ASK & DISCUSS
INDEXPlease can you give me some advice on adjusting my film's score/foley for upcoming cinema screenings?
11 years, 7 months ago - Adam Greves
I've recently finished making a short film which has a score to some extent but mostly uses accentuated foley throughout. There is also a voiceover. It sounds great and quite intricate through my monitors and cans but when I played it at a venue last week it sounded awful and so much was lost. It's got into a couple of festivals and I'm really worried.
It's got quite a lot of bass / low frequency stuff but nothing out of the ordinary. I've researched peak levels and have mastered to -0.5dBFS like I have for loads of audio CDs in the past and it (stupidly) didn't occur to me that cinema should be different. I read somewhere it should ideally be -10dB but am really confused.
I'm not an audio engineer by trade so this all self-taught stuff. If you could offer me some advice, please drop me a message. I'd really appreciate it.
Many thanks,
Adam
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11 years, 7 months ago - Dan Selakovich
I'm afraid you won't like this answer: if you're showing a film in a theatre, you have to MIX in a theatre. Room size can change things completely. It's the same idea of a large screen changing the pace of editing compared to a TV screen. Mixing with headphones is ALWAYS a bad idea.
You can't really think of it as your tracks being at -10db. Possibly your dialogue tracks will be between -10 and -12db, but it's a MIX, so some sounds will be louder and some softer.
You didn't mention this, but did you do a surround sound mix? That will really muck things up if a theatre isn't equipped that way. If so, do a simple stereo mix.
Festivals kind of suck in that way. They'll view your stuff on a TV, and if selected, show it in a theatre. So you have to do two mixes. One for the small screen and one for the big room of a theatre.
Response from 11 years, 7 months ago - Dan Selakovich SHOW