ASK & DISCUSS INDEX

8 years, 5 months ago - Dan Selakovich

That's a huge question. Ideally, you need monitors, not "speakers." But even still that's an issue, depending on where this short will be shown. A theater, for example, has a complete different acoustic quality than your bedroom, but at least monitors will give you accurate sound. On features, if I mix in a small stage, we would always screen it in a real theater several times throughout the mixing process just to make sure what we are hearing on a small stage works on a big stage. I would never mix with headphones, but if you do, make sure they are acoustically accurate monitor type phones. If it is to be shown only on a computer or TV, you might be able to get away with inexpensive monitors.

The biggest mistake I see (hear) in shorts and bad features are holes in the dialogue track. Learn how to "checkerboard" your dialogue tracks, and add handles to the incoming and out going bit of dialogue on each track. That way you can fade out on one bit of room tone and up on the other.

Understand that you know the dialogue inside and out. Be aware that you have no objectivity. You may be able to hear a line of dialogue just fine, but your audience might not understand it at all. Often, I hear music mixed too high over the dialogue, or SFX and music not supporting one another, but fighting each other.

I could go on and on. I know you only asked about equipment, but more films suffer from artistic and technical skill than whether they used Logic or ProTools. Remember, here in Hollywood we have dialogue editors, foley editors, background editors, efx editors, music editors, and ADR editors and supervisors (mostly ADR is the dialogue editor), and each is a pro in each of those areas. You're going to be doing ALL of the disciplines. Try to learn as much as you can before trying to tackle your film. During the mix, we typically have 3 people mixing: dialogue, efx, and music. Re-recording mixers are rarely also the editors I mentioned, but specialty pros in that area.

John Purcell has a great youtube series on editing dialogue. Please take a look at it (though I've not seen the series, he has a very good reputation here in L.A., so I'm sure it's great). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3d5XIzKlWFk

8 years, 5 months ago - Ian Templeton

Hi Dan,

Thanks so much for such a comprehensive response. I realise the daunting task ahead of me but I want to try anyway. It was a purely technical question because I figure that if I find I'm severely lacking in craft, I can still outsource it at that point. No harm in trying and learning more about sound in the process.

The film has no dialogue. If it did, I would probably have been more reticent about taking it on myself. That leaves background, FX and music then.

So if I can get good monitoring equipment, I should have the bare minimum to in theory do a good job? I do have access to a cinema to test it.

Thanks again,
Ian

8 years, 5 months ago - Paddy Robinson-Griffin

What Dan says, naturally, and just adding an example of "you know the dialogue..." (for the future, when you have dialogue!)

Film we produced recently, two great comic actors, but a whole 15 second escalating gag relied on a clear hearing of one setup line. The director knew it, the editor knew it, I should have known it but had long forgotten it my the time I saw a screener. Absolutely ruined the sequence. Had to ADR and it made a great scene.

8 years, 5 months ago - Dan Selakovich

Oh, Ian, I wasn't saying you shouldn't do this yourself. You absolutely should. You'll learn shitloads that way. As for equipment, it sounds like you've got it covered. Have fun!

8 years, 5 months ago - Alex Gregson

It will be a steep learning curve, similar to a Sound Designer trying to learn another Post Production craft for a project - such as Video Editing or Colour Grading. What you learn in the process will probably give you insights into approaching Video Editing in different ways too, I look forward to hearing the results and if you have any questions you can drop me a line at alex@344audio.com.