More on Sonic Perspective

In film, your camera determines your perspective by bringing you closer or further away from the subject. Usually you would start with somewhat of a wide shot at the beginning of a scene to establish where the scene takes place. Then you would cut between medium and close up shots periodically for coverage of the scene, with the occasional cut back to the wide to depict any sort of movement that may happen during the scene.

In sound, there is also a perspective that comes through, depending on how the scene is framed with the camera. If the shot is wide, there usually is no way to get a boom near the subject, and hence the perspective is far away.

In this case, it seems unreasonable to expect the sound department to get a close up sonic perspective of a subject if the camera framing doesnt physically allow it right? Well, you would be surprised how many people do not consider this.

Some film makers shoot mainly wide shots in an effort to save time and money, and although wide shots can be very beautiful if done right, they can also give a sitcom effect to your picture. "But sitcoms have sound right? It's pretty good!" Well, if thats what you want, but let me tell you a little about how that is done, and why it isnt ideal for your film. First, the sitcom is a dying style, and it only works on closed sets for the most part. A sitcom has a built set with no ceiling and a couple of crane operated mic booms hanging overhead with a special kind of super long range shotgun mic that is able to get decent (but not cinema quality) coverage over such wide shots, because most sitcoms are shot relatively wide. This would be rather impossible for a "one man show" type sound person to get on his/her own. Sitcom style shooting also tends to require excessively long shots, meaning they run for a long time, and cover more than one actor. A boom operator holding a boom over their head for your wide shot can't do that all day, and usually 10 minutes is really pushing it.

Well then why not just put a lav on them? If you have read any of my previous posts, you will know that relying on a lav is never the solution. If your camera/lighting departments arent working with the sound department to make sure that everyone is happy, chances are you are not going to get ideal coverage for sound. So your picture may look fantastic, but your sound may be hollow and distant, or extra noisy.

I've worked on a number of films where the DP will say something like "I've run sound for a film, so I am conscious of what the sound department needs." That is nice to get a sympathetic person on set, but the truth is, unless you have a deep understanding of sound, both technically and in experience, you will know that their idea of what you need as a sound person in order to get good sound is vague at best. They often think that because they can hear the dialogue, the sound is good. And to the untrained ear, this will pass. But as soon as that film is projected alongside a film that did things the right way at a festival or something, suddenly your opinion changes.

So unfortunately the sympathetic DP often has no real idea of what you need, which is terribly unfortunate because your camera and lighting departments are often dictating how you do your job, without really knowing anything about what your job requires.

This is why a lot of sound people keep to themselves on set, do their job, deliver the audio, collect their check and leave. Because they are tired of fighting the good battle on every set they work on, on every setup they do. So they simply say "We can only deliver you the quality of sound that your production allows us to give you". What does this mean? Well, if your camera person only does wide shots, and your lighting crew arent making it possible to get a boom near the subject without casting shadows everywhere, then they arent letting the sound department do their job right. And to make things worse, the noisier your location is, and the further away your boom is from your subject, the worse your sound will be.

What it comes down to is this: The best place for a microphone is as close to the subject as possible. This is just how it is, theres no such thing as magically "zooming in" your audio. If the mic can't get close to the subject, they will sound more distant, and you will have a louder noise floor, or background noise.

So back to perspective. If your shot is wide, dont expect to get a close perspective from your sound, because it is physically impossible, with certain exceptions. Punch in to a close up on your subject to get good coverage, and please, do not forget about the dialogue editor! They are probably the most important person in post production audio!

Syncing Sound To Film

In the independent film world our budget forces us to make decisions that we will hope save us money. One of those things that I see more and more often are people trying to record the sound directly into the camera. The idea behind this is to save time in post production by not having to resync the sound before editing. Although this works in theory, it is not exactly practical. In this post I will explain the pros and cons of doing this, and why.

Sound into camera: Why not? It is already in sync with the picture, less time in editing right? Well, yes and no.

Every so often I get a director/producer who insists that I record the sound directly into his camera. But more often than not, I am using my shotgun mic and at least a couple of wireless lavs. At this point I am using more than two tracks, and most cameras being used today in the independent film world only have two audio inputs. So there is the problem of only having an initial mix of all of the tracks. Going this rout defeats the purpose of having dialogue editors and mixers in post. In a sense, you could relate this to setting your camera's focus to a fixed point, and not adjusting it for the entire film. There will be moments of clarity, but for the most part it is far from ideal.

The other disadvantage to this is the obvious lack of monitoring and adjustment capabilities that your sound team can make during a take. Granted, if the signal is being sent to the camera via a mixer, then the sound mixer can be making those adjustments as needed on his end. But if the camera's audio input levels havnt been calibrated to match that of the sound mixer, your audio may be too low or too high into the camera. Too low of a signal means that you will have a higher noise floor, and too hot of a signal means that your signal will distort or clip.

Auto Gain and Limiting: Many of todays cameras have these features, but what do they do exactly? Well, Auto Gain simply takes the audio input level and adjusts it to always be at a nominal level. Sounds like a good idea right? Well, it is a machine, and it cannot anticipate what will happen in the script. So if there is no dialogue happening for example and it is quiet, the Auto Gain will ramp up the signal until the noise floor is violently loud, and as soon as someone speaks, the signal will be too loud and peak, and the Auto Gain will ramp the signal down too low, but not fast enough, and you will have levels changing during your dialogue. And the Limiter? Well it works some of the time, but if the signal is too loud, it is going to clip no matter what.

DSLRs and Juice Boxes: A Juice Box is a small device that you can connect to your digital SLR (Canon 5D, 7D, etc), and will allow you to connect two XLR (mic) cables directly into it. It will usually even provide the ability to switch on and off phantom power, a low cut (high pass) filter, and a pad. Some will also accept mic or line levels, and have a number of other functions, including a headphone output so you can monitor your signal on it's way into the camera. Sounds great right? Ideally it should be, but here are the issues involved with using a juice box and trying to record into your DSLR:

Monitoring: Your DSLR does not have a headphone jack, so you cant actually listen to what you are recording. You can listen to your sound before it goes into the camera via the juice box, but it may be too loud or too low when it gets to the camera, because both the camera and the juice box have separate input level controls, and you have to adjust both of them so that they match, which can be pretty tricky. Fortunately your DSLR has level meters for you to watch and see the levels rise and fall. This is helpful, but to make things more confusing, heres the kicker: There is no manual audio gain control on the DSLRs as of yet, which means you are stuck in Auto Gain! The juice box companies have thought of this however, and have designed a system where one of your two available audio channels are fed a signal tone which keeps the gain constant, allowing you to record onto your other audio channel without the ups and downs of your Auto Gain roller coaster.

So here we have somewhat of a solution, but you can only record onto one channel, which means if you are doing anything more than using one mic source, such as a boom or handheld mic for interviews, you are stuck with that pre mix problem because at this point you need your audio sources to once again go through your sound guy's mixer and be condensed down into a single mono track before it hits the camera.

The other issue I have seen with the DSLR/juice box system is that a good number of these dont seem to connect to each other well. What I mean is that in order to connect the juice box to your camera in a way to get the sound into the camera, you take a small cable coming out of the juice box and stick it into the mini-jack input in your camera. In my experience, I have seen a number of these connections fail, and you will lose your audio without even knowing it (until you go back and take a listen once youre home)! In this case, you will either get distorted audio or your camera will just revert back to it's built-in mic. I have even seen the input cable get partially in, but not all the way, so you don't actually get any audio at all! Either way you cant tell just by looking at the camera. You actually have to transfer the file onto your computer and check to be sure since there is no way of plugging headphones directly into the camera.

Time Code and Resyncing Sound: In the past we have often used Time Code as a reference so that the audio and video could be more easily resynced in post for dailies or "rushes". This is not a bad system, but it is an expensive one. Not that many cameras today being used in the indie world can even run Time Code, and if they do (like in the case of the RED ONE), there is often a drift that happens rather quickly, so Time Code becomes useless at that point. In regards to sound, what your sound mixer needs is a mixer/recorder that can support Time Code (again, an expensive feature to have), as well as a Smart Slate (very expensive), and sometimes additional components to run, jam, or link the Time Code to your camera and sound recorder. If you want your sound guy to have these options available, first consider the practical application of what you need it for, and what it would cost to get it all up and running, as well as be sure that your camera can support it! I get directors/producers ask me all the time if I have a smart slate and Time Code, but when I ask them what they are shooting on, often times the reply is a 5D or an HVX, at which point I ask them why they want me to have Time Code when they cant even use it!

So let's think about a better way of syncing sound to picture without an expensive Time Code package. I have recently worked on a few projects where the editor has been on set and told me that there are new plug-ins for Final Cup Pro and possibly Avid that will analyze the sound from the camera's on board mic, and compare it with the production audio tracks, and snap them together automatically. Although I havnt been able to find these products on my own, I have heard from a number of sources that this does in fact exist and works! And as an added bonus, they say it isn't expensive either. So there you have it! A simple inexpensive solution that will save everyone money, and you a lot of time in post production because you dont have to manually resync the sound to picture for each take, which will save you more money because you dont have to pay your editor for his/her time in doing so! And you can keep your sound guy/gal who will deliver you great audio to match your picture!