Final Mixing Process

The final mic was completed at Andys house due to lack of time available in the sound theatre, as well as knowing we could be interrupted by other groups wanting to export their projects. The final mix was actually a rather quick process, and I believe this was due to the amount of preparation beforehand, allowing us to get straight to work. The mix was completed on studio monitors (KRK RP8), which we both own and are both used to their characteristics, meaning we both had trust in knowing how much low/high end to add/subtract.

The final mixing stage mainly consisted of going through the film from start to finish, automating any dialogue, foley, panning and effects to add realism to the piece. We also added any fades needed, especially with the music and atmosphere tracks. We ensured that the levels were consistent throughout and that any audio processing needed had been completed. The film was then watched over by the director who only had a few small issues which were rectified quickly.

The mix was then exported to be sent to the film editor, followed by three separate exports for the foley, music and effects mixes respectively.

The whole process of recording sound for film has interested me since embarking on the degree of Audio Production, and I have become more interested throughout the course. When the opportunity arose, I realised that working with Media Production students would be very beneficial and a good experience that will put me in good stead to apply for work after University.

The ability to work with others has always been a large part of University, however never before had I embarked on a project with a group of people that I had never met. This experience gave me the opportunity to correctly assert myself whilst being managed by a director, as well as having to work around other members of the group. Social networking played a vital role in communicating with other members of the group, and constant messages and posts meant that we all stayed in contact with each other and knew exactly what needed doing at each stage of the way; finances, timescales, call sheets and any other documents were posted online and this allowed everybody to maintain a professional practice. Having creative input from a team of students also helped the film develop quicker and revealed any flaws or problems that may arise before they happened.

Throughout this project, I believe the process I have learnt the most from is location recording. Before this project, I only had theoretical knowledge surrounding using location sound equipment but no hand-on experience. From the first day of filming, I believe I was able to use these theoretical skills and apply them to a practical situation; the SQN mixer was much easier to use after researching, as was finding the correct microphone positions and routing everything to the recording equipment. Before we started filming, I was unsure on how many takes would be needed to capture good takes of audio, and I was worried that if some of the audio we recorded wasn’t of a good standard, then we wouldn’t get the opportunity to retry. This was not the case, and I quickly realised that the amount of takes needed for the many camera angles were more than enough to accommodate for any bad audio takes. Also while on location, I found that background noise is much more of an issue than once anticipated, especially when listening back through headphones. From this, I believe my ability to source problems and rectify them has improved, and I believe that my listening skills have improved as a result; I can now expect common problems and know how to overcome them. Another skill I believe I overlooked before the project was the simple ability to hold the boom pole in the correct position and move it without it affecting the recording. I had not previously realised just how sensitive microphones can be when attached to a boom pole, and from noticing how even the movement of fingers on the pole had huge effects to the recording, I was able to develop my skills in making sure I was positioned correctly and comfortably before the shoot.

The post-production stage was a similar process to what I am used to, in the fact I had a good amount of practical experience in using the sound theatre. What I believe I learnt the most is the ability to work as a group, realising ideas of others when the correct terminology is not being used; only two of us were experienced audio engineers, the media production students have little audio experience so working together was difficult yet rewarding. I have learnt that patience is important in a situation like this, but others having creative input really does help the whole process. Recording the ADR was also a learning curve, directing actors to perform their parts exactly as they had been on camera. This was not a difficult process as had been expected, but from this I have learnt that although inexperienced, it is possible to perform ADR to a good standard by being patient with actors. This will be key in the future, as I am sure this process could be very long winded in certain situations with different actors, and directing them correctly will greatly help with getting the work done.

Towards the end of the project, time constraints as well as double booking the sound theatre placed considerable strain on the group. Until this stage, we had all managed our time effectively, and it obviously became quite stressful in the final stages. Thinking back on this, It would have been very easy to become stressed and unproductive, as well as argue with member in the group. I believe this aspect is often overlooked yet can have a huge effect on the final product, be that amateur or professional. Fortunately, the whole group worked well together and I believe this reflects in the final project, however I will never take the ability to work well in group for granted, and realise that working with film crew that I may not socialise with is inevitable.

In conclusion, I feel that this project has allowed me to excel in the areas of Audio Production that I am interested in, and the final product will be a good showcase of my talents to add to a portfolio to show to future employers. I now understand how stressful the film making environment can be, and I believe I have adapted my skills to suit this. Even through working 15 hour days on both location and in the studio, I have thoroughly enjoyed this module and I hope it will help me to excel myself in my chosen career path

We spent the day finalising the project before mixing, ensuring that we had a completely full atmosphere track, as well as all the foley sound that were needed. We also fully arranged  each component of the audio into separate tracks, fully colour coded them and created any sends to reverb/delay plugins on bus channels. The full project was now presented looking clean and easy to work with, as to reduce time in the mixing stage.

We also spent today sourcing most of the music for the film, which all had to be royalty free or free to use. We searched many websites containing music licensed under the Creative Commons system, which gave us a huge selection as long as we correctly attributed the creator. All the music we found had to be very fitting with the scenes, and so we used jazz/lounge music for the restaurant and cafes scenes as background music. To portray emotion, we carefully selected piano music along with some music from a friend which was very fitting. Making the music sit well in the mix was hard work, and required a lot of careful mixing, but eventually worked well, which I believe is evident in the film.

 

The second session in the sound theatre consisted primarily of recording the foley effects for the whole film, followed by finding and inserting the correct atmospheres. Before recording the foley, I made a thorough list of every possibly foley sound we would need to record, along with the time that the event happened, which was very helpful in remembering what we had left to do

When recording the foley, I did most of the movements whilst Andy stayed in the studio and monitored. Doing the whole film in this way was very efficient, as I knew exactly what pieces of foley were needed and had become used to how each foley action would sound recorded. Likewise, Andy became much quicker on Pro-Tools and the whole process was completed with relative ease. We covered every movement that we believed would have an effect on the final film, regardless of how minute they may have been.

After recording the foley, we moved on to the atmosphere tracks. During location recording, we recorded room tones for each location and so these were inserted in to the project at the right times. We then systematically went through each scene and inserted fitting atmospheres, some from sound libraries and some that we had recorded ourselves. Some scenes required more careful selection of atmospheres, however the process was rather simple as we didn’t have any particularly extravagant environments to deal with. Some atmospheres were layered as necessary as some sounded a little thin on their own.

Post Production – ADR

Post-production began yesterday, after confirming James, the actor who plays Isaac, was able to come in to the sound theatre to complete ADR, and today, when Charlotte, who play April, was able to make it.

Before recording ADR, we prepared all of the audio and imported the project in to Pro-Tools, ensuring that we had the reference audio for each scene as well as the full video file. We did this before so we could get started instantly and so that our actors wouldn’t have to spend any time waiting around for us; this is professional practice and we tried our best to maintain this throughout filming and postproduction.

When recording ADR, we encountered no problems. We used both an AKG C414 as well as the Rode NTG-2 to compare which sounded better in the environment as to maintain as much consistency with the location dialogue as possible. Fortunately, both James and Charlotte were exceptionally good at recording ADR, especially when considering it was their first time, and the sessions ran very smoothly and we captured some very good takes.