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Question about doing a sound mix.

H

harmonica44

The last short film I did, the sound mix cost a few thousand dollars and to get to sound good, and I took a hit... which is one of the reasons which I haven't done another one since. I was told on here to do a zero budget short, and just do the sound mix myself, but I haven been playing around with a lot of trial and error and find the sound mixing difficult to do.

I was able to learn a lot video editing and color grading on my own and feel I have gotten better in that department. But I find myself still struggling on how to do a sound mix. I got that book that was recommended to me on here before, "Dialogue Editing for Motion Pictures: A Guide to the Invisible Art".

But I felt the book was more of a history lesson in dialogue editing, rather than giving actual instructions that would apply to a modern system. Plus of course, I want to do the whole mix, and not just the dialogue. Does anyone have suggestions on how to learn this stuff better, or any books that would help me do it on my own? Thanks for any input. I really appreciate it.
 
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Meaning go ahead and submit to fests but don't spend any more time fiddling with the tech of the film, move on. If accepted you can decide if you want to.
 
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Oh I see, you are saying wait till after it's accepted. I didn't know that festivals would request a cleaned up copy though, after submitting one that is not cleaned up, if that's what you mean.
 
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This is getting really complicated. You should submit to fests if you want. You should work on a new project if you want. You should clean the audio of your old film if you want. If the fest asks for an exhibition copy of your film after you are accepted, audio is one thing you could get away with improving w/o telling them, as you are not changing the edit/story etc.
 
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harmonica44 said:
It's more than a couple years old now. That's what I was thinking, just move on to the next one, cause I already sent copies out to all the cast and crew, and that's the version everyone has seen now. Some people said I should send it in to some film festivals, but if I do, should I change the sound then?

By ambient noise, I assume you mean the computers that were making noise, which we were not allowed to turn off while shooting. I could try to reduce that before sending it in, but if I turn down the ambient noise, wouldn't the room tone, become too silent as well, since it's all in the same mix? I wish the people I hired to do the mix would have taken the noise down if it was a problem.
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By ambient noise i meant room tone. Nothing to do with computer noise, I'm talking about the jarring noise changes that took place from one edit to the next. It's an editing issue. A sound editing issue.

indietalk said:
Don't move backward move forward. You've already "released" that film right? It's 2 years old? That's a learning experience, you already "signed the painting" as I like to say. Unless someone offers you a distro deal and some $ to clean up the sound. ;)
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I get where you're coming from, but it's not a learning experience if you didn't learn anything! lol.

He's sitting here saying it's impossible to fix the sound, but it's actually really simple to fix. It's not complicated and it's something most people learn in their first short but I supposed he didn't since he outsourced the sound.
 
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Wait, have you ever used the editing software at all? You had someone else do the sound for you and you are stumped on how to fix a simple issue.

Is this why you have turned out nothing?

Just shoot something on your phone and edit it with a free app! It's a legitimate and honest start!

Check it out, I bought this giant military truck in Idaho and drove it to Texas. Filmed random shots on my phone on the way home. Edited it on my phone using a GoPro app. https://splice.gopro.com/v?id=VJ42kZXpM

Just make something, even if it's just on your phone!
 
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Nyati said:
Is this why you have turned out nothing?

Just make something, even if it's just on your phone!
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Nyati, do yourself a favor and skim through Ryan's (harmonica44's) extensive post history. Seriously, search for all threads he's started.

You aren't telling him anything that hasn't been said a hundred times over 6 years. Don't fall into the trap.
 
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Nyati said:
Wait, have you ever used the editing software at all? You had someone else do the sound for you and you are stumped on how to fix a simple issue.

Is this why you have turned out nothing?

Just shoot something on your phone and edit it with a free app! It's a legitimate and honest start!

Check it out, I bought this giant military truck in Idaho and drove it to Texas. Filmed random shots on my phone on the way home. Edited it on my phone using a GoPro app. https://splice.gopro.com/v?id=VJ42kZXpM

Just make something, even if it's just on your phone!
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I didn't even know what the issue was. All I was told before is that the issue is "ambient noise". I took it as that meant the computer fan noise. So how am I suppose to know what the issue is, when the only description I got was "ambient noise".

Now that it has been identified as room tone, going from room to room, I know what you mean. But I didn't know before, what the issue was exactly.

As four outsourcing the sound, was it really that wrong of a decision to hire someone with more experience than me?
 
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That is the problem: you interpret things and then you don't understand it, but never you never asked "do you mean mean fan noise from the computer?".
However you like to ask all other questions.
When in doubt or if the answer doesn't lead to you solving it, dare to admit that you don't get it.

How come you thought ambient noise was fan noise from the computer?
 
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harmonica44 said:
It's more than a couple years old now. That's what I was thinking, just move on to the next one, cause I already sent copies out to all the cast and crew, and that's the version everyone has seen now. Some people said I should send it in to some film festivals, but if I do, should I change the sound then?

By ambient noise, I assume you mean the computers that were making noise, which we were not allowed to turn off while shooting. I could try to reduce that before sending it in, but if I turn down the ambient noise, wouldn't the room tone, become too silent as well, since it's all in the same mix? I wish the people I hired to do the mix would have taken the noise down if it was a problem.
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I did mention that I thought it was the computer in this previous quote of mine.

The reason why I thought it was coming from the computer is because when I shot that scene, there was a computer that we were not allowed to turn off, and I can hear it in the scene, as I play it back. So that's the pretty much the same sound. It was the same sound on set, while shooting, and it's the same sound in the playback.
 
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Okay, so the ambient noise aka room tone was indeed caused by a computer.

The problem was that that room tone suddenly stopped or changed.
Fixing is mixing in this case like Sfoster showed.
It didn't get rid of the noise, but it got rid of 'jarring' discontinuities of the noise.

If you get rid of the noise and it becomes to silent you have to bring the ambiance you want.
 
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Okay thanks. When you say if the noise becomes silent and I have to bring the ambience I want, are you saying that I should replace the ambience with something else, so the room tone is not too silent?
 
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Bingo.

If you're aware that there may be sounds that may not be consistent, always record at least a minute of room tone. That way you can just overlap it throughout the whole scene.

I had a shot where it was a party scene. The actual shoot? Only the main actors are talking. Background actors are mouthing nonsense. Later on we just recorded everyone talking for a minute or so and had that as our background.
 
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I would say that if you do not want to spend money, getting better at audio mixing is the same process as getting better at visual editing, just keep doing it again and again. Check out the free tutorials that Adobe offers if you use their products (I only say that because I use Adobe products). I'm sure Apple, or other companies has tutorials as well.
 
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I did a subscription to Lynda to learn FCPX. 25 a month is worth it if you really dedicate yourself. Take notes and follow along. I think there was 20+ hours of instruction on FCPX from intro to finish.

There were a few other indipendent sites that had tuts on FCPX that I watched as well.

The key is to make a cheat-sheet. Just like in college, they told you to mke a cheat sheet and just memorize that. Only, this time you keep it. All the shortcuts how to add a keyframe color correction etc.

There is no excuse for not learning it. You paid a bunch of money for the program, what's 25 to learn it?
 
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