World of Audio

One Man Show vs Sound Team

2011-11-27T16:35:00.000-08:00

A lot of independent film productions, and even television shows (primarily reality tv) try to cut out as much expense as possible everywhere they can. One thing they have been doing is hiring a One Man sound package. But why hasnt this been the norm since the beginning? Seems ideal: One guy running all the sound AND providing all the sound equipment! We can save a tone!

The "One Man Show" as some people call it was designed for documentary film making and news gathering. Both situations where the quality of the audio isnt as important as being able to understand who is speaking, or simply capturing ambiance. The main point is that the sound person cant be mixing and holding a boom over their head at the same time. You would think this is obvious; you would need at least three arms to do that. This is why this style of recording is not done on narrative projects such as feature films, shorts, television narratives, or a multitude of other production types. The other thing to think about is how demanding you as a production are and what you are requiring a sound person to do.

I get approached all the time by producers asking me to work on my own. When I ask them how many actors or people will have dialogue simultaneously, or in a given scene, what I am really asking is: "How heavy of a bag do I need to wear around my neck?". Each person with dialogue would usually get a wireless mic, and each wireless mic requires a receiver, and an audio channel. You also need to carry around batteries and all kinds of accessories, because you will most likely not have time to run back to your staging area and get things. If you have seven actors at a given point with lines, then I assume I will need seven radio mics and a boom. The boom is the most important mic and should never be omitted from the combination. And if anything, there should at least be the boom and not necessarily the radio mics. If your scene makes no room for a boom to get in and get good sound, it is not worth shooting, or you should have the budget for ADR and serious post audio work. Do not rely on wireless mics, there are too many reasons for them to fail.

So with this combination, seven wireless mics and a boom, I need an eight track recorder to accommodate all of these things. Wearing a bag around my neck or even with a harness with this much stuff is really asking a lot of a person. Their mobility is limited, and booming with this much weight is difficult and impractical. Many situations require the boom to be agile and move with the camera, but if I am being weighed down by this much equipment, not to mention how big and bulky it all is, my mobility is considerably less than if I only had a boom in my hand.

The Sound Team on the other hand was developed when sound became incorporated to picture. A typical sound team on a smaller production consists of three people: the Sound Mixer, who is responsible for recording the tracks and mixing for dailies, and is the department head. The Boom Operator, whose duties involve booming, and working with and around the camera and lighting departments so that they can successfully capture sound without creating shadows and falling into frame. The Audio Utility is responsible for running cables, laving actors, syncing time code, and trouble shooting any technical issues that may arouse. They also double as a second Boom Operator when needed.

A budget production should at least have a Sound Mixer and a Boom Operator. Both people can handle the responsibilities of the Utility for the most part. But if there are a lot of big scenes with lots of actors, I recommend hiring a Utility, if at least for those days when needed.

There are so many advantages to this system that are often so overlooked, it makes my head spin thinking that producers are out there calling the shots on how a department head should do their job, and for how much, when really it is the other way around! The producer needs to hire the department heads, ask them what they need, and how much it will all cost, then they go out and get the funding. That is the point of hiring an engineer and expert for that department. So that they can make your project work to the best of their abilities for you, because if you the producer knew about these things you could run the sound yourself. Have you ever tried paying what you wanted or could afford for your groceries? No, because they are set at a fixed price, and if you dont like it, you cant buy it. It's that simple.

When I have run a one man show in the past on a narrative, the most irritating thing that I hear (other than when people want to chime in and make suggestions on how to do my job) is when everyone is ready to shoot, and I'm busy doing something and they call out "waiting on sound!". If I am the entire sound department, there are a lot of things I need to do, and doing the job of three people doesnt make it any faster. IF I was allowed to see the blocking and assess the lighting and framing before we go for a take, I would then need to mic up the actors, and assess how I am going to engineer the recording of this scene. I may need to use plant mics, or hang mics from the ceiling, or put sound blankets on places to deaden the acoustics. But I am often not allowed time to prep for a take. Some how people get the idea that one man can take up less space and work faster than two. With two, as a mixer I dont need to be in the room that the shooting is taking place in. If it is a small apartment bedroom for example, I can be in the living room, and the boom op can be in the room, taking up less space because they dont have a bulky bag around their neck.

As a mixer, I can be sure the levels on all tracks are good, monitor them, record my mix track, take care of sound reports, and prepare for whatever is coming up next so that things are more efficient. A Boom Operator can get in and out without taking up much room, change the batteries or make an adjustment on an actors radio mic, and handle a lot of other things while the mixer is doing something else.

I was asked to work on this project that more than likely went nowhere due to poor organization and, lets face it, a bad script. I was working by myself, needed to mic up seven people, and boom and record at the same time. My bag was about 45 lbs, and a great majority of this project was outdoors walk-and-talk style shooting. This project was absolute torture, and to make matters worse, the catering was so bad I wound up going off on my own and buying my own meals. This was an out of town shoot, otherwise I may have just packed a lunch. The point of this though was that I was doing so many things at once, and had so many things going on (all those tracks of dialogue) that I could not be sure if I got anything usable. Listening to eight different audio sources at once is a difficult task if that is all you are doing, but I was also booming and walking at the same time, trying to keep the shadow of my boom out of the shot while trying to get good sound. Meanwhile I am also worrying about batteries, adjusting levels (many of these actors werent well trained or seasoned, and would go from whispering to screaming which of course is not the way things work in film), and all of this was on the fly.

If I had a team I would have had two people booming, maybe only used wireless mics on a couple of the key actors, but I would have generally tried to get the most coverage with the booms. I would have been a distance away so as to not get in anyone's way, and could have provided a great number of other tasks and could have been able to ensure great takes.

Another production I worked on was a pretty small independent project, and wanted to hire me as a one man show, but I negotiated the rate so that I could hire a boom op. At the end of the shoot, I met the editor. This person is the editor for a popular television show (which I was surprised about since this was very low budget, and Im pretty sure most people were either not getting paid, or making less than minimum wage!), and was expecting a lot of things from me, such as sound reports, mixdown tracks, and having my tracks in a particular order. Obviously I cannot provide things after the fact, this is something that should have been discussed before shooting. And if it were, I could have done everything with no problem. But if I were a one man show there is no way I could have provided any of those things. So you see, when producers start making calls on how things are run, and then other departments are expecting things that cannot be fulfilled otherwise, things turn into a mess pretty quickly. Fortunately my main recorder provides the ability to generate sound reports after the fact, and I had been taking notes and circling takes, so I was able to help post out a great deal.

This production also had more characters with dialogue than appeared in the script (last minute changes) and I was rarely provided with sides, so anticipating what scenes I needed to engineer was very difficult, and often opted to boom more and put less wireless on actors than I would have normally. But those problems all come from poor judgement on production's part, and poor organization.

A word of advice to independent or low budget productions: Just because you have less money to work with, doesnt mean you should go and re invent the wheel. Things are done a certain way for a reason, so dont go thinking that because you are independent or low budget that you can start calling shots without consulting your department heads first. This also applies to rates. When you hire your department head, ask him/her what their rate is, and what expenses they will need covered (such as expendables, a day rate for a Boom Op, or any special equipment that needs to be purchased or rented for this specific production). Do not set aside what you think is enough and just say what rate you are willing to offer. Many times you may luck out and get someone good who has the equipment and is willing to work for that rate, but most people will not.

I was recently offered a job on a feature where they wanted me to run a one man show for the entire production, provide all equipment, and work for a rate so low that it wouldnt even cover the cost of renting two radio mics! Needless to say I was rather insulted, and told the producer that she needed to discuss my rate and expenses and come up with the money for that before hand, not the other way around. Her reaction was "this is how we do it in the film biz!", to which I replied "well, not in the real world, but on rinky dink operations that do things their own way, sure! I guess it is how things are run..." Producers often forget that they do a few jobs a year, but I do at least a few jobs per month. My experience is always going to be greater than a producer's that has been working for the same amount of time that I have, and often is still greater than someone who has been working for twice as long as I have. Also a thing to consider is that I do jobs of all sizes. From independent shorts to feature length films of all budgets, television shows, commercials, you name it. I see how things are run from all levels, so when an independent film producer who has never done anything significant in terms of budget or success comes to me to explain how the biz works, the only thing that happens is that I know just how incompetent that person is, and I lose what little respect I may have had for them.

When thinking about a budget, also consider the following: Your sound department is providing equipment, and will expect a kit fee. This is basically a great price on renting the equipment. We are giving you a deal because you are also hiring us to work on your project. In the case of that gig that needed an eight channel recorder, seven wireless, and a boom, this is what the equipment rental costs are from a rental house per day:

Sound Devices 788T + CL-8 (8 channel recorder): $200/day

Sennheiser mkh 416 shotgun mic: $25/day

Lectrosonics SMQV wireless transmitter (x1): $50/day

Lectrosonics UCR 411a wireless receiver (x1): $40/day

Sanken cos-11 lavalier microphone (x1): $15/day

So these are the basics, not including wires, batteries, boom pole, bag/cart, or any of the accessories you need to make these things actually work together. According to these figures, it costs $105/day for one wireless lavalier microphone system. But we need seven. So thats $735/day just for lav systems. So the total cost for just these basic things is $960/day. So giving your independent sound guy a couple hundred dollars/day for his kit rental is sounding like a pretty good deal at this point. But dont make him/her work for free, we need a day rate, and a kit fee. It costs us a lot of money to be able to provide these services for you, and there is a reason why on big budget productions the sound mixer is one of the highest paid people on set. In my experience, people trying to do a low budget film will still pay a high rate to the sound department, while everyone else takes a pay cut. Even the DP and director. Why? Because they all have something to gain from this production, and have a hard time getting hired onto projects to do those things. For me, if you do not want to pay for my services, someone else does, so I have no problem turning down work because as a sound person, I am always busy and being approached for jobs. You also want to make it worth my time, because if someone offers me more I will probably jump ship onto their production, and replace myself with someone else. This can cause problems on your end, even though technically the sound department is covered. But you do need to make it worth me staying around. And it is not just me that will do this, everyone will except maybe someone young and inexperienced, in which case you maybe dont want to have that person running your sound anyways!

Back on point: One man show, good for some things, but not all. If you dont have the budget, dont shoot until you do. There is no point in shooting a film if you do not have a proper budget, because it will not turn out that well and your film will more than likely fail due to bad production or any number of other things that come with not being financially prepared. A Sound Team is what you need for your narratives if you want to do things right. This will save you a lot of money in post as well, heres why:

Your sound mixer is making that on the fly mix. This is intended for dailies, but a good amount of it does make it into the final mix of the film. Now since you are spending less money on someone doing your post audio work, you are saving money. Your production Sound Mixer is making mixes on the fly, not all will be completely usable, but those that are, are done in real time. In post, your mixer will go back and fourth many times on one line, taking considerably more time to do the same work. So let's say your production mixer makes usable mixes for 2/3 of what was shot in one day, which is let's say about 7 pages in your script out of 10. Seven pages of mixing in post may take all day, it may take a week depending on what needs to happen, but saving the majority of the days worth of work is worth it's weight in gold because you are cutting post time into a third, and you are usually paying a post engineer and renting a studio, which costs more than a budget production mixer. So you do the math: Spend more up front, get better quality results, save on money in post. Cut corners in all the wrong places, get an inferior product, spend more on the back end.

The choice is yours, will you make the wise decision?

Slates and Slating

2011-07-14T13:03:00.000-07:00

In this article I will be talking about slates, their various forms, and how to appropriately slate a scene. I find more and more people do not know how to slate correctly, or even know what a slate is for, which leads me to believe that film schools really are just a cash cow, and the education they provide is far from accurate or complete, let alone well rounded.

The slate has many purposes. It has a front panel with sectioned off areas where you label information about the production, as well as the scene and take information. This is so when you look at your footage, you can see what clip you are looking at without having to watch the whole thing. The clapper part of the slate is there so that resyncing audio to picture in post production is easier than trying to line up the sound to some movement in the scene.

As you can see in this picture, the top part of the slate is labeled "Prod." which stands for Production. This is where you put the title of the production you are working on. "Roll" means camera roll. Since we primarily use digital cameras these days, you would put "1" for the first tape or memory card. when you switch tapes or memory cards, you change that number to "2", and so on. If you are shooting with more than one camera, you designate them as camera A and camera B. In this case you would label the roll A1/B1 for the first tape or card in both cameras, and change the numbers whenever you change the rolls. Simple enough right? This is so that the editor knows which clip came from which camera and which roll, so piecing your film together is easier.

The scene is the number that designated which scene you are shooting. If this is scene 1, you write 1. If you are shooting the same scene from a second angle, it is called 1A. If you choose to go for a third angle, it is 1B. And so on. Sometimes when you run out of letters in the alphabet, you go to double letters: 1AA, 1AB, 1AC, etc. We tend to skip letters l, o, and sometimes s because they look like the numbers 1, 0, and 5. When slating scene numbers with letters, 1A should be slated as 1 Alpha, 1B as 1 Beta or Baker, 1C and 1 Charley, and so on.

The take section is self explanatory. Take 1, take 2, etc. If you shoot scene one three times, you have three takes. If you only do two takes of 1A, you have two takes. Etc.

Beneath that is where you put the name of the director and the cinematographer or DP (Director of Photography). If you are shooting more than one camera, you often will put the name of each camera operator so we know which camera is which.

Writing the date is very important when you are shooting for more than one day. Again, this helps the editor keep your footage organized.

The next things written are things you circle to help the editor. Day, Night, Int(erior), Ext(erior), MOS, Sync. If the scene takes place in the day, you circle day, if it is interior, you circle Int. simple enough. MOS is circled when you are shooting without sound, while Sync is used when you are shooting with sound. MOS stands for Motor Only Sync or Motor Only Shot. There are other funny theories as to what MOS stands for, and Im sure youve already heard them.

Filter is if you are using a filter on the camera. In the space next to the word Filter is where you would write what kind of filter you are using. Some slates also have an FPS alongside everything here at the bottom. This is where you should write your Frames Per Second. You should always do that, AND tell your sound person so they know what rate to record at. If you do not tell us, we will assume it is one thing or another, and if we guess wrong your audio may drift from the picture!!!

So now you know what a slate is. The appropriate way to slate is to place the slate in front of the camera to where it can see the entire slate in focus, with the clapper open (if you are recording sound with this take), or held like the picture below to designate that this take is MOS.

You can also simply hold the sticks closed. This is as an added reminder to the picture editor to not look for a corresponding audio take because none was recorded.

Once the slate is in place, the Assistant Director should call "Roll Sound". Once the sound mixer says "Speed", the AD should call "Roll Camera(s)". Once they call "Speed", the Assistant Camera or whomever happens to be slating should then call TO THE MICROPHONE "Scene___ Take ___", then let the sticks fall (not slam them, unless the sound person/mic is far away from the slate) then call "Marker", and quickly get out of the shot. Marker designated that the sound of the sticks is in fact the sticks, and not any other sound. IF the camera is very tight on an actor, and the slate needs to be placed in front of their face, you would call "Soft Sticks", and very gently tap the sticks together so as to not offend, bother, hurt the ears of, or take the nose off of the actor just behind the slate.

Once the Camera Operator says "Set", then the Director or Assistant Director will call "Action", at which time the talent should take a beat, then begin. If they do not wait for "Action" chances are they will ruin the take because the technicians around them are not ready.

Any other method of slating will generally make you look like an amateur, and people will recognize that! Slamming the sticks hurts the sound guy's ears, and causes unnecessary Sound Pressure Levels to potentially damage his expensive microphones. Dont Be A Jerk, and slate properly!!!!!!

Smart Slates! Why? I'll tell you. Smart slates are used when your CAMERA and SOUND both are using Time Code to sync to eachother, again making things easier for the editor to resync the audio to the picture. THIS IS NOT NECESSARY FOR TIME CODE USE!!! But is only used when time code is in use. What I means by that is that the sound guy with a professional kit will have a built in Time Code generator into his recorder. It is very precise, and an expensive feature to have. Do not ask for time code if you are on a super low budget, because like I said, it is an expensive feature for the sound guy to have.

The sound person can jam sync the camera to his time code, effectively putting the camera in sync. For whatever reason, cameras tend to not come with a good internal clock (which isnt much more than the technology of a quartz watch might I add!), so everyone looks to the sound person for sync. So then, if one can simply jam the audio and video sync, why use a time code slate? Well, the Smart Slate will freeze the Time Code that is on its display once the clapper has been shut, so with an exact sync point displayed, resyncing audio to video in post is that much more simple. But do remember that a smart slate is a very expensive item, and it does not help the sound department in any way do their job. So DO NOT expect your sound department to have one, unless YOU are willing to pay an extra kit rental fee to your sound department.

I usually do not offer time code services of any kind unless a minimum rate is met, because these are added expenses that dont help me with my job, and actually added tasks that I have to do on set. Many times I dont have time for these sorts of tasks, so asking me to take time out of my limited time to fumble around with something that doesnt help me do my job is not something I want to do unless Im getting payed extra for it.

And to be clear, MOST cameras that indie film makers are using DO NOT run time code!!!! DSLR cameras have no time code options, neither do many lesser types of cameras. Even cameras like the RED One do have time code, but cannot keep a constant time code because they werent built with very good precision. In the event of using a RED or any other time code camera that loses it's sync once powered down, or tends to drift, should have a lockit box attached to it to keep sync. THIS IS SOMETHING THE CAMERA DEPARTMENT RENTS! It is not something you should EVER expect your sound department to provide, as it is something to keep THE CAMERA from drifting off of time code. If it were sound that had problems with drift, sound would have one, but it is ALWAYS the camera that needs a better Time Code generator than the one it has.

The last type of slate I will talk about is the Insert Slate:

This little guy is something that your Assistant Camera person should provide. It is small and primarily used to label an insert take, which often times are a close up on an object or action that will help detail the scene. Since a lot of inserts do not require sound, these slates do not have sticks on them. Though sometimes you do need to roll sound on an insert, in which case there are small slates with sticks available, or you can tape a C47 (clothes line pin) to the top of the insert slate and flick it to create a tiny snap sound.

So, now that we have talked about slates and slating, I hope to see better ACs out there who know how to slate properly without calling the scene and take numbers to the camera and not to the microphone, and without slamming the sticks and hurting my ears. I also hope to stop getting calls from so called producers asking me to provide a smart slate on a shoot that is going to use a Canon 7D! Yes, this happens all the time, and it just makes you look bad, so please do your research before you make a fool of yourself!

Recording to Camera: Do's & Dont's

2011-04-27T17:00:00.000-07:00

I work on a variety of productions for both Film and Television that ask me to send the audio to the cameras. The intention of this is usually to have the audio already linked to the picture so that they can save on time (and money) in post production.

Why this is a bad idea:

While this sounds like a good idea from a financial standpoint, let alone the ease of editing or playback, it is actually going to hurt your production more than you think. Professional sound equipment incorporates expensive and precision parts that ensure the quality of the sound coming into the machine is as good as it can be, while offering outstanding recording options. Sending to camera requires all tracks to be mixed down and sent into the camera's inferior recorder. Many cameras do not offer the dynamic range that an audio recorder would offer standard, and the converters arent always adequate either. The biggest problem however is the trouble with the mixdown.

It sounds nice on paper to have your audio pre mixed and already attached to your picture, but mixing on the fly for final results is like starting a project from a very weak connection. In camera perspectives, it's like shooting your film or TV show with your iPhone. Sure, it's HD video, but the quality isnt there.

These days we see more and more "One Man Band" type audio guys on sets, whereas not too long ago it was standard to have a mixer/recorder and a boom op. This setup is like having a camera operator and an assistant camera. Operating your camera, pulling focus, and doing all the other tasks involved in shooting a picture (be it for film or television) can be quite daunting, and one cannot expect a one man camera crew to do as good of a job as a two man crew. The same goes for sound. When I am holding my boom over my head, how am I supposed to adjust levels during the take? The simple answer is that I cant. So if I cant actually do an on the fly mix that is being sent to camera, what am I sending? All the tracks together with the levels kind of set where I think they may be best at, but I cant do a proper job while booming.

Another problem that can occur is how the signal is sent to the camera. Many ENG teams use whats called a Break-Away cable, which has your audio sends, and monitoring returns. Normally this would tether the camera man to the sound mixer. The camera man could quickly release the cable if he needed to move fast. Of course at that point no audio would be sent to the camera until the sound mixer could catch up with the camera man and re attach the cable.

Other times we use wireless sends to the camera to avoid the tether. But the wireless devices are considerably expensive, and use a lot of power. Batteries dying during a take are pretty common, and the possibility for radio interference or drop outs are very high, and happen quite frequently.

Whenever I am asked to do this type of thing, I always record all my tracks separate on my recorder as well as send to the cameras because more often than not some sort of problem occurs. I have saved many projects from being thrown out or re shot because the on camera audio was no good, and they were able to take my recorded tracks, re sync, and do a proper mix in post. This does not mean I am sending my audio incorrectly, it means that I cant be responsible for the integrity of my audio if it is being recorded on a machine that I would never use, and operated by someone who knows nothing or very little about what I do.

This of course is why it is important to always remember to slate every take, even if you are shooting non scripted material. Programs like Plural Eyes are also very helpful in quickly syncing sound to picture, as well as multi-cam shots. With inexpensive programs like that, the need for time code or cutting corners and going into camera seem expensive to the sound department, lazy, and irresponsible.

A recent film I worked on had an on site DIT that would ingest footage from the camera's cards, as well as my audio, and sync them on site. That way he wasnt bored all day, and the editor already had everything set up for him to just jump in. Knowing that this was going to be the case, I attached a small discrete mic on the camera so that the DIT would also have an audio reference (though not my audio) so that he could hear what was happening in case of a mis labeled slate, or to use as a reference track in Plural Eyes to sync with my audio tracks.

To me this is the absolute best solution for saving money on your production without compromising the quality of your sound or picture. Chances are you already have someone on site ingesting your media as you shoot, so why not put them to work syncing audio to picture? That will keep them away from hanging out at the crafty table or bothering the makeup girls!

That will also help coordinate media specifications so that everyone is on the same page. 90% of the time on an Indie film shoot, no one tells me what frame rate we are shooting at, whether they want me to deliver mono or poly files, how they want things labeled, if they want sound reports, or anything. Usually the only direction I get is whether or not they want me to send to camera. Often I will be asked at the end of a shoot for sound reports, but if no one asked me to make them before we began shooting, I cant deliver them. I also wont do sound reports if I am mixing and booming at the same time. I need three arms to mix and boom, and a fourth to make sound reports. You try doing it and tell me how it was easy to do all your jobs correctly and simultaneously. If there was a DIT on site however that was concerned with syncing things up, they could tell me to shoot at 23.98 or 24 fps, how to label my tracks so things are easier for them, or a number of other things that will help streamline the process and minimize room for failure.

Well, I got a little off topic, though related and important. So the point I am trying to make, plain and simple, is that recording audio to camera can be done, but dont plan on using it for anything more than a reference track. There are too many reasons for it to fail, and then you will be left with nothing at all that's useable. Do things right, and you will save money in the long run.

If you are looking to save money on your production, there are countless resources on the internet (and my web site: http://cymbaline.org) about stretching your budget to get the best bang for your buck without compromising the quality of your project. The minute you start making decisions that your department heads should be making is when you are setting yourself up for failure. You hired the expert, take his advice when he talks to you.

An Open Letter from your Sound Department

2011-04-09T15:47:00.000-07:00

This article is derived almost entirely from the article "An Open Letter from your Sound Department" from filmsound.org. I have added parts here and there that come from my own experiences on set. If you think you know a thing or two about film making, even if you are a 30 year veteran, do yourself a favor and read this. I guarantee you that you will learn a great deal.

This letter is being written by audio professionals to help directors and producers understand how good sound can be recorded on the set. We want to help you make the best film possible.

For this piece, we will not discuss the topic of mixing itself, as this is the "hocus pocus" part that you trust us to do so well.

We want you to have information that will enable you to evaluate what is interfering with good sound, before a hasty decision is made that can harm the quality of your film's sound. To help you make your decision you need to know about some of the obstacles that we sound people face, before we can even begin to get usable production sound on the set.

This is after all, the age day of digital sound. Theaters have wonderful THX(the audience IS listening) and SDDS with 5.1 surround. Home audio is often better than many theaters as a sophisticated audience demands DVDs with 24 bits. Yet, today's sound at it's source on set is suffering like never before.

THE PROBLEM

We, the sound crew, are the ones that you depend on to create and protect YOUR original sound tracks during production.

Unlike the work of the majority of the people who are working for on-camera results, the mixer's efforts can not be "seen" on the set. Almost no one hears what the microphone picks up. Too few are sure just what we do. Only the most obviously bad noises are even brought up for discussion.

Included in our job is to monitor the sets for unnecessary, accidental, ignorant and sometimes even malicious actions or lack of actions that may compromise your sound track. To emphasize this point: WE DO THIS SO YOU WILL HAVE THE BEST TRACKS POSSIBLE; IT IS NOT FOR US.

We are too often frustrated by the state of conditions that now exist on most sets. Many times we are expected to solve all sound problems alone. Instead, this should always be a cooperative effort with the assistant directors and other crafts.

Sound mixers are often perceived as pests or even a hindrance to the film's progress. We don't like being put in this untenable position because it is humiliating and unnecessary. We don't like to be considered adversarial to the rest of the production and we certainly don't want to be the "sound police"!

A mixer on a tough show, who fights alone to get you good sound, stands a good chance of burning out from all the excuses and defenses put up. It's hard to put it all out there without support. The temptation is to cave into the pressure and just go with the flow, and no good can come when that happens.

The problems that we face may lead you to believe that good sound cannot be achieved without set disruptions and added costs. This would not be necessary if reasonable measures are anticipated and endorsed by you both in pre-production and during production.

We know the limitations of our equipment. For example, microphones are just tools, they don't make miracles happen. If on-set audio problems are not dealt with immediately, they will only be back to haunt you again in post production.

You can help us do a better job for you. Good sound can most often be achieved by using reasonable preparation to avoid pitfalls.

We need your understanding and your backing.

THEN AND NOW

To understand the sorry state of audio affairs today, you must go back in time.

There once existed a major studio system where an assembly line of crafts worked together to churn out film products. No matter which studio we worked at, all crafts understood they were expected to take reasonable measures within their purview to allow for good sound recordings. It was instilled as part of their job description. These duties were passed on to the young apprentices. Grips cut microphone shadows sharply with flags. The electric department would change out a noisy light that buzzed. Camera assistants would try everything possible to quiet camera noise and many is the time that an operator had blankets and pillows over them and the noisy camera. Every other craft would do whatever was deemed reasonable to help get good sound, because it was considered to be part of their job. No one had to try to persuade them to do it. It was an era where reasonable co-operation with the Sound Department was the normal way to make good movies.

Today's crafts still have pride in their jobs but it seems they NO LONGER consider sound assistance to be a part of their job description. The problems began when the in-house studio training system broke down as non-union independent films proliferated. Along the way, the process of learning what their jobs entailed changed the way they perceived sound. The other crafts now don't think they should do anything to help YOU get good sound for YOUR movie. There is no longer an apprenticeship system to pass along this knowledge. They now learn on the job under fire through osmosis.

They must now be requested in each instance to do reasonable things, which are necessary to protect YOUR sound tracks, because they just don't consider it to be a part of their job anymore.

The Sound Department would gladly cut the shadow on the back wall of the set ourselves or cover the noisy camera, but that's not how the game is played. Instead, we have to convince, cajole, coerce, plead and use every other psychological persuasion technique to get the other crafts to help us prevent sound problems.

That last second, scrambling time on set should only be used to fix the unexpected problems which will inevitably occur. Instead, that last second is the first time that the sound mixer finds out about changes in dialog, staging or unwanted noises from on or off of the set.

All of the other departments work for what is seen and not heard. Every single person on the production from make up and wardrobe to grips and props concentrates only on what's seen in the viewfinder.

Because the other production crafts work only for picture, no one knows or cares what's happening to YOUR audio.

You are the only person on set with the power to allow us to get you good sound. It is always tempting for sound to give in and not go against the grain when circumstances impose impossible barriers.

Film schools are going to need to add psychology courses to their sound mixing curriculum soon. The situation is often that bad. That is why we want you to know as much as possible about the audio minefield lurking on every set.

What may often seem to you to be a lot of complaining, is in fact simply communicating negative factors to you, so that you will know what you are getting on your sound tracks, and what sound problems can be fixed NOW. For bottom line, these are YOUR choices. Just because we hear a noise does not make it a sound problem. It is your problem too. After all, we turn over the tracks to you at the end of the day.

After reading this, hopefully it will be much easier for you to make the informed decision about when it's really the time to loop. It's far too late to reverse a sound calamity later in post.

Even though this topic is last in the chain of events, we should start first by talking about why ADR is not a fix.

LOOPING

It is important to understand the gravity and consequences caused when the words "We'll loop it" are used.

You are obviously aware that extra ADR adds a financial burden to your budget, but the consequences are much greater than that. Looping is only an answer for situations where all else fails! It's not a quick fix later if the original set problems could have easily have been rectified with just a little time, knowledge or communication. Looping means that you are also making a huge artistic compromise that damages the film in many other ways in which you may not be so aware.

Obviously, you realize that the actor's performance is always better in production than in an ADR booth. Making a film is an artistic endeavor that lives forever! You cast great actors to bring together the collaborative efforts of film making and then you lose the essence of the scene by looping! The voice of a great actor totally in character, moving and interacting with other actors in three dimensional space is a treasure. It breathes life into the film.

Sure, ADR will have less noise than even the best set recording made with cameras rolling, but in fact we know it lacks any spontaneity, as well as the emotional truth of what's captured when you use your artists talents on the set. It can't be duplicated. ADR is not acting. The greatest method actors all hate it and at best, it is only a close recreation of the original scene.

Looping also just eats into a post budget's financial and time constraints, which would be far better spent utilizing their magical tools to enrich the film.

And as any independent film makers knows, they are always over budget by the time the film gets to post sound production, so do yourself a favor and allow us to get you the best sound we can on set!

When you just have to loop, the new forward thinking by many respected post sound professionals (such as Randy Thom from Skywalker) is to loop it immediately on or close to the set and as soon possible after the scene. These advocates know that the performance will be better so soon after filming the scene and the sound will be more natural if done in the same environment with the offending noises locked down. There are companies that specialize in on set looping using the video assist tapes for picture in portable studios.

Looping at best is usually fiscally irresponsible. Be sure that the audio problem really can't be fixed BEFORE you make a decision that you will regret later. Never allow the simple impatience of the moment on set be your real reason to loop! Be sure you have first covered all reasonable alternatives.

SOUND PROBLEMS ON THE SET

The majority of events that ruin sound tracks are totally predictable and happen over and over, show after show, year after year.

These are obstacles that are clearly identifiable and quantifiable. The difference between getting good sound or bad sound is often determined by how many of these predictable negative factors take place on your particular show and how they are handled.

There are few problems that don't have solutions if proper diligence can be taken in advance. The sound mixer is your advocate here. Let's try to identify the audio problems which each craft brings to your film.

PREPRODUCTION

Good sound begins by anticipating the outcome well in advance. Communicate early and often with your mixer in pre-production. Pay the mixer to go listen to potential problem sets ahead of time. Let them make a mock recording to see what can be dialed out in post. Do this before the locations are locked in and before the scouts with your key department heads. If the mixer is still on another show, have them designate a trusted associate to go for them. In the end, it's cost effective.

LOCATIONS DEPARTMENT

More can be done here to save a film's audio than any other department. Picking sets should have consideration for sound. At least try to weigh in environmental noise factors! We just ask that a minimal amount of consideration be given to potential audio problems. Often, we shoot in a place which could have easily been substituted for another location or on a weekend. Many times we film at a location which has construction, traffic, schools, airplane patterns and other background noise which are quite obvious. Only shoot those kinds of locations when it's absolutely necessary and essential to the film.

Lock down all the noise problems before we get to the set.

Always consider the control of the air conditioning. This is a must! Without a/c control, the audio background will change from shot to shot as the air goes on and off. If it is a large building, have someone standing by with a walkie-talkie to turn the air back on after each shot. When exterior, it can be just as important to kill a/c units that are near the set.
Have control on all noise makers in sets such as bars, offices and hospitals. All refrigerators, computers, ice makers, x-ray and other machines must be able to be turned off.
Ask to schedule filming during non- work times in locations such as bars and restaurants.
Avoid tin roofs during rainy season.
Make sure sets can be cabled by electric and still keep windows, doors and openings closed.
Be sure your location is not near busy streets or intersections.
Be aware of trash pickup days, delivery days, etc. As well as nearby police and fire stations!

ART DEPARTMENT

Confer with the sound department when adding noisy set furniture, computers and machinery.
Try to consider overhead mics before building low covered ceilings, hanging lamps and cross beams.
Inject foam into constructed stairs and steps to get rid of hollow footsteps over dialog.
Whenever possible, carpet sets to deaden echo and live rooms. Especially consider these taking this step in rooms where the majority of dialog takes place.

ASSISTANT DIRECTORS

None of these implementation plans will succeed if the ADs don't support YOUR sound on the film. Sometimes they don't! The crew will take their cue to stop co-operating if it's clear the ADs react at the expense of getting good sound. Derogatory statements like "waiting on sound" and "just loop it" are unproductive and sap our spirit.

Get police traffic lock downs when possible.
Get quiet lock ups on set. Do not allow any walking. Station your PA's at key locations outside, and most especially under windows. (Keep the PA's from talking too) "Lock It Up" means that we should not hear any work noise from our crews. No engines, talking, etc. Have your walkie set up with priority override function so as to announce the roll across all walkie-talkie channels being used by all departments.
Allow the sound department to make quick corrections that are reasonable.
Enforce pantomiming from the background extras.
Allocate a reasonable time and place for an actor to get wired. It won't help go faster if you push the sound crew to wire faster if the actor insists on getting wired at the last second on the set. Conversely, don't make the boom operator sit outside a star's dressing room just wasting valuable time that could be used to work out other sound problems on set.
When there are closed rehearsals, make sure the boom operator gets to see at least one rehearsal before the actors leave the set.
Honor wild line requests before releasing the actors.
Honor room tone requests before breaking the set up, and stop all talk and movement. Room tones are very important to get before the ambient sound changes.
In plane infested locations, roll as soon as the engine noise tails out before another plane comes in. Keep the set quiet enough to determine the status of the incoming and outgoing planes.
Be sure to inform Sound Department at least two days ahead of playback days. Have the office send a post approved tape with sync. Don't expect that a CD or cassette will suffice.
Have all walkie-talkies, cell phones and pagers turned off during takes and final rehearsals. They can wreck havoc on wireless microphones.

PRODUCTION MANAGERS

Budget in a third sound person and the proper amount of audio equipment. A third person is invaluable in getting sound problems fixed in the crucial moments between the takes and scenes.
Don't say "no" to any additional sound related costs without considering the entire post budget too.
Book and check that stages are quiet. Even the newest and most modern stages often have dimmer banks located on or so close to the stage that they are a terrible problem.

CAMERA DEPARTMENT

Camera assistants:

When (not if) there is camera noise, make all reasonable efforts to contain it by using barneys, glass, blankets, tweaking, etc.
Don't turn the slate on and off as time code will then be wrong. Let the mixer know as soon as a slate shows any problems.
Let the sound mixer know what frequencies are being transmitted in case it steps on wireless mics or comteks. Be prepared to kill the panatape when it causes microphone interference.

Operators:

Hold only the frame size to be used and no more.
Communicate and work out any problems with the boom operator before the first team is called in.
Be willing to operate in a pinch with cover or blanket over a particular noisy camera.

Directors of Photography:

Light the set so that a boom can swing overhead.
Don't use Xenon lights unless the director was informed ahead of time that the whole scene will have to be looped.
Don't ever say "loop it"! It's not the DP's prerogative! If the DP conveys to the crew that sound matters to the film, they will follow that lead and be more attentive to potential sound problems.
When shooting practical car scenes, try to consider sound problems and light so that windows can be closed where possible.
When shooting with multiple cameras, do not attempt a wide and tight shot at the same time. Unless you plan on having close up and distant visual perspectives both with a distant sonic perspective, or you plan to add to the productions post sound budget. Speak with your AD or Producer on these matters.

SPECIAL EFFECTS DEPARTMENT

Make a reasonable effort to keep the offstage noise making devices away from the set and baffled whenever there is dialogue in the same scene.

When making rain, put the rain machines and water truck as far away as possible.
Use hogs hair to muffle raindrops on roofs and when it's seen out a window.
When a fan is used to blow a curtain or plant, work it out with the sound mixer before the noise problem crops up after the first take.
When using fireplaces, try to limit the hissing gas sound.
Heaters close by on cold sets need to be shut off well before rolling to eliminate the crackle and pops from shutdown.

WARDROBE DEPARTMENT

They can help in creatively placing the wireless in the best possible position on the actor's body, when asked. They should never make negative comments about bulges that make the actors overly conscious about wearing a body mic on them. Think about avoiding noisy clothing, especially when the principal actors will wear much of the same clothing throughout the film.

Never allow the actors to wear silk underclothes, especially bras. Cotton tank top T-shirts should be put on actors when possible to help avoid clothes rustle.
Silk ties should be avoided or at least modify the inside with cotton for primary actors wearing the same wardrobe in several scenes.
Be sound conscious when choosing chains, necklaces and other jewelry.

***** Stiff clothing such as starched shirts, large threaded fabrics, and other noisy fabrics should always be avoided. These things WILL ruin the sound for wireless mics, and the Boom will have to be relied upon entirely, which means that camera and lighting have to consider this, which in most cases they wont!*****

PROPS DEPARTMENT

Make an effort to keep noise making props as quiet as possible. Especially in the following most common problem areas:

With guns, always let the mixer know if it's full, 1/2 or 1/4 loads, and how many shots plan to be fired and when.
With table scenes, try to put down a pad or felt underneath the tablecloth to muffle dish-clattering noise.
Use fake ice cubes in drink glasses.
In kitchen scenes, put a cloth down where possible dish noise will occur. Spray shopping bags with water mister to get rid of paper noise.

GRIP DEPARTMENT

Use cutters to kill boom shadows.
Use all reasonable measures to reduce dolly squeaks. Put a dance floor down if floors creak. Use talcum powder when needed.
Use blankets to deaden outside sound from open doors and windows.
Make baffle covers for the loud set machines, fans and ballasts.
Fasten down scrims that rattle in the wind.
On insert cars keep extra stands attached to speed rails from clanging.
Only use silks made of SILK in windy or outdoor scenes, NOT any form of plastic sheeting!

ELECTRIC DEPARTMENT

Keep the generator as far away as is reasonably possible. Always use a minimum of 3 banded lengths (150 feet) to the first box, and go back from there. Supply base camp power where possible to avoid loud generators.
Use all reasonable measures to keep lights and ballasts from making any noise on set, and use extension cabling to keep noisemakers off set.
Run cables so that windows and doors can closed.
Put variacs on problem dimmers.
On insert cars, clip and wedge funnels to keep down the rattling sound.

CRAFT SERVICE DEPARTMENT

Set up away from sets so that the coffee makers and other devices can't be heard, especially on stage.

Do not provide lots of snacks that come in plastic wrapping. These find their way onto set and ruin takes!

TRANSPORTATION DEPARTMENT

Plan on pushing or pulling a particularly loud vehicle out of the scene using human manpower when it's possible during close-up shots.
Park the trucks as far away from set as reasonably possible and keep the individual generators off during the shot. Put base camp at least 1000 feet from set in quiet locations such as deserts and mountains, and 500 feet away in city locations.
Help keep insert cars quiet.
Be prepared to park a truck in front of the generator.
Instead of running car engines, use alternate quiet power for picture vehicles that must run flashing light effects during the coverage.
- Reward the companies who have taken reasonable steps to keep quiet driving to a maximum. Especially ask if the tail pipe has been rerouted to the front of the truck and if the on board gennie is quiet.
- Use only one key alone in the ignition to eliminate clanging keys.
- Don't Armor-All the dashboard, and use Simple Green to remove it where mics need to be planted.
- Keep car interior floor area free of all the noisemakers such as the chains, removed side mirrors, nuts and bolts.

ACTORS

To mixers, a good actor is a loud actor. Whenever we get together to discuss our jobs we always talk about how good a voice an actor has. Actors who have done a lot of stage work tend to have learned the art of projecting their voice.

Don't refuse to wear a wireless mic when it is necessary.
Don't ask a boom operator to get out of their eye line. (Acting has been done with the boom for decades. This is a dangerous precedent we have recently started seeing.)
Warn the sound department when you will do a much louder or quieter take than was rehearsed.
Please speak louder when asked. We only ask when we really need it.

DIRECTORS

Collaborate frequently with your sound mixer as you would an editor, composer, DP or writer. We can also enrich your "vision" through sound images. Find out what problems and solutions exist. Don't fall for the trap where you hate to see your mixer coming because you know it's just bad news. Your mixer will feel that vibe and start telling you less and less until sound is no longer a vital part of collaboration on your film.

A good rapport with your mixer will allow you to know information about what was borderline and what you can barely get away with. If you simply trust that the mixer is getting good sound, you may be mistaken. It is always possible that the mixer has given up fighting the good sound battle and succumbed to the lack of any positive response to their efforts.

Very often, sound problems are not discovered until the last moment after the other departments have done their work and the set is finally quiet enough to hear through the microphones. The shot sometimes evolves into a sound problem that was unanticipated. Also, we may need a moment or two to make adjustments when creative changes have been made on the spot. Like it or not, sound is a part of your entire film making process from pre-production through production and on to post production. You might as well do it right. If you convey this message to your troops ahead of time, you will be freed up to spend more quality time with other pressing areas of film making.

Remember that certain crew departments such as the UPM and ADs are compelled to watch their production budget, and are not always concerned about the entire cost of a film all the way through post production.

The difference between good sound and bad sound on many shows is only about 5 to 10 minutes a day of doing some added tweaking here, another mic planted, a wireless changed there, quieting footsteps, siliconing a door squeak, room tone, a well placed blanket, killing a machine that came on during a take, powder on a dolly wheel etc. Usually by the time you print a take, the problems have been solved. If not, another take may be in order. ADs or other crafts who stifle this process will cost you dearly later in post.

OVERLAPS - When possible, it's always better not to have them at all unless absolutely necessary because you can only be in one cut or the other. You may decide later you want to see both sides of the actor's dialogue. Remember, it's always easy to create an off camera overlap later if you still want it. Usually, the overlaps are simply because of a belief that the performance will be hindered. That argument loses credibility when the face of one of the overlapping performers won't be able to be seen at all. Of course there are times that overlaps must happen and both sides must be miked.
USING TWO CAMERAS - There is a proper way to use 2 or more cameras and an improper way. It is perfectly acceptable to use 2 cameras of the same approximate frame size at the same time. The sound mixer's nightmare is running one camera wide and another tight at the same time. This means that sound will be compromised because all the actors must be wired because the wide camera will not allow a mic to get close enough to the tight camera size. This can be resolved by the second camera only filming non-speaking actors, or not working at all during the wide master shot. Then, go to 2 cameras for all your coverage.
REHEARSALS - These are very important to the whole crew. It's fine to have closed rehearsals for actors only, but give one to the crew or at least let the boom operator see one. Otherwise, we can only guess where and how the sound will be delivered. The words we dread the most are "let's shoot the rehearsal". You might get lucky, but don't shoot rehearsals unless you are willing to do a lot more sound takes to work out the unknown problems.
AD LIBBING - It's impossible to mic lines no one knows will happen. If you want to keep an ad-lib, do another take for sound if they didn't get the line the first time.
AIR TRAFFIC - Probably the single most frustrating audio problem on set is being in a plane traffic pattern. It's a problem that might have been avoided by better location scouting. You know it's no good, we know it, the actors know it, the whole crew knows it's no good. Yet, after awhile, you have no choice but to plow through and start printing those takes anyway. In that case, rather than looping, it's much better to get through the scene with lots of short clean pieces that can be cut together later.
LOUDER ACTORS - Sometimes we really need you to get the actors to speak up in order to save a scene. When in loud scenes such as a crowded bar or stock exchange, it's best to force the actors to speak unnaturally loud. If not your added post sound will be thin and they won't be able to add the rich background effects that make it sound real.

FINAL NOTES

The key at all times with sound is the word "reasonable". Reasonable efforts should always be made to do all these things in a reasonable amount of time. We don't want to take over the set and make the film, it's just about getting good sound. Nor do we want to sit quietly in a corner while YOUR sound tracks are butchered.

We are only asking that we go back to a time not too long ago where this was all common practice. We won't debate why this happened, but there is no question that an anti-sound attitude now prevails. That was then, and this is now. Being a set politician is always an important forte, but your tracks should not be forced to ride on the outcome of those verbal altercations.

Don't tell your sound mixer that you hate looping unless you are willing to back them up with your on set support.

Today, it is up to you to demand better sound for YOUR picture. This can be easily instilled on the first day of pre-production. Give all the keys a memo and a verbal direction that you want every reasonable effort made to get good sound on YOUR film.

We are not asking for power on set, just a little respect for your sound. With your newfound support, we promise to act reasonably at all times and not expect that the sound be the most important part of the film. We know there will be times that sound must be looped after it was given due consideration. We just don't want it taken lightly either. The word "reasonable" applies at all times.

Most importantly, find the time to communicate with your sound mixer because you need to know if you are getting the best sound tracks possible.

We have written this because we want your film to be great! It will live forever and we always want to be proud that our name went on your film.

Sincerely,
Your Sound Department

Wireless, Noise, and the World closing in on Good Sound

2011-03-26T12:02:00.000-07:00

Ive had a few topic ideas recently, but a new issue in wireless communications has arose, giving me the opportunity to tie them all together.

Recently, it was discovered that some new CONSUMER (not even PRO!) Wifi distributors are hogging up space in the wireless world, causing horrible interference, and worst of all, it hops to different frequencies. So even if I were to set up some wireless mics on safe channels within the same zone, those channels might be taken over at any given point.

This is an issue that we are seeing more and more of as wireless communications like Wifi, Smart Phones, and consumer grade electronics are taking up our radio spectrum in the professional audio-visual world. What does that mean for us? Well in 2009 the frequency range known as Block 28 was annexed by the US government, so many wireless devices such as Lav mics, IFB listening devices, and even Television or Video Broadcast was out of luck, and all that expensive equipment was then rendered useless. What we see is a trend of more and more things occupying the wireless work spectrum, which means we have less and less room to use wireless devices on set. So you think you can get away with just setting up a couple of wireless lavs and be fine? Think again.

A- Thats a lazy and non professional way of looking at sound, and

B- Youre going to need to start hiring Boom Ops (Thats right, the way it's supposed to be! A Sound Mixer/Recorder, and a Boom Op, and no, a PA doesnt cut it!)

We sound guys have been doing the one man show for a while, and though you can get great results from it, keep in mind that if you want someone monitoring the levels of YOUR audio, making on the fly adjustments so it doesnt get too low and too high, AND boom at the same time, remember how many arms one person has. In this equation, you need three arms.

RANT: No matter how low budget the production, I still see a DP operating the camera, an AC pulling focus and doing his/her normal tasks, and usually the camera or at least lenses are being rented.

Now look at the audio department. Usually you have your Mixer/Recorder adjusting levels, setting the wireless systems up and placing them on talent, and doing a lot of other technical voodoo that no one else on set really understands, AND you have a Boom Op taking care of the most expensive mic on set, which is undoubtedly getting the best sound (assuming your lighting crew knows how to light for sound, and youre not shooting all wides!). Camera gets an assistant, sound needs one too to do things right.

Back to the Issues at Hand: Noise! The world is getting noisier! A guy a block away from me was sitting in his drive way revving his motor cycle for a half an hour, just because he felt like it! Plus, cars are noisy, here in Los Angeles there are planes and helicopters flying overhead at any given moment, trains, kids, dogs, etc. Try finding a place where you cant hear anything but the wind, or birds chirping. The noisier it gets, the less we can really rely on the boom mic, even though it is designed to cut down on a lot of noise. But if our wireless channels are being taken up, we cant use those either.

Will we have to revert back to hiding wired mics on set all over the place, and have talent only speak when they are near one? I dont know what the outcome will be, but I see thing getting a lot worse before they get better. So film crews, listen to your sound guy or gal when he/she raises a red flag, and dont pretend you know what youre talking about when you start offering suggestions like "Cant you boom from underneath?" or "Cant you just go wireless?"... We dont make camera or lighting suggestions, and we dont tell directors how to direct. Everyone is supposed to know their job, and what they need to do in regards to the other departments. Let the boom mic get adequately close to the talent to get good sound, unless you dont care, in which case, hand the boom over to a PA and see what your budget looks like when you have to fix everything in post.

Departments working with Sound as a Team, not an Obstacle

2011-02-13T23:41:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time, in a far away land, there was a mighty system of studios that created films and television programs for people's enjoyment. The Elves that worked in these magical studios were very happy, and all worked together as a team. Each Elf worked in a specific department, and had his or her own specific duties. But they all had to respect the other departments, and do what they could so that the other departments could do their work correctly. In this magical time, each Elf was taught by another Elf in sort of an internship environment, and was expected to do what they could to learn and get good at their craft as best they could.

Then one day, greed overtook the land (even more than normal), and jobs were sent to other far off lands after many an Elf had become wealthy exploiting other Elves where possible. Some scheming Elves saw how things were, and realized that many Elves would rather have a job in an environment that they thought would be more fun than others, instead of traditional jobs or any kind. So those scheming Elves founded school after school for fun career opportunities like art, music production, and film making, because they knew that more young Elves would prefer to learn how to make a movie than become a biologist. So the scheming Elves made more and more money as more and more Elves came to their schools, even though those schools did not preserve the traditions and customs of those industries taught only in the magical studios. But what did they care? They were getting rich, while teaching young Elves just some of what they needed to know, and instilling in them poor values regarding all aspects of their craft.

As time went on, the older Elves began to retire, and the younger Elves that had studied at those cash cow schools began taking their places. Well, let me let you in on a little secret: Those schools didnt know (or care) about the fact that each Elf is a member of a team when working in film or TV. And remember those values that kept every department working in harmony with each other? Well those young Elves didnt know or care about that either!

So what happened next? Well I'll tell you: The Elves that work in the wardrobe and costume departments, they started using once forbidden fabrics because of the issues that they would create with the sound. Yes I bet you didnt know that some fabrics are woven with threads created by trolls and demons, and they make a lot of noise on a micro sonic level. But why should we care? We cant hear it! Ah, but a hidden wireless lavalier microphone can.

What else? Well, those Elves in charge of lighting never learned about lighting for sound, because that is a special craft that is only passed on from one Elf to another in the old magical studio system. So every day the poor Boom Operating Elf has to face another battle with the lighting Elves because their choices cause shadows to fall everywhere in sight.

And? The Elves in charge of location scouting began choosing noisy locations because they got a good deal on them, or because they were pretty.

Is that all? Nope! Camera Operators and Directors began getting this idea that an Elf on camera can sound good even if it is not possible to get a microphone close to that Elf! To have a big beautiful picture and clear dialogue is stuff of magic, and post production. But doest thee not possess wizardry such as wireless devices? Cant thee boom from underneath? Are questions that Elves in other departments would ask. And those poor Elves in the sound department, who are already constantly having battles with nearly all other departments, can only say two things: If that were an option, we would have proposed it. We can only get as good of sound as you Elves allow us.

So what is the moral of the story? Well, those poor Elves in charge of production audio had a real hard time there on set, didnt make any friends, and werent able to get good sound in many situations. But you know what else happened? Those other Elves who didnt listen to the sound department when they said " this location isnt good for sound", "this material is too noisy for magical wireless mics", or "I cant get the boom anywhere near the subject because of framing and lighting", those Elves with their ears closed to reasoning, they got stuck with a bill that more than doubled the size of their budget when they had to fix everything in post.

The End

Crafty in a Modern Age

2011-02-13T22:17:00.000-08:00

This doesnt have anything to do with sound, but it is something that I feel I need to address because let's face it, it is something that is going to come up and if you are ahead of the game you will be notices and appreciated.

Film makers, indie or not. Let's think about the situation of Crafty in a modern day perspective. Crafty is called "Crafty" or "Craft Services" because originally it was contracted through Kraft Foods, or so I am told. Now, we all know Kraft. They make cheap garbage food that's really unhealthy, but it tastes good. Most people that work in film in Los Angeles are from places other than Los Angeles, and people's diets vary depending on where they are from. I have done a lot of traveling in my life, lots of road trips all over the states, and a lot of international travel as well. Most small towns along the freeway only have fast food joints, a greasy diner, and usually a chinese food place. Also, when you go to the grocery store, if you really pay attention to what you are buying, you will realize that most products (and produce) in America is actually unhealthy. The food industry uses words like "Natural" and "Whole Grain" to make you think that you are buying wholesome food, but in fact, if you knew what was really in there you would think twice about buying that product. Corn Syrup is in everything, as well as Preservatives, Pesticides, Hydrogenated Oils, Trans Fats, and Hormones! It's mind boggling to think that a "free market" has enabled companies to allow so many unnatural and harmful ingredients in our food. And if you go to a major supermarket chances are there is little to nothing available there that doesnt contain these things.

Basically, just about anything pre packaged, sweetened, suspiciously colorful, prepared or not in a natural state of being. Even much of our produce is genetically altered, and contains pesticides and/or wax to give it a shine. Our dairy and livestock usually are given hormones and who knows what else so for a number of reasons, which my guess is why people in other countries have less food allergies... because most other countries do not allow industry tampering to their food.

So what am I getting at? Well, here in Los Angeles, we have a lot of people that try to stay healthy, and a lot of them work in film and television. Can you imagine? People working in film and television want to stay healthy, or thin. Sounds like actors to me. But yes, also crew. I like to eat healthy too, but unfortunately I eat most of my meals on film and TV sets, and most of the time there are no healthy options. Chips, donuts, candy, granola bars full of corn syrup, food coloring and preservatives, no thank you. Usually the only "healthy" option is one of those vegetable trays with celery, baby carrots, and a tub of ranch. Well, I am thankful for the effort, but that gets old really quick. Im not a big fan of ranch, and those veggies taste like chemicals to me. Then what? Well, Im not in charge of crafty, so I dont know. I personally like hummus and freshly cut celery (not pre packaged), or maybe some organic peanut butter (I know it has a weird texture, but if you knew what they do to regular peanut butter to give it that consistency, you wouldnt eat it either!).

My point is, why should I be the odd man out just because I dont want to treat my body poorly? I work a hard job. 12 hours on set, day in and day out, plus usually about an hours of route either way. I need to keep my body in good shape and keep my energy up. Caffein and sugar are just going to make me feel bad once the initial rush is over and make me crash even harder.

The other part of this is that the food needs to be easy to eat on the go. It's fine to have some "table snacks" but we need things that we can just pop in our mouth and hop to the next take. I for example have a heavy bag around my neck that gives me limited mobility, and a boom pole in my hand, which gives me one hand to try to feed myself, so bananas are out of the question, and a whole apple is going to get my hand sticky, and I will more than likely have to set it down at some point to go back to work before I can finish it. Apple slices are nice though. But things that come in wrappers can not only prove a challenge for a guy like me on set, they can also cause problems. The sound of a plastic wrapper in headphones is not only one of the most irritating sounds you can imagine, but it can also be quite painful if it is loud enough. Those wrappers also find their way into peoples hands while we are trying to run a take, which of course will ruin the take. I have been known to approach the crafty table and throw all plastic-wrapped items in the trash when people start wandering onto set with those things in their hands and we are getting close to rolling, or while rolling for that matter. Honestly, I dont care who I have to piss off, I need good takes, and I dont want the producer barking at me when we hit post because crew members werent being respectful.

While we're talking about food on set, let's talk about meals. A crew expects at least one hot meal per shooting day, which is 12 hours at the maximum. If you go over by one minute, you are expected to provide a second. The meals should be hot, and again, healthy if possible. Indie film makers are always trying to make me eat garbage like Subway, which isnt hot or fresh (contrary to what they say), and Ive known a lot of people to get sick from them (myself included) due to their low quality ingredients. Other things people try to feed us are Stoffer's Lasagna because its cheap and can kinda feed more people, but it is again low quality ingredients, and most tomato sauces in the USA are sweetened with corn syrup, so I wont touche it. I like pizza, but I would rather not eat it on set because it is heavy, and I dont want to go into a food coma half way through the day. So get creative. Get catering or something from a good healthy place. Ive been on plenty of shoots where we had a local restaurant or independent caterer provide the catering, and it often works out to be about $5 per head, which is what you would pay if you cheaped out and got Subway. Some of the things we had were roasted or baked chicken, maybe in some delicious sauce, some prepared vegetables, salad, rice. You could even have a BBQ and not spend a lot if you know where to shop.

But do remember that a lot of people have dietary restrictions. A number of faiths do not allow the ingestion of pork or pig products, some people are vegetarian or vegan, or pescetarian. Others just simply dont like certain things, so if you are getting sandwiches, maybe only go with beef, turkey or chicken as the meat, have some vegetarian options, and dont have any sauces or extras already on them. I for one have three things that I cant stand, but unfortunately they are very common, so every sandwich or burger is a battle for me. I cant stand Mayonnaise, Mustard or Pickles. I just cant do it, Ive tried, I try all the time. But 80% of the time I will order a sandwich (or be provided with one), request no mayo or pickles, and it will be there regardless. Needless to say I get a little grumpy when this happens.

So please, start thinking healthy and learn a little bit about nutrition if you are in charge of feeding a hole cast and crew of people. And also be aware of the potential problems your choices may cause, such as noise or sticky hands, or maybe pollution :) Your cast and crew will be happier and healthier, and work harder, instead of feeling like poo by lunch time and just trying to get done with the day the rest of the time.

More on Sonic Perspective

2010-11-10T10:22:00.000-08:00

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

2010-11-02T15:23:00.000-07:00

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!

Regarding the Sound Department and Costs

2010-10-14T11:16:00.000-07:00

When you hire a sound guy, most often there are two things that you look at when deciding on which sound guy to go with: Experience, and Equipment. With this in mind, it is somewhat rare to expect the same things from almost anyone else on set. DPs rarely have their own camera (unless you are shooting on something like a 5D or 7D), and the production usually rents the lighting and grip equipment. Makeup brings their kit, sometimes Wardrobe provides the clothing, but often times they are provided with a budget to purchase or have made certain articles of clothing. The DIT often has his computer, programs and card readers. And a few other people often have their own equipment, but usually pretty small stuff, with the exception of a steady cam operator. The sound guy on the other hand has to have his own kit, otherwise he wont get work. It isnt very faire, but thats the way it is. We also have to settle for less pay than the DP, unless its a really low budget production, in which case the sound guy is often the only person that gets paid. I'll get back to this point in a minute.

So whats in a standard production audio kit? Well, a shotgun mic, boom pole, headphones, two wireless lavs, and a multi-track field recorder/mixer. We often cary more than that, but a basic standard ENG kit is what I just described, as well as cables and various accessories. Now lets say the production wants the sound guy to provide Comteks (listening devices for the director, producer, and/or scripty), or a Time Code slate. In my opinion, these are things that are outside of the job description of the sound guy. The sound guy is there to record audio, not to ensure that the camera is in sync with time code, or that everyone can hear whats happening. So if a production requires me to provide these things, I tell them that they need to pay extra for it. But listening to whats happening, thats audio related right? Well, yes, technically. And so are walkies. But it isnt my job to provide those either. But the sun, doesnt it provide light? Well that must be something that grip needs to provide. I feel that requiring so much from the same person is a bit unreasonable. Often times because I have to show up with thousands of dollars of my own equipment, and get paid less than people who provide none of their own gear.

Now, those low budget shoots where Im the only one that gets paid. Whats up with that? Well the truth is, DPs, actors, directors, these are all people that need to have something to add to their reel. They need to prove that they are competent, and have a lot of experience, because a lot of what they do is make artistic decisions. So if someone hands them a job, that is saying that they trust these people to make artistic decisions for them, which is really a lot of trust to have for someone working on your project. But because of this constant needing to prove ones self in these fields, these people will often have to accept a smaller wage on a low budget production because they need this for something, so in a sense the project it's self is part of the pay.

The Sound Department on the other hand doesnt need to prove anything to anyone. Once youve gotten a few credits under your belt, and you have your own kit, you can get work for the most part. So when the low budget production comes to me and says how great the team is, how awesome the script is, and how many name actors are involved, and that they are all working for peanuts or nothing at all, that it is a passion project, I consider the following: work for nothing, or an insulting rate, or just check job posting and find something with an adequate wage. I have no problem finding work, so why should I cheapen my craft by making professional production audio something people can get for free? Not to say that Im greedy, but remember how I mentioned that I have to provide my own equipment? Well that stuff is expensive, so I often have to re invest every extra dollar I have into new gear, replacement parts, etc.

To rent out a standard sound package from a rental house, Ive done the following research:

Rental House 1 - $460 per day

Rental House 2 - $395 per day

Rental House 3 - $430 per day

These are the daily rental rates of the same sound kit at three different rental houses. This is what it would cost a production to rent these items, not including someone to operate them. Now, there are then expendables to take into consideration, such as batteries, topstick or moleskin, etc. A sound person needs to make at least enough money per day to make working in audio worth it, instead of working at a supermarket. On top of that, he needs some sort of kit fee to make it worth the wear and usage of his equipment. This stuff is expensive, and some things have to be replaced rather frequently. I think on average I replace the microphone component of my wireless lavs about three times per year per lav. Why? The wires are delicate, and actors forget that they are wearing them, so they put stress on the wires, spill drinks onto them, perspire onto them, lots of reasons. And those mics start at $150 each, and can go as high as $1000 per mic!

I get a good amount of gigs where they see what my kit consists of, and then the day before shooting they tell me they are going to need x amount of wireless lavs. I have to remind them that they saw my kit, they know how many I have, and that they dont grow on trees and arent inexpensive. If they need more than what I have, they can rent them, or I can rent them and they can pay extra.

Im not trying to sound like a curmudgeon, but the overhead costs for the sound department are high, and in the independent film world, few people respect that. Those that do however are often times the best people to work with, not just because they are a friend of the sound department, but because they have a better overall sense of how a professional shoot works, and who puts what into their craft.

But the one thing that I think anyone should really walk away from this article with is that every position on a film set is important, and there for a reason. So you cannot overlook each department or position because you view them as a lesser position. Shoots without PAs and Grips take twice as long, so the money you are saving from not hiring these people is spent on time and location. An AD is important because among other things, they keep us on schedule. A scripty makes sure that everyone is sticking to the script, and generates reports that are important to the editor and dialogue editor. ACs are important because they build the cameras, follow focus, and make sure that things are running smoothly in the camera department. These are all important positions, and no single position should be overlooked or thought less of.

Frame It Out!

2010-10-14T10:22:00.000-07:00

I dont expect everyone on set to fully understand the nature and technical aspects of audio. After all, that is why they hired a sound guy in the first place! But Ive recently had some experiences with actors and producers who really dont have a good grasp on how sound works. These scenarios are for everyone's benefit:

Most recently I was shooting a film in the desert. One of the shots called for the actor walking towards the camera while speaking. Simple enough, however the camera was hand held and walking backwards as the actor continued walking. Now, most camera operators (from my experience anyway) arent very subtle with their movements in regards to sound, and in this case, we also had the assistant director following along with myself as well. Naturally I extended my boom pole out to its maximum reach in order to distance myself from the audio I wished to capture. However the camera operator and assistant director both made a great deal of noise while walking, so when you listen back it sounds like more than one person walking during this scene.

Now, I had a lav on the actor, as well as used the boom. I told everyone involved that they would most likely have to re record that dialogue because there were too many footsteps in the background. At this point the producer began telling me that he had seen a sound guy have things on separate tracks, which is why we had the lav on the actor in the first place. Yes, this is true, however the lav doesnt have perfect isolation, so those footsteps are still audible. If you wanted true isolation, you would record the dialogue and the footsteps separately. That is the only way to obtain true isolation. At this point the producer and actor proceeded to argue with me about this! At which point, I told them that they could spend all day trying to tell an expert about his craft, but that wont change the way sound works.

This is a tragic case of ignorance and unwillingness to admit when one is wrong. But the real unfortunate thing about this scenario is that although I recorded plenty of "wild" tracks of footsteps and clothing movement, most of the dialogue was ad-libbed, so I couldnt get wild tracks of those lines because the actor couldnt remember them! This is a real case of shooting ones self in the foot, because instead of me recording the lines off camera a few times to give the dialogue editor something to play with, they will have to either go into the studio to re record those lines, or be stuck with the production audio with the mystery phantom footsteps!

Another thing I find myself saying a lot on set is that sound is not like a camera. I cant just frame out what I dont want to hear! So when we are rolling, I need things to be quiet. This not only includes the location, but also the cast and crew that are not in the scene. A funny story:

I was on a set where a number of the cast and crew werent respecting the "silence while rolling" policy, and on top of that, most of crafty was comprised of things in plastic wrappers such as chips and granola bars. I was constantly hearing those plastic wrappers in my headphones, which is a very irritating sound. So after asking politely that everyone set their snacks down while we were doing a take several times, I reached a point where I had had enough. So in the middle of a take I called cut, stopped recording, set my equipment down, walked over to craft services and threw everything that was in a plastic wrapper away, as well as took any remaining snacks out of peoples hands. One person that I confiscated their snacks from was the producer. Normally a big no-no. But when the producer got mad at me I told him that I was hired to record good sound, which was not possible if people cant put down their snacks during a take. So what was it going to be? Good sound, or snack time? I had recently told this story to some crew members, and the very next day one of those people was eating chips while we were doing a take. The director snapped at the guy, telling him "he just got finished telling us about this, werent you paying attention?!?"... I thought it was kind of a funny situation!

As you can see I am very strict about noise during a take. In many cases, the location we are shooting in will be so quiet that I can hear the movement of a person that is off camera while they simply shift their weight. That is why we call out "sound is speeding", so that people know to quiet down. If people arent respecting this right away we call out "settle!". This implies that we set everything down that was in our hands, stand perfectly still, and breath as silently as possible. Because remember, we are in a recording session at this point!

One thing that I see more often than anything else are the use of mobile phones on set. When I am on set, I turn my cell phone off. I expect everyone else on set to do the same, so before our first take of the day, I tell everyone "cell phones off!". At this point I get a lot of people putting their phones on silent instead of off. Silent is not the same as off. Have you ever set your phone next to a speaker, and then received a call or a text? That weird sound coming from the speaker is what I hear in the mic, even when your ringer isnt on. Why? Well, I dont completely understand how a transducer (speakers and microphones are transducers) would pick up on something like that, but it does. A speaker turns electrical signals into acoustical audio, and a microphone converts acoustical audio into an electrical signal, so they will both pick up on this if it does happen.

I will admit that this phenomenon happens a lot more frequently in europe for some reason, but if you are close enough to a microphone here in the States I will pick up on it.

So I often times have to tell people that "silent is not the same thing as off, so please turn your cell phones OFF". Since there are so few people who actually do this, I sometimes have to institute a "$20 if your phone goes off" policy. Most people dont take this very seriously, and view it as an empty threat. But when it happens I stop production until I get payed by whomever received the phone call.

This is a very effective method because people dont want to have to lose that much money, but more so because the director or producer doesnt want to wast any time, so they will tell the person "thats what he said and you didnt listen, so pay him so we can move on!". Obviously this is an extreme situation, and you would have to be working with some rather unprofessional people in these cases, but you would be surprised how these types of people manage to find their way onto a set!

Aside from my extreme measures that I have to take from time to time, I am a very pleasant person to work with, and a lot of film makers tell me that they enjoy the fact that I am not a typical sound guy who stays away from everyone, quiet in his corner. Instead I make friends with everyone and participate in what is going on, as well as joke around with the other crew members. I get a lot of repeat business because people enjoy working with me, but they also know that I run a tight ship, so when it comes down to business, Im on top of it.

So the moral of these stories is simply this. Unlike a camera, I cannot just frame out unwanted sound. So if conditions on location are not suitable to make clean recordings, then the sound guy cannot guarantee the quality and integrity of the recording. And if you dont get a good recording on set, you will have to spend a lot of money in post to re record things. So make sure that not only is your location a quiet one, but the people on set with you are going to respect the fact that they have to be quiet. And film makers, please dont tell experts how to do their jobs., it only makes you look like a fool.

Location Location Location!

2010-05-10T16:07:00.001-07:00

One of the biggest factors that will determine not only the outcome but the budget of your film is the location. In the indie film world, this usually means whatever place will suit your film cosmetically, and is free to shoot in.

Since a lot of indie film makers are looking for places to shoot in that won't cost them anything (permits, location rentals, etc.), they often take what they can get. Or they may have found some place that has a beautiful backdrop. That's fine and there's nothing wrong with that. But there is often one thing that location scouts forget about, and that of course is the issues that the location may cause in regards to sound.

When you are filming in an apartment in downtown Los Angeles or New York, one would expect a little city noise in the background, and though not ideal, it's ok because we understand where the location is in the setting of the film.

But one of the noisiest places one can film believe it or not is in a suburban neighborhood. The difference is that while a downtown location is noisy, it is relatively constant. But in the suburbs, it is generally quiet until something makes a noise. At that point, your take is ruined and you have to re shoot.

I recently worked on a film where the setting was in a typical suburban neighborhood where all of the couples were young, everyone had young children, dogs, an SUV, and were living the modern version of the 1950s dream.

I arrived on location early in the morning, and it was quiet and a lovely day. Once we began filming, an army of gardeners were unleashed upon us. These were people from a gardening company contracted to come through the entire neighborhood every week and do all the landscaping, trimming, etc. They first sent the lawnmowers, then the weed wackers, then the side trimmers, then the leaf blowers (which are actually illegal in Los Angeles county because they pollute and don't abide by noise pollution laws, which of course are never observed). We were able to convince them to come back later in the day (we were shooting everything outside) by sending over a good looking actress to ask them kindly and to offer them some money, sandwiches and some beer. But our efforts were in vein because as soon as they quieted down, the garbage truck came around, and for whatever reason, picked up the track of every third house, so they could draw out their hours and make the rounds three times. They began at about 10am and were still there around 5pm!

Of course there were dogs barking, motorcycles, trucks, SUVs and other large (and loud) vehicles that were passing constantly throughout the day, but when about 1pm struck, all the kids came home from day care/school. So at that point, suddenly there are kids screaming throughout the film for no particular reason.

If the location scout had shown up to the location on the same day during the same time a week before making their final decision, they would have known that choosing this location was basically going to completely ruin the film. The fact is that there was constant noise all day long, and we spent most of the day waiting for it to quiet down enough to get a take, so needless to say we finished very late, and there was a lot of background noise that you typically don't hear in suburban settings in films or TV shows.

Another film I worked on recently had some visually great locations, but a good segment of the film was shot under a freeway overpass, which was noisy due to the traffic overhead which is understandable. But a place like that acts as a wind tunnel. Anyone who has shot at the beach knows that wind is not a friend of the microphone, even when you have a blimp around your boom mic, or when you're using lavs. I told the producer that we would be lucky if any of the audio recorded in that location would be useable.

Other locations that are problematic in a different way are locations that are too reflective (have echo), and have that "roomy" sound. A lot of homes and apartments built between the 1940s and the 1970s have low ceilings, which is not only difficult for the Boom Op, but often causes poor acoustics, which gives you that "roomy" or "boxy" sound. If you are shooting on a location like that, you should take into account acoustically treating the location prior to filming. Acoustical treatment is different than sound proofing, though people often don't know the difference.

Studio foam is acoustical treatment. It will not sound proof anything; it is foam and you can hear through it. But it will help reduce the acoustical reflections caused by bare walls. This is called acoustical treatment. The only issue is that it is expensive and probably won't fit in with the decoration of your set. But there are alternatives. Tapestries often work well as good acoustical treatment and decoration at the same time. Often times when shooting a scene in a room there are bare walls that will never appear on camera that could be covered with blankets or carpet. Tile and hard wood floors are also reflective and the more you cover up, the better your sound will be.

So for all you beginning and indie film makers, be aware of what kinds of noise problems your location has, because I guarantee you that in post you will either have a lot of work (which will cost a lot to fix), or you will simply have bad audio. And bad audio in a film means you have a bad film.

Dialogue Editing

2010-04-21T14:28:00.000-07:00

In this article I am going to talk about the importance of Dialogue Editing, what it is, and how everyone on set can be aware of its possibilities, and what they can all do to make it go smoother so your film turns out better in the end. But before I get into that, I want to address a small thing that can really make all the difference in the world regarding the mixing process of a film.

If you hired a sound guy who knows what he's doing, he probably recorded all of the audio in 24 bits, as opposed to 16. But when the editor starts up their session, it sometimes defaults to a 16 bit session, and the editor either doesnt know the different, or forgets to change it to a 24 bit session. So all of those nice high def audio files recorded on set are being reduced to almost CD quality (which is low)! Be sure that the editor knows to run their session in 24 bits so that you arent handing a lower quality project to your post sound guys after editing.

For those of you who dont know, 24 bit vs 16 bit is the equivelant of having a fader on a mixer that is one inch high as opposed to three inches high. For you video people, its like DV vs HD. If you were trying to mix something with the small fader, you would have less room to really get that track into the mix. But if you had a larger fader, you would have more room for the sound to lay in its place and really dial in where it needs to be. Litterally speaking, we are talking about dynamic range, which is how much room you have between silence and distortion (how loud your signal can get). 24 bits gives you a lot more head room, so your signal is less likely to distort. And it sounds more natural, because it is less compressed than 16 bits. So be sure to keep this in mind.

Now, on to Dialogue Editing!

On set you usually have a number of different takes for a particular scene. In this example, I'm going to talk about a simple "two shot" scene, using one camera.

Usually you would have your two actors facing eachother, and the camera is looking at one of the actors at an angle. The sound guy would normally mic up the actor that the camera is recording. Then when the director feels you have a good take, you do the exact same thing again, except the camera is facing the other actor, and likewise the sound guy is miking up that actor as well.

In editing, your film editor resyncs the audio for each take with the picture, decides which is the best take, and pieces it together, cutting between the two angles to show the conversation. Simple enough right? In theory, but there are a couple of things that can change the outcome.

Often times when filming a two shot, the set is nice and quiet for one angle, but then it gets noisy for the other angle. So when you cut between the two, one actor always has a lot of background noise, and the other doesnt. How do you avoid this? Well, sometimes you cant. But what your editor can do is go through all of the takes of that noisy scene and put a couple of the better audio takes on an ALT track in the session, so when it is handed off to the dialogue editor, they can go in and resync the audio to get a cleaner take.

Another problem that can occure is when the actors are allowed to improvise. If they are improvising, chances are you will have a very hard time piecing together a cohesive conversation, and if they have two different conversations for both angles of the same shot, you can really run into problems. I worked on a film once where this was the case, and the director/producer decided that for one segment they wanted the actor who wasnt on camera to be speaking during a two shot while we were looking at the other actor. The problem was that we never got a good take of the question being asked in the scene because the only time the question was asked was when that actor was off camera, so they clearly sound like they were far away from the mic, whereas every other time they spoke they werent. There was no budget in this film for ADR, so we had to live with it. If the actors hadnt improvised, we could have easily found a good take of that question and layered it over the scene to get a good version of that dialogue; another thing less experienced editors wouldnt know to do.

Another thing that we try to avoid is having actors step on eachothers lines. I know that sometimes the script calls for this, but it is hard to pull off and get good sound if youre on a low budget film, and you are only using a boom with no lavs. If the actors dont step on eachothers lines, the effect can be achieved in editing with little difficulty, and your audio tracks can be overlapped as needed.

A different thing one runs into is when let's say two actors are having a conversation, and again you are using one camera, and a boom. One actor is sitting at a table, the other is preparing something in the kitchen. The actors both usually go over their lines and have their conversation during both of their shots. Now, imagine in editing, you decide to focus on the actor preparing something in the kitchen while the seated actor talks. As far as audio goes, you have a choice of getting the sounds the actor in the kitchen is making, whith the voice of the other actor far away, or just the voice of the other actor, and no kitchen noise. Which do you choose? Well, I always tell the actors that it is best to do a quick run through and know how long the other actors lines are going to be, or give them some sort of signal once they are done so that they know when to respond. This way, when the descision in post is made to stay on the actor in the kitchen, but have the dialogue of the other actor be heard, you can still get a good signal from both actors and not compromise the situation. Just stick both takes on different overlapping tracks, and have your post mixer make it sound good!

These are just a few small examples of how everyone on set can work together as a team to ensure that your film turns out sounding great, regardless of how small the production is. Your dialogue editor will be very greatful, and as always, a happy crew is a hard working crew! That includes post!

Lavs Demystified

2010-03-02T13:07:00.000-08:00

What are Lavs? Well, basically they are tiny mics that you clip onto your actors so that you can get audio from them when you dont have a boom, or cant get it close enough. Lav is short for the word "Lavalier" which in French means pendant or a kind of jewelry that would be clipped on like a broach.

Good sounding lavs can be very expensive, complete with a wireless transmitter and receiver easily cost over a grand each, but you can find cheaper ones. Those however are usually used for conferences and things where all you need to be is heard, and the quality of the audio isnt necessarily that important.

But it is possible to use lavs without the wireless setup. The catch is that now theres a wire involved that you have to run underneath your actors clothing, and all the way through the set to your sound mixer's mic input. This method isnt very common because lets face it, the actor doesnt want to be tethered to anyone, and having cables throughout the set can be a safety issue, let alone the fact that it may get in the shot! But using lavs wired is a good way to avoid all kinds of potential problems that can occur when using a wireless system.

Almost all lavs use wideband FM (Frequency Modulation) modulation, which means that they work like radio waves. The problem in this case is that they can often be using the same signal as a number of other wireless devices including other communication devices. On a good lav system you would have the option of scanning through the available frequencies to use, then set your transmitter and receiver to an open frequency. On some of the lower end models however you dont have this option, or if you do, you only have the option of using one of several frequencies, if the frequency isnt just set by the manufacturer.

Another issue is that if your actor has to continue his/her dialogue through lets say walking into other rooms, and the receiver (which should be with the sound guy) stays in the initial room, theres a chance that the signal can cut out. If you have ever seen Francis Ford Coppolla's "The Conversation", you see a high tech (for the time) sound guy/spy who has bugs in various places, picking up a conversation two people are having in a park. But they are walking around, and theres all kinds of things getting in the way. Later on you see him taking his various sources and making a compiled mix of the conversation the two people were having, and you hear his source tapes cut in and out. This sort of thing actually happens, though it usually takes thick walls or led paint to cut the signal completely.

The other downside to using lavs is that since they are to be clipped onto your actor, you have a high risk of getting clothing noise from your actor's movement, indirect audio because maybe the clothing your actor is wearing doesnt allow for a hidden mic clipped anywhere close to the bottom center of the neck (these two are usually the most common problems), and of course, poor sound quality because the mic is so small. They also eat batteries faster than you could imagine, and they only take good brand name batteries! I have also had interference because I could hear the actors heart beating over their dialogue!

Also, a good thing to know is that a lot of lav mics are omni directional if you are using one type of clip, and cardioid when using another. This can be the difference between an extremely high noise floor, and a good clean signal. The lav mics themselves often come in a little package with a number of different types of clips, so choosing the right clip is very important because the outcome of your audio is at stake, and there is usually nothing written anywhere to tell you this. A qualified Audio Engineer who has a good knowledge of microphones and electronics can tell just by looking at it, but most people just see several different clip options.

So with all of these negative aspects of using lavs, why bother? Well, as I mentioned in a previous article, lavs are a good backup system. Sometimes the boom just cant get close to the actor because maybe the scene requires a wide angle, or maybe the location doesnt allow for the boom to get close. This is a very normal problem on set, because "on set" doesnt necessarily mean you are in a film studio. Also, lavs can often pick up some good low end frequencies in an actors voice that may be desirable in the mix. Some actors are well known for their voice, and if the boom isnt picking up that low end, the voice might not be recognizable as that of the actor. In any case, it's always a good idea to have a backup if you can squeeze it into the budget, and your post sound guy will appreciate the options.

I work a lot in post as well, and it is nice to have multiple sources. I once worked on a film where we were shooting with the RED ONE camera, and they wanted to record the audio directly into the camera so they wouldnt have to re sync it later. Now, I have a lot of experience with that camera, and although it looks good and it's interchangeability is a cool feature, they really phoned it in when it comes to sound, which is why I recommend always recording to a different source, and to just not bother with the RED's audio. But in this case, that is what the producer wanted, and he wouldnt take "no" for an answer. So, knowing this, I said to him "then we're going to need a mixer with direct line outputs for each input". We were using three lavs and a boom, with a Sound Devices four-channel mixer, which provided direct line level outputs (I'll talk about the difference between line level and mic level in another article), because I wanted to avoid using the RED's mic pre amps.

So even with all of this precaution, the RED (which can accept up to four analog audio sources, and record four separate audio tracks) still managed to distort most of the audio (though it was not audible at the time), which we found out once in post production. However, since we had multiple takes, and multiple audio sources, I was able to piece together the dialogue in the end and the difference was night and day. Initially, I thought we were going to have to ADR the whole film! But I was able to save the day (and the actor's patience!) by my use of all of these sources (I'll talk about Dialogue Editing in another article).

So I hope that this article was enlightening on what lavs are all about, and why they are a good idea to have, but not to rely solely on.

Audio and Visual Perception

2010-02-26T16:11:00.000-08:00

When you look into a camera from across the room, and you are using a wide angled lens and things are well lit, you can see the whole room. Simple right? Well the same philosophy doesnt apply to sound. Anyone who has used a camera with it's built in mic knows that. If you are interviewing someone up close, that built in mic can be adequate if it's a quality mic. But as soon as you step back, the quality of the audio goes down dramatically. It gets "roomy" or "boxy", and often times the background noise level (Noise Floor) goes up, making the already poor sounding dialogue harder to hear. How do we avoid this?

You've seen plenty of times the guy with the long boom pole and the headphones. Thats usually the best answer. Simple right? Get the mic close to the source of sound, ie: get the mic close to the actor's mouth. This makes sense right? Thats why a singer sings into a microphone, and not just in the general area of the mic. The closer you get the mic to the source of the desired sound, the better that sound quality will be because you then can turn down the mics input level (Gain), which will reduce the Noise Floor.

For Filming purposes we usually use what's called a shotgun mic on a boom pole. I wont get into the technical jargon on that, but do know that it is a different kind of mic than the kind you would use to sing into. It is a specialized microphone, and can generally serve for only this purpose, though a creative sound guy could use it for other reasons as well. But generally speaking, a shotgun mic is supposed to be able to pick up audio in a straight line from the tip onwards, with it's pickup range gradually getting wider and less sensitive. So the closer you can get that mic to the actor's mouth without being in the shot, the better.

Fortunately most of the time shots are pretty narrow, so you can get in pretty close. Shotgun mics provide the best sound, so you want to use them whenever you can. But sometimes the shot is wide, and you can't get the mic in close enough to pick up a good signal. What do you do then? Well, there are two options:

1: Use lavs. Lavs are tiny mics placed on the actor. Some are wired and go directly to the sound mixer, some are wireless and have bulky transmitter packs that too need to be hidden on the actor. Lavs are very expensive, and dont always sound as good, but are a good backup system in case the boom cant get a good signal.

2: ADR. Automatic Dialogue Replacement (though far from being automatic) is a last resort for a number of reasons. It costs money to do it (and not a lot of facilities do ADR, or have experience doing it), actors dont like doing it (assuming they have any experience doing it), you lose the performance in the actors voice more times than not, and you have to go in and re create that scene a lot of times from a sonic perspective, which is tedious and expensive.

So as always, it comes down to making sure you do things right the first time around, instead of wasting time and money for everyone involved. And again, the best way to get good production audio is to hire a professional staff and ensure that not only are conditions ideal for sound recording, but the proper equipment is available.

Financing an Indie Film

2010-02-26T14:45:00.000-08:00

You may ask yourself: "what does this have to do with sound?"

Well, if you read my last blog, you know!

So where does the money come from? Well, you may remember me talking about assets. These are things that your film contains that may provide funding for your film. A good example of an asset is the cast. Do you have any big names among the cast? In this case, things are easy. All your producer has to do is find someone with some money who would be interested in financing your film.

Why would they do this? Because maybe they want to be friends with the actor. Maybe their son or daughter wants to be an actor/actress, and playing alongside a name actor could be a career booster. Maybe they just want to feel like they are a part of the film team, or maybe they are simply interested in the revenue that the film is expected to generate.

This scenario isnt very realistic for really low budget indie shorts or student films, but it should get you thinking about assets, and why a person or organization would be interested in giving you money to make your film.

One Example: A friend of mine wrote a film as a student thesis about a legend that happened on a border town in Texas. Now, this wasnt a "La Llorona" kind of legend, where the town didnt want to have anything to do with it. It was one of those legends or stories where tourists were drawn to the town to see where it happened. So here we have an asset, and an interest. If this film is made, the possibility of increasing the towns touristic appeal/awareness is there, so the town has a vested interest in this film. So he (my friend) contacted the city council, proposed his business plan, and got funding for his film. The town even wanted to use the film in their museum, so now we're talking royalties!

With this sort of asset and future for the film, you can now turn that around and get other people interested in your film. Maybe the town payed for the film to be made, but you now decide that to do things right, you should go to the actual town to film. But the town is in Texas, and you live in California! With the above described scenario, you can generate more interest and provide additional funding for your cast and crews travel expenses.

Remember that when you are the Producer, you need to be thinking about the whole films expenses. This includes post production, which often takes much longer than shooting, and can often be very expensive. As an indie film maker or student, you can probably fill a number of these rolls, or have friends that want to help, or have favors that you can call on. But remember, you want to do a good job, so make sure that the producer or director is overseeing everything.

So what other kind of assets does your film have that might interest a person or organization? Well, as an indie film or thesis film, there is a lot of grant money out there waiting for someone like yourself to take advantage of it. You just need to know where to look. Good thing we have Google these days, if you can't research this kind of thing on your own, maybe you shouldnt be making movies! lol

But basically, organizations and individuals provide grant money for the arts for two reasons: tax write-offs, and to appear like they have taste and support the community and refined things like art.

Ive worked on countless films where the producer was able to obtain with little difficulty funding from grants for the arts or student film makers, and nothing was expected from them in return other than to actually make the film. The interest there is that at the end of the film in the credits, the name of their organization will appear. So when your film does the festival circuit, people will see that. So basically they just paid for a commercial that may eventually find its way to screenings all over the world and internet, DVDs, maybe a short film compilation DVD. Thats advertising!

So what about financing for Feature Indie films? You know, ones with big budgets! Did you know that a great number of indie features are shot for between 1 and 50 million dollars! Thats as much as or close to big budget studio films! The only difference between the two kinds of films is that one is backed by a major studio (like Sony, Warner, or Universal), and the other is backed by...you! So it's up to you (the Producer) to go out there and find funding.

For funding a big budget film, you need a lot of dough. So to figure out how much that is going to cost, this is going to require a lot of research. So get quotes from all the staff you are going to need, as well as wages for your actors. Also make sure to include meals, rentals, location and transportation costs, props, all staff (crew), and post production. Just figuring out the costs is a great undertaking in it's self, so while you are doing that, see how much you can reduce your costs. I know this goes against what Ive been saying, but interns are a good way to keep costs low, in some instances, just not when it's going to be a huge part of your film! Maybe they can help cater, or do assistant work. That sort of thing. I'm sure there are a number of people that are just trying to up their IMDb credits for their resume, and working on a feature film is good credit, so some holes can be filled by this. Others are going to be more difficult. With renting equipment, you may get discounts for package deals, or because you are on good terms with the rental house. Most rental houses have a daily rate they charge for equipment, but they often only count the weekend as one day, since they are themselves normally not open on sundays. So weekend shoots are a good way to go.

A lot of the cast and crew however won't work for free because they are trying to make a living too. But some are willing to work for deferred pay, which means that if you know money will come after production is done, they get paid then. Or, if by chance the film makes money, they get a percentage of the film, often to a certain point, or once an agreed upon number is reached.

What you need to understand is that if you want to offer me, the sound guy, deferred payment on your indie project, you are asking me to take a huge risk. If I dont have savings, I may lose my apartment because I spent all month working on this film that may or may not even pay me instead of working on paying gigs! So asking people to work on a deferred payment plan is very risky for most production crew and actors. Post production may be a little different, because these people may have day jobs, and can offer their nights to work on addition projects such as your own.

But anyone working on deferred pay is going to want to know about your assets, in particular if you already have distribution and press lined up, because their payment is based on money the film generates, not money generated to make the film. So that's risky business, and you risk making a lot of enemies if your cast/crew go unpaid due to your film flopping. And where you have enemies, you develop a bad reputation, and when you develop a bad reputation, no one will work with you, hire you, or rent equipment to you. So you have to find a new career!

The ability to pay your cast and crew on the front end is the best way to get quality production and keep people happy. The second best way is to provide good food on set! But that's not what we're here to discuss.

Money. Gotta get it. Who to ask? Well, who has a lot of money that may be interested in your film? Believe it or not, the best people to ask are people that arent related to the entertainment business. People who are wealthy by their own means, business, inheritance, whatever. The film industry is sexy from an outside point of view (and cut-throat within!), so people not related to the industry have a fascination sort of point of view. Not all obviously, but enough. Now why would a wealthy person fund your film? Assets, incentives, the prospect of making more money. All kinds of reasons. It's up to you to find them. Sometimes the best asset is already having a portion of your film funded by another wealthy individual. That may mean that one person is not carrying the whole bill, and they see that someone else has faith in the project, so they feel better about doing it. But these guys who arent in the industry usually arent trying to develop another business partner, though thats what is basically happening. They also want to feel like they are given the gift of now being on the inside. So they may want to hang out with you late at night at some club, or come on set to watch the filming, or meet the actors. Definitely come to the production parties, because they are part of the process just like everyone else.

OK, Im not going to go into all of that because thats not my job. And this type of work isnt very well suited for a beginner. What you need to do more times than not is sell your idea to an already established Producer who already has a working relationship with a number of film backing people and firms, as well as connections to cast and crew that already trust him or her. This is reducing perceived risk on a lot of different levels, and going to give you overall a better chance at finding funding, and getting a better cast and crew, which will ultimately generate better quality and more interest in your film, which can improve sales and put you on the map as a film maker.

So these are just a few things that the Indie Film Maker should think about. Because it is always better to prepare for your film and get things done right, than to just try to get the film done with no budget and hope that it turns out alright.

Sound: An Explanation To Indie Film Makers

2010-02-26T13:15:00.000-08:00

The medium we call film, or movies, is an audio-visual medium (unless you're making silent films), which means that equal attention has to be payed to both the audio and visual aspects of the film. It's 50-50 on this guys, because the one thing that will make or break an indie film above all visual aspects is poor audio.

As a sound guy, I have worked on countless indie films, including student projects, shorts, web series, you name it. And the one thing that always astounds me is the lack of attention to the audio side of things.

Indie film makers like to try to cut corners whenever possible because, lets face it, they're trying to save money because they are usually working with no budget, or very little for that matter. One of the biggest mistakes they make is not hiring an adequate sound guy. I see this over and over again: The production hires "interns" to do the location audio, or simply hand the boom over to one of the grips or someone on set who doesnt necessarily have any experience, because it's only sound right? It's not as important as the picture! Wrong! What just happened here is that due to lack of experience and knowledge in the field, this guy isnt going to know about mic placement, acoustics, maybe he wont know what makes a shotgun mic different from a handheld mic. There are a thousand things that can go wrong in this scenario. But the one thing I find more than most aside from improper mic placement and clipping, is noise.

That's the location scouts fault a lot of the time too. He/She didnt choose a location with a quiet enough environment, and the production team didnt take care of any possible acoustical sound problems that will affect the production sound.

So what does this mean? Well in short, your film wont do very well because nobody can hear whats happening, or if they can, it doesnt sound good. The only way to fix this at this point is to re record the audio. That means calling all the actors into a studio to do ADR (Automatic Dialogue Replacement, or Looping), which is re recording all dialogue. Then you need someone to place/record things like footsteps, clothing movement, doors, any sound that may be needed. On a feature film you would usually have a Foley guy to do all the natural human sounds like footsteps, an Fx guy to handle non organic sounds like sonic details, a background & ambiance guy to take care of those types of things, a dialogue editor, a sound designer, composer (with music supervisor), and of course someone to mix the whole thing together. Those are a lot of hats for one sound guy to wear, but it is easier on short films, though still not always entirely practical.

But at this point, you have bad production sound, and now instead of paying someone who knew what they were doing in the first place, you have to pay someone to take care of all of this, which doesnt come as cheap as just getting good production audio. And also, your actors wont like having to re record themselves, and probably dont have any experience doing it, so the sessions can be long and tedious, and you will almost definitely lose the emotion and character that goes along with a live acting performance verses a dubbed one.

I have had to be this guy more times than I can count, and although I dont mind the work, I know you the film maker are pulling your hair out over this whole thing and living with regret.

So if you think that interns are the solution, nope, they are going to cost you money in the end more times than not. Even guys fresh out of school. Location audio is an art and science in it's self, and it takes a lot of knowhow and experience to get it right.

Film Schools. Due to my experience working on these types of productions, I can't help but think that either the film schools dont talk about audio much, or the film students just dont care about it. This explains the attitude towards the importance of sound in their films. Maybe film students, being a student of a visual medium, feel that because sound cannot be seen, it is somehow less tangible than the visual aspects of the film. Lets face it, 98% of whats happening on set is purely for visual reasons!

We have the DP (Director of Photography, or Cinematographer), maybe a B camera and assistants, Grips (lighting), actors of course, wardrobe, makeup, and just about everyone else on set is there to make sure things LOOK good. They're all assuming that the sound guy is just going to take care of the sound by himself, because afterall, sound in their eyes is often a minute detail.

Pre Production. Very important that you secure a good sound guy and boom op and bring them in on pre production so that the work conditions can be ideal (or at least better) for the sound department.

A Bad Example: A lot of my gigs are last minute calls. The sound guy dropped out or got another gig for your shoot date (usually because it pays better, if at all), and I am called in the day before. So I show up on set the day of shooting, and nothing has been done to ensure good sound. We're shooting in a house or apartment, it's on or near a busy street, the walls are all bare and there's a low sealing (which creates that "boxy" sound you get on indie films), the refrigerator is humming, kids and gardeners are all outside making the world a noisy place. The location scout should have brought the pre production crew to the site prior to get the OK from all departments. I understand we can't control what happens outside, but inside we can at least to a little acoustic treatment, and maybe move the fridge into the hallway or something to reduce the noise level. So at the end of the day, I did what I could, but there was a lot of background noise.

A Good Example: One film I worked on was a very artsy surreal kind of film, and it was being shot in this sort of giant concrete basement stairwell. You can imagine how long the echo would hold out in such a place! So the director brought me and my assistant sound guy to the location about a week in advance, and said, "I know this isnt ideal, what can we do to fix this?". My first reaction of course was "very little!", but then I got to thinking and my assistant and I came up with a solution. The camera angles are only facing two walls throughout the whole film (at least where there's dialogue), so we can cover the other two (one of which was an open shaft that worked basically as an echo chamber) with cardboard and cloth, which will block out the echo chamber, and absorb the reverberation. On the walls that were going to be in the shots, we simply made sure that the decoration was going to diffract or absorb the sound, so we get good clean audio.

On top of this, the production also made sure that we had all the equipment we needed to get good sound for their production, which leads me to another topic that I will get to in a sec. The point is, the production audio was so good on this film that not only did we not have to re record a single word, but we won an award for it!

Sound Equipment: Rent or Expect the Sound Guy to have it? Well, it depends. But before you go looking for a sound guy thats going to provide all of his own equipment and work for basically less than minimum wage, I would like to you take a look at what is required for good production audio, and the price tags that go along with them.

Boom Mic: the standard one everyone expects goes for about $1,299.00

Boom Pole: 10 ft. Fiberglass usually goes for about $1000

Shot mount and Wind protection: another good $500 or so

Wireless Lavs: 1 mic (about $500), one Transmitter (another $500), and one Receiver ($500). Now this is for a quality "not going to cut out or sound like a tin can" set, but this is for just one wireless lav. You usually want two or more on set!

Mixer/Recording device: Assuming you are going with one boom and two lavs, you will need at least 3 mic inputs and recordable tracks available. But, mixers and recorders come in increments of twos, so you're looking at a portable four-track recorder. Most "cheapo" portable recorders (hard disk or flash drive) go for about a grand each. But if you want it to really sound good the standard is the model by Sound Devices. This goes for over $2000!

So already you are expecting your sound guy to provide more than $5000 worth of equipment, and you expect him to work for minimum wage, or "for experience/credit". I'll tell you something, unless this kid has money in the family, he wont own all of that unless he's got some major experience, at which point he certainly doesnt need the credit for your thesis film!

So let's talk about renting. There are a number of rental houses all over the place. I live in Hollywood, so obviously there are quite a few out here. I go to one place. I initially went there because they had the equipment that I needed at a better price than other rental houses were offering, and the staff was great and personable. I quickly developed a working relationship with them, and I am loyal to them because of how great their service is. Now, when an indie project needs to rent this stuff, a rental house usually wont rent out high end gear to some inexperienced student, or someone they simply dont know for that matter. And if they do, there will be a hefty deposit required. Due to the relationship I have with my rental house, indie film makers that I am working with are often granted access to equipment they otherwise would never be able to use, simply because they mention that I am working with them. Sometimes they even get discounts! So loyalty is important to your professional relations, and having professionals working with you can get you ahead in a lot of areas.

But if you are going to be shooting for many days, in some cases it is cheaper to buy the equipment. Then you can keep it for your next project, or give it to your crew as payment.

I cant tell you how many first time film makers I have worked with who went to pick up the gear from the rental house the day before the shoot, and were almost turned away because the rental house didnt know who they were. But once my name was mentioned, the production was saved! Of course my reputation is at stake here, so take care not to tarnish it! lol

So, in order to do things right, we need the right person with the right gear. But how do we afford this? Well, you could either save up all semester, work a part time job to put you through school (I did!), or look for other sources of financing. By this I dont mean sell yourself or deal drugs, I mean look for possible sources of financing that may pertain to your film.

What is your film about? Does it promote an idea or place? The content of your film can easily provide the answer to where the money can come from. These are called assets, and this is what the Producer should be thinking about in order to finance your film. Now, I'm not going to get into this right now, but I will in a future blog.

In any case, I hope this will prove helpful to aspiring film makers, and less like the rants of a jaded disgruntled sound guy! lol

A Brief Explanation

2010-02-26T13:03:00.000-08:00

Thank you for stopping by. The purpose of this blog is basically to Explain a little about what a sound guy does in various fields, and the things he or she deals with on a daily basis. This could be in the studio recording music, as well as working on set doing production audio for films. The intended purpose of this blog is not to provide technical advice or training, but rather the stories behind the lines.

People that might find this blog useful are: Musicians wondering whats up with the guy pushing all the buttons, Film Producers and Directors that want to understand the perspective of the sound guy, and student film makers and sound people interested in getting into the business.