The would-be sound designers thread

Great thread idea, Renn.

First place everyone needs to start is go pick up The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (2 Disc Set) that has the feature on the re-recording of the sound and the Apocalypse Now Dossier version with the EPK on Walter Murch.

Also, check out filmsound.org for some great articles and some basic terms.

I just finished a book about the making of Nashville, which talked about how revolutionary the use of multi-track recording was in that film (particulary with actors being body miked, etc.). I'm curious as to what advances have been made since then, whether body miking and multi-track recording is more of a norm these days, and how easy/inexpensive it is to do recordings like that, particularly for independent film. Apologies if this made no sense.

You bastards are going to make me learn about sound now aren't you? I mean come on, I get your equipment replaced for you when the director breaks your precious headphones. I didn't punch out the sound guy who yelled at me for his and someone else' fuck up (I nicely walked away - and then told my boss she could deal with him because he wasn't getting shot from me the rest of the show).

I would add Walter Murch's books as well since he started off dealing with sound a lot. Will have to get that Good, the Bad, and the Ugly disc.

Edited to add: Rath, what's the title of the book?

The book's called The Nashville Chronicles. It's a must read.

Most movies over a couple of million will use the almost fail safe of body mics with a boom in order to get as much coverage as possible. Body mics are always in issue in any scene that requires a tone of movement due to cloth rustle. The boom allows the dialogue editor/mixer to have options that don't contain the letters A, D and R.

It's not cheap but it can be done on indie flicks. You just have to be prepared to have a slightly more expensive on-set sound budget.

Sound guys are a sensitive lot who get shit on by many people on set so we tend to explode in a 360 rather than at one person specifically. It doesn't make up for him being a jack ass but if you've heard the phrase "Waiting on sound" for the umpteenth time in one day you get a little testy.

And, yes, we will make you learn about sound.

Editing videos I did with friends for fun without any knowledge of sound design and mixing...

...when I add layers of sound fx and music onto badly acquired production audio in an editing program, I obviously have to mess with the volume of each of these so that I get what I want without creating a jumbled mess of sound. But even with a lot of tinkering, I never think the stuff I've worked on sounds all that great. What else is it that you pros are doing when it comes to a final mix? It's not just a finessing of the levels of each asset, right? What other voodoo do you do?!

I mostly BS'ed this question so I could legitimately subscribe to this thread. I'm trying to learn for free!!!

I'm not going to give away too many trade secrets but I'll give you a workflow that will help make things sound better.

First thing you have to do, nooj, is clean up the production sound. You need to eq out noise, get rid of clicks and pops on dialogue, kill on-set fx noises (squibs, explosions, lights falling on gaffers etc) and get the sound to a listenable quality. That is to say, room tone and dialogue and not much else.

Then you add a layer of BGs, sometimes called ambis in the UK and Australia. So, things like room tone if you're inside, the noise of an office, phones ringing etc. Or if you're outside you'll need birds, car passes, crickets (or cicadas if you so prefer). These will get a final mix from the Re-recording mixer but the BGs editor will do a preliminary leveling, add some reverb and some basic eq-ing. BGs should take up between six and twelve channels in your mix. (3-6 stereo, 3-6 mono)

FX (or effects) are done simultaneously by a different editor (usually). These are specific, as seen by the audience, sounds. It's the old mantra "See a cow, hear a cow!" Punches, explosions, car-bys, Transformers transforming, Crispin Glover's eyes sizzle are all fx.

The key to really good fx is the mix. Again, the FX editor usually does a preliminary mix blending the sounds together using a really good equalizer, some sort of convolution reverb (to make the fx sound like they exist in the same space as the dialogue) and lots of leveling plus a scattering of fades. The mixer will finesse all these elements using a large series of tools and plug-ins used in such a way as to confuse mortal men and scare directors.

Then, if you're feeling like you want to you add some foley (human body sounds) and record some walla (basically background voices) to sweeten everything.

Here's the big key though, for a good sounding film with great fx, it's the little things. A huge explosion is great but it's the falling debris, the sizzle of burnt flesh, and the groaning of metal that will sell that explosion as dangerous. A creaky floor signals tension but the squeak of the leather of the shoe plus that hint of reverb on a very empty room makes it significantly better. Those little things are what separates great films from fucking brilliant.

I don't really have anything to add here, except that a strange occurance happened during pickups last night: sound was ready before camera AND lights! It was mainly due to our AC getting the thankless task of assembling a RedRock (which she'd never done before--the downshot to pickups is you don't always get the whole crew back), but you better believe the sound guy milked it for all its worth. We heard "Waiting on camera!" every five minutes.

So, yeah, sound ready before camera. Making note, because it'll never happen again.

Hahaha. I don't know why everyone gives sound shit for being "waited on". The crew I work with has worked together for years, so they're pretty comfortable with each other and sound and camera will crack jokes at the other's expense every now and again. But I've been on other sets and met grips, gaffers and camera people who seem to make their livings HATING on sound. It baffled me! There are a lot of things sound can't do until every department has finished their work, and I thought this was obvious - but I've still been on sets where a guy who spent an hour setting up a couple of flags rolled his eyes when the sound guy needed one more minute. And then there's room tone! God forbid the sound department ever asks for room tone on some of these sets.

I want to take this post home and marry it.

You get a foley class? That's awesome. I had to teach myself foley.

Ryan mentioned using carpet to help eliminate the sound of gravel in the filmmaking thread. We just finished a 48hrs movie and the opening scene was outside an abandoned mill beside the train tracks so there was nothing but gravel everywhere, and we didn't bring any carpet. Next time Ryan tell them the carpet that hides the spare tire in the trunk of their will work fine. Don't let them use your own though because it will get dirty.

I was real proud of myself for thinking of that, like yay I wont have to deal with gravel sound over the dialogue, then this weird old guy opens up one of the big doors of the abandoned mill, which we had assumed were boarded up, and drives his car out and starts washing it, so now we have weird old guy washing a car noises over the dialogue instead. It's like are you kidding me guy, you can see we're shooting a movie and you decide now you simply must wash your shitty beat up Honda City?

Foley question:

I'm gonna be adding some noises into my movie tomorrow would like some advice on if what I'm planning will sound right

Axe hit to spine
gonna combine hitting a leather jacket with chopping a cabbage.

Axe hit to the stomach
combine leather Jacket hit with stabbing a big bowl of pasta

Tire iron to the skull
tire iron to a rock melon

Any suggestions or better ideas?

This is good but I'd also sweeten it with some hitting meat effects (if you don't want to waste good meat I think I have some FX I can send you). You also want to add some flesh squish by hitting soaking wet cloth.

Again, add some squish.

Rock melon=cantaloupe, right?

Go bigger on this. Try a watermelon. Add some bone cracks by cracking celery in a very hard sharp way.

Don't forget that you want to have all the swishes in there as the ax/tire iron is swinging. You'll want to mix it down a bit so it's not so in your face but we've become so accustomed to it as an audience that hits sound funny without that preceeding it.

Also record these all at different distances. A lot of times in indie films foley is way too wet so you want to have choices between that and more realistic. Having the mic placed at different distances allows you to choose. It saves time in the mix and doing foley is fun.

Thanks Ryan. When you say "You also want to add some flesh squish by hitting soaking wet cloth." do you mean swinging the cloth and hitting a bench of hitting the cloth with something else?

The head hit with the melon is more of a knock down blow rather than a skull smashing one, in fact the hit's in the trailer at 1:30 which at the moment has the worst ever aluminium bat sound http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35d6Y4t9sdQ Would also like to point out that the conversion to youtube made the overall sound quality much worse that it actually is, I mean it's not great but it's not that bad. I'll get a watermelon anyway because why not?

Hitting the cloth with your fist or pressing down on it. Or just squish it between your hands. Cloth and pudding works if you want a more gooey sound.

Oh, yeah, make that way bigger. Sound will sell that scene and make it both funnier and creepier. You need the swish then the hit (try to combine the melon hit with a 2x4 hitting another piece of wood) followed almost immediately (a few frames at most) by the crunching celery.

Just as an added note, all of your sound could be bigger. You're working in horror and comedy. Both genres come alive with big sound.

How to Make Foley Soup on the next Rachael Ray!

Oh, horrid, the other idea you may want to look at for a squish is jell-o in cheese cloth.

For a real film, sure, but what about for a porn film.

Awesome. Congrats!

ETA: Gadz! How the hell do you mix using the Mac mouse? That'd drive me 'round the bend!

Do you sound people know how hard it is to find unlubricated condoms to cover your precious mics and equipment?

I was watching some of the Planet Earth Documentary the other day, and I know most doco stuff is foleyed anyway, but with the deep sea stuff, when you do foley for things like that, are you recording noises on the surface of the water and filtering it to sound deep underwater or do you submerge the mics, and record actual underwater noises in a controlled tank?

And do you just take wild guesses as to what things actually sound like?

The easy answer: depends on the circumstances and budget of the project.

Most likely is that they use a combination of foley, fx and sound design. The foley would be recorded clean and dry and then have filters added to make it sound right. They would likely add fx to give it all a sense of texture. Sometimes they would do foley in a wet tank but that would strictly be on a huge budget film.

As for what they sound like it would be a combination of research (talk to the leading experts, read papers on the subject, similar circumstances/animals) plus some educated guess work and then add in some creativity to make it sound good.

Think of the dino exhibits at zoos where the beast roars. We have no idea what they actually sound like but educated guesses based on similar modern animals plus scientific guesses based on physiognomy and you get the best guesstimate you can.