Adding music to a film?
- Thread starter Semiazas
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A couple of ways:
1) put the music track down first and edit your visuals to the music, so that shots might change with every other beat for tight synchronization.
2) Edit your visuals, dialogue and sound effects, then put the music in last.
To do this, you need an editing program. Use the first 2 or 3 tracks for cutting dialogue or the sound that is actually attached to your video images.
If you have a lot of sound effects - background ambience will take up a track or two and you may have telephone rings, gunshots, tires squeeling, etc. Plan on 2 or 3 tracks for effects.
Lastly, you will put music on a couple of tracks. For ease of understanding, lets say 3 tracks. This means, you will have 9 total tracks - 3 stereo tracks for dialogue, 3 stereo tracks for sound effects and 3 stereo tracks for music. Multiple tracks will allow you to fade/overlay music tracks on top of each other for transitions.
Ultimately, if you edit sound for features, this kind of track separaton will allow you to turn - say the dialogue - "off." A foreign company can now dub your movie, yet have all the sound effects, ambience and music. These are called M & E tracks and most distributors require them.
Okay, so we're talking about a short with two pieces of music. The editing program should allow you to add as many tracks as you need. So you have a couple of tracks for dialogue and you can put music on track #3. As long as the musical pieces don't need to overlap, you can use the one track.
Your editing program will probably have some sort of mixer or volume control, so you can make the music track softer than the dialogue - waaaay softer, while talking. Bring it up for the action/suspense moments. In Premiere, I add keyframes or handles that you can raise or lower on any of the tracks. If you put one handle all the way down, followed a couple seconds later by a second handle at normal level, this will create a fade in. Do the opposite for fade out. Or add a couple of handles under the dialogue and pull them down so you can hear the words clearly.
When I make music on a keyboard, I make a wave file out of the song, throw it on a jump drive and put it in my main computer for use with the editing program. You can also record into your camera and CAPTURE the audio through your firewire, USB, etc. - same way you captured the video.
1) put the music track down first and edit your visuals to the music, so that shots might change with every other beat for tight synchronization.
2) Edit your visuals, dialogue and sound effects, then put the music in last.
To do this, you need an editing program. Use the first 2 or 3 tracks for cutting dialogue or the sound that is actually attached to your video images.
If you have a lot of sound effects - background ambience will take up a track or two and you may have telephone rings, gunshots, tires squeeling, etc. Plan on 2 or 3 tracks for effects.
Lastly, you will put music on a couple of tracks. For ease of understanding, lets say 3 tracks. This means, you will have 9 total tracks - 3 stereo tracks for dialogue, 3 stereo tracks for sound effects and 3 stereo tracks for music. Multiple tracks will allow you to fade/overlay music tracks on top of each other for transitions.
Ultimately, if you edit sound for features, this kind of track separaton will allow you to turn - say the dialogue - "off." A foreign company can now dub your movie, yet have all the sound effects, ambience and music. These are called M & E tracks and most distributors require them.
Okay, so we're talking about a short with two pieces of music. The editing program should allow you to add as many tracks as you need. So you have a couple of tracks for dialogue and you can put music on track #3. As long as the musical pieces don't need to overlap, you can use the one track.
Your editing program will probably have some sort of mixer or volume control, so you can make the music track softer than the dialogue - waaaay softer, while talking. Bring it up for the action/suspense moments. In Premiere, I add keyframes or handles that you can raise or lower on any of the tracks. If you put one handle all the way down, followed a couple seconds later by a second handle at normal level, this will create a fade in. Do the opposite for fade out. Or add a couple of handles under the dialogue and pull them down so you can hear the words clearly.
When I make music on a keyboard, I make a wave file out of the song, throw it on a jump drive and put it in my main computer for use with the editing program. You can also record into your camera and CAPTURE the audio through your firewire, USB, etc. - same way you captured the video.
In that case, you won't be competing with other audio levels. Record with your DAW, external instrument, etc. and save the wave file. In the editing program, IMPORT the wave file of your music and drag it into the audio tracks. Set your mixer level as desired.
Moe "common" way is "2". You lock he video, THEN you start layering on the sound with music generally last.
First, you almost never have stereo dialog tracks, and most sound FX are in mono as well.
The number of dialog tracks will depend upon the number of speaking parts in a scene. And, depending upon the style of the film, there may be several dialog tracks for each character. I've had as many as 21 dialog tracks in a scene (all mono), 40+ mono Foley tracks, a dozen sound FX tracks (a mix of mono and stereo), ten ambience/BG tracks (a mix of mono and stereo), plus the score (two stereo tracks) and diagetic/source music (three stereo tracks) - and this was for a drama, not an action/adventure film. Dialog, Foley, Sound FX, BG/Ambience and score/music each gets its own stem, and there are several reverb busses. At mix each stem is "printed" separately to allow for M&Es.
I usually get score about a week before I mix, diagetic/source music a week before that (sometimes a lot sooner, sometimes a lot later).
First, I'm only mixing stereo, not 6:1. I have delivered my last 3 features, as described.
What about dual levels from one mic? I record 2 levels for those scenes which actors start yelling or whispering - let's say nominal left and then a softer right recorded directly on to a DVX or HVX. When editing, I will use COPY LEFT or COPY RIGHT channel to both sides - dual mono - or whatever the appropriate level is. The final result is a mono sound, but I think you can see why I'm using stereo tracks, otherwise, I will not be able to choose sides.
As for sound effects, I use both mono and stereo sound effects. The downside to that is when I have a lot of sounds, I can't move a mono sound to a stereo track, and vice versa. For features, I usually have far more than nine tracks, until I output several tracks into composites. Ultimately: I have mixed down to three stereo tracks:
Stereo track 1 - composite audio (dialogue, FX, Music)
Stereo track 2 - FX and ambience. (Since this is a mixdown track - FX swoosh left to right...definitely stereo for my mix and a lot of waves from Sounddogs is in stereo.)
Stereo track 3 - Music
What about dual levels from one mic? I record 2 levels for those scenes which actors start yelling or whispering - let's say nominal left and then a softer right recorded directly on to a DVX or HVX. When editing, I will use COPY LEFT or COPY RIGHT channel to both sides - dual mono - or whatever the appropriate level is. The final result is a mono sound, but I think you can see why I'm using stereo tracks, otherwise, I will not be able to choose sides.
As for sound effects, I use both mono and stereo sound effects. The downside to that is when I have a lot of sounds, I can't move a mono sound to a stereo track, and vice versa. For features, I usually have far more than nine tracks, until I output several tracks into composites. Ultimately: I have mixed down to three stereo tracks:
Stereo track 1 - composite audio (dialogue, FX, Music)
Stereo track 2 - FX and ambience. (Since this is a mixdown track - FX swoosh left to right...definitely stereo for my mix and a lot of waves from Sounddogs is in stereo.)
Stereo track 3 - Music
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It doesn't matter if you're delivering stereo interleaved, LT/RT, LCR, 5.1 or 7.1, dialog tracks are done in mono 99.99% of the time. With a few exceptions, dialog is always panned dead center in the case of stereo interleaved and LT/RT, and placed in the center speaker in the case of LCR, 5.1 and 7.1
You use the nominal level track. The reduced dB track is a safety track, you only use it if you need to.
As I mentioned, sound FX are a mix of mono and stereo. In the case of mono sounds you move them around the sound field with panning.
The standard approach to stems (what you called composites) are also as I mentioned - dialog, Foley, sound FX, ambience/BG, music and reverb busses. The stems are the same as the final mix (stereo interleaved, LT/RT, LCR, 5.1 or 7.1).
Yes, that's why I suggest recording that way and I actually use the safety track quite a bit. Thanks for all the info.
My point was the production tracks are not treated as stereo tracks; they are separate mono tracks. "Clean" dialog is pulled from the safety track and placed in the dialog track(s) as needed.
I'm very surprised that you use material from the safety track "quite a bit".
I'm very surprised that you use material from the safety track "quite a bit".