#mu2402

This evening my colleagues and I will be completing the set tasks of the module MU2402 and collating our work ready for submission. In the actual industry, the process of delivery may well be very similar to the circumstances under which we have to submit. For example, the process of test screening will be done in order to ascertain whether or not our work has had it’s desired effect, there will most likely be multiple versions of the delivery such as an M&E track (”music and effects” or just a version of the final mix without any dialogue, usually used when the piece will be released internationally and requires an overdub with a new language), and simply the fact that we have had to work to a strict deadline in order to make sure that the work has been finished on time - or rather finished at all (referring to my previous post about how deadlines can be seen as creative tools).  

So tonight we say goodbye to retribution. We will bounce a final stereo mix and some stems before writing them all to a hard drive and keeping it extra safe until tomorrows deadline date. I must say that, however challenging this task has been, I have thoroughly enjoyed contributing and working with my colleagues on this project, it has opened my eyes to an enormous area of the audio industry, inspired me to explore career options in the field of post production audio and has permanently changed the way I view films and television programs.

Once me and my colleagues had listened to the video a number of times in our brand new mix session file, we identified some areas that needed to be automated further and referred to our pre mix criticism notes for other areas that we could improve on. A great deal of the work that we needed to do was working with the low end frequency content of one character’s (Viktor) voice. we used audiosuite EQ to shape some of his lines and quickly fixed the problem, however the decrease in low end in the dialogue brought out some of the low end in the music, this was rectified by changing the level of the music instead of working with the EQ. 

After all of the sounds are implemented and in sync, the attention of a re-recording engineer working on a film turns to balancing. This means that the engineer will edit the levels and EQ of the dialogue, FX and music throughout the short film to make sure that the audience’s focus is in the right place at the right time. For me and my colleagues, this meant that we were about to use a great deal of automation.

I knew that the foley FX that I had contributed to the mix had been mixed relatively to each other, however these did not fit with the other elements, for example the backgrounds were in my opinion too loud to begin with (in comparison with the foley and dialogue). We had set up the mix session so that each audio track was routed through a bus depending on it’s category. These “sub” tracks included backgrounds, footsteps, moves, props, guns, punches and miscellaneous - which were routed through another bus names “FX SUM” - dialogue production, dialogue ADR - which were routed through a “DX SUM” and the soundtrack which went through an “MX SUM”. This allowed us to scale down the session into something that was manageable whilst still having a great deal of control. 

We then began to automate the levels and plug-in functions on the sub tracks before producing what is known as a “pre mix”, which is then used for external constructive criticism and overall helps to improve the quality of the final product. We also used this pre mix to reference external sources of playback - watching the film with our pre mix on a television. Once we were happy with our pre mix, we bounced each of the sub tracks into new stereo files that we named “background stem”, “footsteps stem” etc. these were then imported into a new session ready for additional mixing.

Before we start pre production, my colleagues an I needed to implement and edit all of the sounds. When it came to looking at the production sound recordings, we noticed a great deal of reverb and room ambience, which clearly didn’t match with the ADR recordings. There were also some issues with distortion and general noise. Thankfully we have had a lecture recently on a piece of software that can be used as a tool to fix these issues.

The RX5 noise reduction plugins from Izotope are installed in the D-command and D-control studios at futureworks and it is some of the most impressive software I have worked with. We mostly use the De-Reverb and De-click processes for the dialogue clean ups. We use it separately to our DAW and render our processing to the clips using audiosuite. 

Me and my colleagues brought together our different areas of work into one humongous “mix session” file a few nights ago. This turned out to be an ordeal with synchronisation issues at every stage. However we overcame these issues and I will admit that our mix is starting to come together.

Our first task during the collation stage was to reduce our individual sessions into “Stem” files. I did this in my foley session by first making a selection over all of the clips in a track and using the “Consolidate Clip” function in pro tools to render a new whole file clip. I did this with all of the tracks in my session. I also included a sync beep two seconds before the first frame of action (timecode: 00:59:58:00) to use when trying to line up all of the different tracks. I then selected all of the newly made clips in my edit window and referred to the clip list, as all of my edit window selections were highlighted. In the clip list’s drop down menu, I selected the “export clips as files” function and sent out my stems into a file in order to move the files over. 

The next stage was to build our mix session. As we had been using an organised track layout in the individual sessions, I simply imported the audio and the video onto new tracks to start with and I proceeded to sync the video with the timecode in the session. Then I set up “submaster” tracks for all of the different elements in the session (submasters are busses that you route only the footsteps through for example, in order for greater control and collective automation) and sum tracks for MX, DX and FX (music, dialogue and effects) before bringing everything through one master fader. 

Yesterday, a group of colleagues and I had the pleasure of talking to the director of the short film that we are designing sound for. In a normal post production for film scenario I can only assume that the director would have been present and providing insight into the creative direction of the audio from the beginning, however as this is a part of a module the director must not have had time to visit us until now. Despite this I found the conversation invaluable to the project and several of my queries about the story were cleared up.

The director talked to us about how he visualised the characters and gave insight into the details of the scenes. For example, he confirmed that the setting was in fact on the outskirts of a large city during the day time (as we had thought) but also mentioned that, despite the room that they are in being empty, the rest of the building may not be. Saying that the characters may be “hiding in plain sight” as it were.

Ben Burtt, of skywalker sound with such films to his name as Super 8, WALL-E and the Star Wars series, describes sound as a way to “give life” to a film. Him being the extremely renowned and acclaimed sound designer that he is and after watching a number of the films that he has worked with, I am inclined to agree with him. 

The Sound designers job sometimes blends with that of the foley artist, in that a foley effect, while extremely close, may not be exactly what the artist nor the director are looking for, and would benefit from some more electronic manipulation or from layering several sounds, which is where the elements of sound design come in. However a sound designer is often tasked with creating sounds that can not be recorded, or that have never even been heard. This requires immense creative foresight and the ability to break up elements of an effect in their imagination in order to build it in the reality of a recording studio or a DAW.

One of my favourite areas of sound for film is Foley effects. Foley is normally defined as the replacement of sounds such as footsteps or clothes moving or even the sounds of props that the characters use. I enjoy it so much because of how creative it can be. For example, foley artists are often required to layer sounds and recreate things using props in their studios (or “foley stages”).