The problem is crickets have like 4 different songs, and they change frequencies, so in one track they're playing one beat, then when another character talks it suddenly changes. You can clearly hear the people but I threw a bunch of extra cricket noise on top which took away the abruptness of it. It's still there if you listen for it though.
Yes, the big problem with background sound like cricket noise (and other noises) is that even when it appears to be consistent it isn't and you don't notice that it isn't until you start picture editorial, which juxtaposes different parts of the noise which highlights the inconsistency and all of a sudden it sounds "wrong".
One of my friends recently has decided that the only way he can get high production quality sound is to ADR everything and match that up. I guess thats possible for a short but is a depressing thought. Seems it would have been mandatory with my location unless I bombed the whole forest with ddt
Your friend is in for a nasty shock! There are several issues with ADR'ing everything:
1. An actor's performance is not just visual (their facial expression and body movement), the performance is also largely in exactly how they deliver their lines. Even the very top actors have a great deal of difficulty getting the same quality of performance during ADR recording as they achieved during filming. In other words, while the technical recording quality of ADR is better, almost without exception the artistic quality is poorer. Of course, with actors who have less experience and skill this problem is exacerbated.
2. Matching up ADR is usually not a trivial exercise! Commercial ADR studios make the matching up process easier but are usually well beyond the budgets of most lo/no budget filmmakers. The most common end result is ADR which has a different aural perspective to the visuals and this sensory contradiction will feel "wrong" to an audience and pull them out of the scene/film.
Even in commercial filmmaking ADR is always a last resort. As a general rule, at the lo/no budget level it should be avoided at almost any cost! Good quality production sound recording is essential at every budget level but in some respects it's even more important in lo/no budget filmmaking because with such a limited budget "fixing it in post" either isn't possible at all or virtually always results in at least a compromised, if not extremely compromised film. Obviously, one of the most important aspects of decent quality production sound is consideration of production sound when location scouting.
I think something went wrong with his export, this is the sound file he sent me back.
As Stef stated, that's a pretty badly clipped audio file! Knowledge of general audio, of another branch of audio or even knowledge of audio post itself, is not by itself necessarily of any use or any indicator of whether someone can actually do a half decent audio post job. It's the knowledge combined with experience and the appropriate tools which makes the difference. Due to lack of funds, lo/no budget filmmakers often turn to composers, music producers, audio students or in this case, a theatre sound guy for their audio post needs. Rarely if ever do these audio people have the audio post specific knowledge, experience or tools to do the job significantly better than the filmmaker could themselves. Even though it might appear that they have a proper studio, full of wicked equipment and are far more audio knowledge! In this case, nothing but a day or two of time has been lost but if/when you have a bit of budget for audio post, make sure you spend that budget on an actual audio post guy rather than a wannabe or someone experienced in another audio field!
G
