers due to shrinking budgets. It is more common now, especially on television and smaller films, to see only two mixers on the stage. In this case, the dialog mixer also usually handles the music. This makes sense as typically you need to get the music out of the way of the dialog and, when the dialog stops, you want to hear the music come forward, so you are pushing one element up while the other goes down.
Outside of Hollywood, it is more common for one person to handle everything. This has almost always been true in New York, and sometimes in San Francisco. There is a certain logic to this, as usually it takes many passes to complete the mix regardless of how many mixers there are. Also, the head mixer usually manages the other mixers anyway. There may be some drawbacks to working this way, however. It is always good to have extra sets of trained ears on the stage to help with creative ideas and to hear potential problems. It is also good to have an assistant, so that when one mixer gets busy trying to fix one element, the other mixer can continue moving forward or take a break. Mixing is a very long and tedious process, and having a second mixer really does make the day go by much more efficiently for many mixers.
It is also worth pointing out that a mix should happen on a dub stage and not in an editing room. An editing room is unlikely to have good acoustics and it probably does not have all of the gear necessary for a good mix. Most dub stages are multi-million dollar investments designed specifically for this purpose. Editing rooms typically have problems acoustically with flutter echoes or other reflected sound, and the small size of the room does not mimic what a real theater (or even a medium-sized living room) will sound like. Due to size constraints, editing rooms typically use near-field monitoring, which is unheard of in theatrical presentations and very rare even in the home environment. Intrusive noise is often a problem in editing rooms, from the noisy fans on computers to the sounds from other rooms in the building. Even worse, some editors mix on systems with very poor speakers. This makes it difficult to hear technical problems that may arise in the mix. The mix stage needs to be as pristine as a mastering facility for music recordings, as you are in fact making the audio master in this room.
As a result, using a dub stage is a very expensive process compared with editing. For this reason, it is always best to have everything as perfectly and thoroughly prepared as possible before coming to the stage. This means that as an editor you should insist that the creative forces hear and approve all of your material before coming to the stage. This is not always feasible due to their time constraints, but it is always the best preparation. A worst-case scenario (that is not that uncommon) is for a director or producer to show up at the dub stage never having heard anything and to be unhappy with almost every element from music to sound effects. This essentially stops the mix and forces the editors to start sound editing on the dub stage, which can be a phenomenal waste of money. Since the dub is one of the last processes done before releasing the film, it is also one of the most important and can therefore be very stressful, yet it is common that the producers are running out of money at this point, and they have an air date or release date that they are contractually obliged to meet. This can create very poor working environments. The best way to handle such pressure is to be prepared for the mix. If you are not over prepared, you are not prepared at all. It is always easier to drop something extra in the mix than it is to find new elements in the middle of a dub.
Regardless of how good your sounds are, if the tracks are not properly prepared for the stage, your mix may be impossible. Good editors know how to align tracks to make the mix as easy as possible for the mixers. (This is one reason why it pays for editors to have a little mixing experience.) Most importantly, tracks are organized by type of sound, with most similar sounds on the same track and the most disparate sound effects on separate tracks. However, the editors should always check with the mixers. Each mixer has his or her own preferences, including the maximum number of each type of track that they can physically handle on their console. Therefore it is sometimes necessary to share different types of sound effects on a single track. This can be acceptable as long as there is sufficient empty space between the elements, so that the mixer has time to change level or other processing without stopping. (Remember that dialog is never put on a sound effects or music track to prevent the possibility of English showing up in a foreign mix of the film.)
A good mix is like a performance art. In a perfect world, the mix would be a live play-through of the film with the mixer adjusting level, panning, EQ, reverb, delay, and compression all in real time. Of course, this is impossible, but for clients it would be ideal. Clients like to see the mix happening in as close to real time as possible, not only because the forward progress is immediately evident, but also, more importantly, because seeing and hearing the film in large sections makes it much easier to decide what is working both technically and creatively. The most difficult mixes are the ones that constantly stop for long periods and then restart, typically because the material was not prepared properly for the stage (elements are missing or wrong, or tracks are poorly laid out) or because no one ever approved the tracks before they came to the stage.
Of course, sometimes it is the mixer’s fault when a mix goes poorly. Younger mixers who have learned to mix one track at a time by using a computer mouse are not at all prepared for what a real-world mix is like. Real mixers are capable of handling dozens of tracks at once in real (or near-real) time. Clients do not want to see a mixer volume-graphing. They can’t hear what you are doing, and, since the movie has stopped playing, they assume that something is wrong and wonder why the mixer isn’t mixing (in their view). They want to hear what you are doing in real time so that they can give you their feedback. To be a good re-recording mixer, one needs many hours of practice to develop both the technical skills and the ears to hear what is good, but one also needs to learn to deal with clients well. Once technical challenges become second nature, by far the most difficult part of the job is trying to make the clients happy, and this is often the breaking point for those people who are technically gifted but have not learned to collaborate well.
David Bondelevitch
David J. Bondelevitch, MPSE, CAS is an Emmy and MPSE Golden Reel Award-winning music and dialog editor, re-recording mixer, and Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado, Denver. He is a past president of the Motion Picture Sound Editors and current Vice President of the Cinema Audio Society. He studied composition at the Berklee College of Music and filmmaking at MIT and USC. He is also a member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, the Motion Picture Editor’s Guild, the American Federation of Musicians (Local 47), the Society of Composers and Lyricists, the Audio Engineering Society, the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, and Broadcast Music, Inc.
He has been nominated for MPSE Golden Reel Awards 21 times. Credits include Strangers with Candy, The Ten Commandments, The Hunley, Ruby’s, Island Of The Sharks, A Separate Peace, Jeepers Creepers II, Black Knight, Passion of Mind, It Conquered Hollywood, and Stonebrook.
Deliverables
Once the mix is complete, it is put into its final forms and the sessions are archived. I say forms, because rarely does a project end up in one final medium. These days movies are played in theaters, on television, on DVD, on the web, on iPods, and so on. Often they are played in various languages, which requires a specific set of items, as mentioned above, primarily an M and E (music and effects only with no dialog). It is critical to have open communication with those on the receiving end of the project. They will tell you exactly what needs to be delivered and when it has to arrive by. This is a bad conversation to have once the project is complete; it should happen before you begin. This way you can plan for the deliverables early on in the process. Most big projects have this covered from day one, but things often morph as the project unfolds and it is important to ensure that someone stays updated on these details. See Chapter 10 for more information on exporting projects.