Help this one-man-band sing..

[eraserhead_in_time]

Hey guys,
Against any common sense and logic, simply believing in the fact that Getting out there and shooting is better than not doing anything at all- I shot this movie. It was shot in 7 days as a closed room murder mystery/horror with a crew of 4 people plus 3 actors. I had a crappy Sony HD camcorder that shoots 1080i.
With minimal lighting and no power supply we shot it. Since we had to use generators for lights, the audio was entirely ruined. So I ADR-ed the movie.
Now I'm alone in the entire post production phase. I know it's a bad idea but the truth is I can't afford it. Other than that, I really want to do this. Every aspect fascinates me and I want to learn while making mistakes. Ill definately ask questions on those specific topics but right now I have few general ones.
Kindly help
1) I use Adobe CS6. After editing, should I overlay ADR tracks in Premiere or Audition?
2) Is VFX done at last or Sound designing?
3) How do I edit montages without Music? As I understand, once your editing is done then the composer composes music for it?

I'm really enjoying the process. I made a million mistakes and I'm glad I made each one of them. it has been my film school.
Thanks

 

[Blade_Jones]

Hey guys,
So I ADR-ed the movie.
Now I'm alone in the entire post production phase. I know it's a bad idea but the truth is I can't afford it. Other than that, I really want to do this.
1) I use Adobe CS6. After editing, should I overlay ADR tracks in Premiere or Audition?
2) Is VFX done at last or Sound designing?
3) How do I edit montages without Music? As I understand, once your editing is done then the composer composes music for it?

Been there, done that. I replaced every single sound and line of dialog in a movie once. I am not familiar with those programs. I used Nuendo (multi track audio program) and Wavelab (audio mastering) and Final Cut Studio. Nuendo is WAY WAY easier to work with when it comes to sound as compared to attempting to use FCS as a sound editor.
I broke the movie into scenes. So I created project files of ADR and sound effects (no music) in Nuendo for each scene. Then I mixed each scene down to individual stereo tracks (for each scene). Then I pieced each stereo scene into one big 90 minute multitrack Nuendo project file timeline. Then I added music and maybe a couple of fussy sound effects. Stuff like individual explosions you will want to tweek louder or quieter without having to remix an entire scene. Then mixed all of that to one stereo track. Then mastered that in WaveLab. Then I dropped in into Final Cut Studio.
I also wrote the music for my movie. Generally musicians want to see at least a rough edit before writing music. Sometimes I edited TO the music but usually not. It depends on the song and scene.
Be sure to cut out the low end of your mix so that it doesn't distort through a cheap 15 inch TV set speaker.

 

[AudioPostExpert]

1) I use Adobe CS6. After editing, should I overlay ADR tracks in Premiere or Audition?
2) Is VFX done at last or Sound designing?
3) How do I edit montages without Music? As I understand, once your editing is done then the composer composes music for it?

1. If you haven't discovered already, ADR'ing a whole film and achieving believable sync is a nightmare of a task. There are tools available such as VocAlign which can help greatly, providing your production dialogue is at least vaguely recognisable. Otherwise it probably doesn't matter too much what program you use, providing you can edit the audio in fine detail. Audition may provide you with more editing options and programs like Reaper more still but all the audio programs like Reaper and Pro Tools have a steep learning curve.

2. That depends, on bigger budget films the Sound Designer is one of the first people brought on board during pre-production. But for many indie filmmakers and quite a bit of TV drama the Sound Design is often not started until post production. The final stage of creating a film though is always the final sound mix (re-recording). Maybe this thread will help you to understand the Sound Design process a little better.

3. Again, there are a couple solutions to this problem. The preferred solution is usually only done on bigger budget projects, the Composer is brought on board during pre-production and creates some musical sketches during production which the director and picture editor use while editing. When editing is complete the music used is fully orchestrated, recorded, mixed and prepared for the re-recording engineer. The other method used more commonly in the lower budget and TV sectors is to edit the picture using "temp tracks", music from CD's the internet or anywhere and then when the editing is complete for the composer to replace the temp tracks with original music. The danger of this last approach is that the Director and Editor can get "wedded" to the temp tracks and the composer often ends up essentially having to paraphrase the temp tracks rather than creating inventive original compositions.

G