Sound Question??

Alex Mercer · October 18, 2004

Im looking to shoot my first film this spring and I have a question. When working with sound and switching the angle of the camera how do i make it where it sounds good and not like its a different scene everytime I switch angles? Did that make any sense? If someone can help that would be great.

Thanks,

Alex

Mitch Gross · October 18, 2004

Take a separate microphone and plug it into the camera. Run that mike on a long cable and keep it near the actors, mounted on a pole over top of the people speaking. This will keep the sound consistent and vastly better than the onboard mike.

Alex Mercer · October 18, 2004

Even if I used a boom mic, when I go and edit all the scenes together wouldnt it sound all weird?

Alex

Phil Rhodes · October 18, 2004

Hi,

That's where skill comes in! Try to keep the microphone in the right place, and roughly the same place for each take. Avoid using rooms which echo (most rooms echo more than is comfortable) - you can deaden echo by hanging soft curtains. Then, when you are mixing sound in postproduction, work with graphic equalisation and compression to smooth out the differences, crossfade between cuts, use better sound takes against better picture takes if the actors sync up well enough. Yes, it's difficult; no, there's no easy answer, and yes it will sound "all wierd" if you aren't careful. This is one reason why sound recordists are often seen as uncooperative on set - this stuff is really hard, and yet they're often pushed around by other departments.

But seriously - go and rent "Underworld" and listen to the point just before the vampire party where the Irish guy is talking to Kate Beckinsale as she works at her computer. The sound is all over the place - his voice is full of reverb and echo on some lines. Even big movies get this wrong, so you should expect to as well.

Phil

Matthew Beals · October 19, 2004

You should also be sure to record "Room Tone" at every location you shoot in. Once you have completed gathering all of the coverage of your scene have the entire crew be completely silent. Leave all lights that were on ON, if a window was open the whole time, leave it open still. Then position the boom mic in an average position between all the positions it had been held at and record about a minute of dead "silence." This will help you later in possibly creating a bed of ambient sound that will make each cut all the more seamless sounding.

Also, keep in mind that you should also eliminate sound where you can. For example, an air conditioner or an open window. In the event you HAVE to keep the AC on or a refrigerator, be sure to record the "wild sond" of JUST the AC or JUST the refrigerator. All of this can help you in post for the purpose of smoothing things out. Sometimes, when there are too many pops between cuts, the answer becomes adding and looping these wild sounds to create a new type of silence. This is last resort of course. The answer is usually all about EQ and crossfading...

Chris Keth · November 8, 2004

2 things, man. Mic placement and isolating the sound you want from the sound you don't want. That's all there is to it...unfortunately the second one is a pretty huge task.

Lots can be done to bad sounds but it's better to do it well in the first place. You can't normally "fix it in post." You can only "hide it in post."

Annie Wengenroth · November 9, 2004

Also: check your levels! When given a choice between "too quiet" or "too loud", you're better off recording too low than at too hot a volume, because if it's too hot, it'll clip out and sound like crap in post no matter what you do. Well yeah, you could throw all kinds of EQ and filters on there to try to level it out but ultimately you'd have a lot more work to do and you'd risk having a flat, muffled sound, which you don't want. Of course, your main objective should be to get the best signal you can right off the bat so that you don't have to work as hard in post. And yeah, good roomtone is a godsend. Best of luck.

-A.

Chris Keth · November 9, 2004

Also: check your levels! When given a choice between "too quiet" or "too loud", you're better off recording too low than at too hot a volume, because if it's too hot, it'll clip out and sound like crap in post no matter what you do. Well yeah, you could throw all kinds of EQ and filters on there to try to level it out but ultimately you'd have a lot more work to do and you'd risk having a flat, muffled sound, which you don't want. Of course, your main objective should be to get the best signal you can right off the bat so that you don't have to work as hard in post. And yeah, good roomtone is a godsend. Best of luck.
-A.

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This is true but levels that are too low are a big problem, too. Then you have to amplify them so much in order to get intelligible dialogue that you get tons of noise. The idea is to get the loudest recorded sounds possible without clipping. This way the ratio of the sound you do want to the sound that you don't want is as high as possible. This normally means keeping digital levels around -12dB to -10dB. Analog equipment can go higher, closer to zero, because the distortion is gradual as you go above zero. In digital equipment it is unusuable as soon as you hit 0.

Annie Wengenroth · November 10, 2004

Yeah, I wasn't trying to imply that low levels were ideal; sorry if it came off that way, I'm not the world's greatest writer. Another tip: if you turn off the fridge at a location, put the DP's car keys in there so you don't forget to turn it back on!

Chris Keth · November 10, 2004

Yeah, I wasn't trying to imply that low levels were ideal; sorry if it came off that way, I'm not the world's greatest writer. Another tip: if you turn off the fridge at a location, put the DP's car keys in there so you don't forget to turn it back on!

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Just clarifying a little more. Leaving someone keys isn't a bad idea, actually.:)