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My first short...thoughts on cleaning up the sound?

bez

bez

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqKicPPNQEY

Hey guys,
So this is officially my first short I've written, shot and directed. It was all shot outside on a busy street in LA and I didn't get arrested...lucky me! Anyhow, as I mentioned in another thread, I'm an actor that just wants to shoot some funny stuff. This literally took 4 hours from writing to filming (on my canon t2i).

The editing took about another 4 hours when including syncing sound and cutting things up (again another first for me). It's obviously a rough draft, so I'm wondering how to clean the sound in adobe premiere pro cs5.

So if you can help with that ....or other thoughts and suggestions I'm all ears and very thankful! By the way, I have a quirky sense of humor.

Thanks in advance,
Chris
 
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I'm assuming you don't have "Room Tone" recorded, so you'll have to cut and paste some of the non-dialog bits together (fading between) to get a nice longish chunk of the cars passing and nothing else...

Then you'll isolate the dialog parts by dropping the volume between the actual speaking bits.

Next, add a layer of the Tone you've collected underneath the whole thing so you can control how much of the background noise is present... you'll probably need to ramp up the volume just before the dialog so it doesn't jump up.

Next time, you'll want to use a shotgun mic pointed downward at the actors' chests which should isolate the off-axis noises from being picked up by the microphone. (Here's where you'll get noticed ;) ).

or...

Hide a wireless lav mic on your actors so their voices are much louder than the background noise, so you can dial the volume down a bit and control the signal/noise ratio.
 
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knightly said:
I'm assuming you don't have "Room Tone" recorded, so you'll have to cut and paste some of the non-dialog bits together (fading between) to get a nice longish chunk of the cars passing and nothing else...

Then you'll isolate the dialog parts by dropping the volume between the actual speaking bits.

Next, add a layer of the Tone you've collected underneath the whole thing so you can control how much of the background noise is present... you'll probably need to ramp up the volume just before the dialog so it doesn't jump up.

Next time, you'll want to use a shotgun mic pointed downward at the actors' chests which should isolate the off-axis noises from being picked up by the microphone. (Here's where you'll get noticed ;) ).

or...

Hide a wireless lav mic on your actors so their voices are much louder than the background noise, so you can dial the volume down a bit and control the signal/noise ratio.
Click to expand...

Ok so I did happen to use a shotgun mic, but because I couldn't do 2 things at once I couldn't necessarily see the boom to know if it was pointed down. I did get ambient noise for pretty much every situation....so i got lots of cars...one car...a couple cars and a badword ton of cars. So that part was thought out. Now its knowing how to mix them in. I've got probably 10 mins of ambient noise to fill in, but it seems like its just adding to the mix. Is it possible to lessen the bg noise in some cuts?

Also, if i use that method above by using an ambient noise throughout the whole thing and only have the sound up on the speaking parts, how do i do that in adobe premiere pro? it doesn't seem like you can put placeholders where to put sound up or down...it looks as though its one or the other.

Also, is the short confusing or did you get it after watching it once?
 
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The short is well shot acted and edited, seemed to be Roshamon with a sandwich...

The use of someone dedicated to capturing the best sound is key to capturing the best sound. If you are concentrating on capturing the picture, the performance and the sound, you're really selling each of them short... although to steal shots in LA you really can't have a crew to do that with and are left letting the quality of the pieces suffer for the results of getting the stuff captured... you could ADR the whole production to get rid of the vehicles, then add them back in with the Tone you've captured to get a realistic feel for it... otherwise, you're stuck with what you've captured while the actors are speaking.
 
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jackpot! Thanks man...i figured out how to do keyframes with the volume to blend the cars between scenes....SWEET!

In regards to selling each area short....I understand...It's kind of how it goes when you have a one man 0 budget show. As an actor I appreciate the work everyone puts in to making a film. The issue is I'm an actor/writer that just enjoys the craft and having fun and I'll do it however I can...even if that includes filming it myself. I'm not getting paid to do it and funding any more (for crew), because of the cost of the equipment that I've already purchased, isn't an option for the time being. So I'm left with finding creative ways to make my production better.

Thanks to you guys on this board...I feel like I'm taking huge steps at making my own comedic shorts and hopefully soon a web-series.
 
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I'm interested to hear the difference between the two... to see how you handled the middle bits where the volume was shifting in camera.

I also noticed it had that same sodium vapor light wash that I have seen so much from folks with DSLRs testing them at night under REALLY orange lighting... I'm curious to see what that would look like color corrected a little more toward white.
 
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i'll see if can't get a sound adjusted, color corrected version with credits up tonight and I'll repost for you to compare.

Luckily wheatgrinder...my friends are in on the work with me. I'm kinda learning/teaching at the same time...so we can be interchangeable.
 
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Nice work. Overrall, it's a solid short.

I'd be more careful with focusing, in the future. Also, many of those shots are a tad too front-and-center, for my tastes, unless of course that's what you were going for.

You've got a talented group of friends to work with. I look forward to seeing what you come up with, in the future, especially when you work with a more defined script (though, improv can be a lot of fun).
 
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