Such a noob I am HA, forgot all about room noise during this filming project. However I Wonder how important it really is. I mean all you are recording is, well science pretty much, is this truly necessary . if so DO i even have to be On location for such a thing, Couldn't I just do it in my room?
Room Noise ( 30 sec of Silence)
- Thread starter mrpink89
- Start date
Yes you do need to be on location when - each room has a different shape and different things happening in it (some people will have actors stay in position when recording room tone) - e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=4xMMQkaD3_w#t=178s
It's not /totally/ necessary. If you have silence in some of your takes from each room, you should be able to loop that. You use room tone to make transitions a bit more normal sounding, or for when nothing is happening audibly (say two characters are just starting at eachother, but a baby can be heard in the background - you replace the audio with the room tone audio). The linked video explains it better than I do.
Yes, you can go back and just record silence.
Before. After. 99.999 times outta 100 it doesn't really matter.
My hearing is not all that exceptional, but even I can stand quietly in different rooms in my house and hear juuuuuuust slightly different ambient noises.
I also happen to work in a rather large office building and after hours can go into different empty rooms and hear different ambient noises.
Forced air conditioner wind through AC vents is the greatest contributor, followed by the gentle hum of fluorescent lights and computer fans.
Room size, window/wall ratios, and general furnishings also alter the sound.
And if you're lucky outside noises don't permeate the space too much.
All spaces will have different versions of "pseudo-silence."
Largely, I'll agree it doesn't make a big gigantic whup at the level of production many of us are at, but it's something to be cognizant of in case you're ever in a position to "up your game" or when appreciating the work done by others.
Supposedly the free audio editing software Audacity has some sort of noise analyzer that can sample a room noise... sample and then will try to delete/remove/ameliorate that noise from the audio take you'd like to actually use.
I have Audacity, just started using it because I got tired of FreeAudioEditor crashing all the time (although I prefer its interface), and haven't gotten around to trying this feature out.
Can't vouch for it, only know about it.
It might remove 80% of noises you don't want in your audio and 20% of what you want to keep. Might be 90/10 or 60/40. I dunno, but I imagine it ain't perfect.
I think Knightly here has or does use it. I think.
GL!
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/
http://download.cnet.com/Free-Audio-Editor-2012/3000-2170_4-10809742.html ← Not the version of mine that kept crashing. This is an updated current version.
Before. After. 99.999 times outta 100 it doesn't really matter.
My hearing is not all that exceptional, but even I can stand quietly in different rooms in my house and hear juuuuuuust slightly different ambient noises.
I also happen to work in a rather large office building and after hours can go into different empty rooms and hear different ambient noises.
Forced air conditioner wind through AC vents is the greatest contributor, followed by the gentle hum of fluorescent lights and computer fans.
Room size, window/wall ratios, and general furnishings also alter the sound.
And if you're lucky outside noises don't permeate the space too much.
All spaces will have different versions of "pseudo-silence."
Largely, I'll agree it doesn't make a big gigantic whup at the level of production many of us are at, but it's something to be cognizant of in case you're ever in a position to "up your game" or when appreciating the work done by others.
Supposedly the free audio editing software Audacity has some sort of noise analyzer that can sample a room noise... sample and then will try to delete/remove/ameliorate that noise from the audio take you'd like to actually use.
I have Audacity, just started using it because I got tired of FreeAudioEditor crashing all the time (although I prefer its interface), and haven't gotten around to trying this feature out.
Can't vouch for it, only know about it.
It might remove 80% of noises you don't want in your audio and 20% of what you want to keep. Might be 90/10 or 60/40. I dunno, but I imagine it ain't perfect.
I think Knightly here has or does use it. I think.
GL!
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/
http://download.cnet.com/Free-Audio-Editor-2012/3000-2170_4-10809742.html ← Not the version of mine that kept crashing. This is an updated current version.
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The tone of the room will change depending on who/what is in it and what gear you were running, etc.
For your purposes it would be better than nothing to go get yourself some tone from whatever sets you can. For the ones where you can't get tone, go find the most similar space you can and get some.
Chances are it will be better than having none, but will still not be the same as getting tone on the day.
Chalk it up to a lesson learned.
All you're recording with your camera is "science pretty much", is that going to stop you being a filmmaker? As to room tone being necessary, that depends on what your audience will be listening on and whether or not you want your audience to feel involved with your film. If your audience is watching your film on a laptop or smartphone then unless your dialogue is very noisy, you probably won't need room tone. However, if your audience is using headphones, has a half decent sound system or heaven forbid see your film in a cinema (say at a film festival) or you want to make a film approaching professional standards then you will most definitely need room tone!
First off, your takes do and will always be packed wall to wall with room tone, it will be under all your dialogue (and therefore unusable) and in lot's of tiny chunks between the dialogue. With time, effort and the know how, it is sometimes possible to manufacture room tone from all these tiny chunks.
Second off, you can't go back now and record silence because it's impossible to record silence! The vast majority of people never experience silence in their entire life (or even before it). The few who do, have been in an anechoic chamber and the first time inside one is usually an uncomfortable experience because the brain cannot accept the existence of silence and starts to do strange things, which culminates after a few minutes for some people being physically sick, although they usually leave before it gets to that stage!
At the most fundamental level we have to use room tone because you have to understand that the human brain is a pattern matching machine. If you are editing lines of dialogue correctly, you will end up with areas where there is no sound then, when the next line of dialogue comes in, it comes in with it's room tone. The brain is used to dialogue starting and stopping but room tone starting and stopping is completely alien and will immediately destroy any atmosphere you are trying to create and force your audience to become uninvolved in your film. BTW, the audience doesn't have to be able to consciously hear the room tone cutting in and out, just a subconscious awareness is enough to drag them out of your scene/s!
Room tone is created by inaudible sounds and vibrations interacting with the air molecules and acoustic properties in a room and yes, this is science! When your shoot your film your camera's sensor detects and converts photons reflected from whatever you're pointing your camera at, this too is science and without it you could not make a film! Acoustic properties vary enormously from room to room and are also greatly affected by what is in the room; furniture, decorations and even people absorb or reflect certain frequencies. So every room has a different sound and even the same room has a different sound anytime something inside the room is moved/changed. Humans are very sensitive to subliminal changes and different types of room tone. Blindfold someone and take them into a room; a kitchen, toilet, gymnasium, warehouse or basement for example and within a second or so, they will have a pretty good idea of what sort of room they are in, even though they are probably not consciously aware their brain is analyzing the room tone to give them the answer. Good filmmakers use this fact to go beyond just the fundamental requirement of avoiding room tone cutting in and out and use it as a manipulation tool in audio post to make the audience believe they are in the space they are seeing in the films visuals.
You can just go into any old room and record room tone but then you'll have room tone which doesn't precisely match the room tone on your production sound and and may not even match the acoustic space in your visuals. Not only are you risking the pattern matching functions of the brain registering the difference between the room tones but you're also risking your room tone subconsciously contradicting your visuals. Either of these eventualities will stop your audience feeling involved in your film!
As a member of the public you can ignore the science of silence (or the lack of silence) but as a film maker you cannot, not if you want to be a decent film maker one day!
These are all background or ambient sounds, NOT room tone, room tone should not contain any of these sounds you mention! And, room size, windows/walls/floors/ceilings, furnishings, etc., don't "alter the sound" of room tone, they define it.
G
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Lesson learned indeed. ( Half way through production)
I don't know what to do. I feel as if my whole production is now fucked.
I mean I guess I can go back to the sets? but if it's not gonna match then whats the point. But what if I have light music being played during some dialogue scenes? I'm sure you wouldn't be able to tell then right?
I plan on sending this to TromaDance
I don't know what to do. I feel as if my whole production is now fucked.
I mean I guess I can go back to the sets? but if it's not gonna match then whats the point. But what if I have light music being played during some dialogue scenes? I'm sure you wouldn't be able to tell then right?
I plan on sending this to TromaDance
As G mentioned, you probably have some quiet bits before and after they speak, right? It's a bit of a pain, but you could grab a few of those, careful join them up (overlapping and crossfading if needed) to produce a usable roomtone, certainly better than none.
And even with music, you'd still tell, again as G pointed out, even if you didn't consciously know what you heard (or didn't), your brain would pick it up.
=D
CraigL
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It's the same thing, you need to capture "room tone." I tend to think of both indoors and outdoors as location ambience. Each shooting location is completely unique, and the time of day can make a huge difference, especially outdoors.
Part of what you have to do is change the way you think about sound-for-picture. At the big-budget level the post sound team - specifically the dialog editor(s) - strip out everything between lines of dialog. All you are left with sonically are lines of dialog completely disconnected from aural reality. One of the jobs of the dialog editor(s) is to make the dialog sound smooth. This is heavily dependent upon room tone (location ambience).
Every other sound is very carefully crafted for the project - Foley (footsteps, punches, kisses, cloth) and sound effects (everything from doors to gunshots to vehicles to monsters). Everything is painstakingly mixed by the rerecording mixer(s) to create a seamless, believable sonic reality.
Lesson Harshly learned, But i guess I shall see how the final cut will turn out. Kickin my self in the balls for not knowing this important info, but who knows maybe it'll all work out.
By the Way if anyone here has not seen "Living in Oblivion" it is a must watch highly recommended.
Thanks for the advice guys.
By the Way if anyone here has not seen "Living in Oblivion" it is a must watch highly recommended.
Thanks for the advice guys.
Steve Bescumni and Peter Dinklage each have a highly memorable scene in Living In Oblivion. Defo worth a look-see if you haven't seen it yet. Your film may even be better as a result.
Now we are talking about different levels or degrees of fimmaking. We've moved from the need to have/use room tone at all, to using closely matching room tone. At the highest levels of commercial filmmaking, very precisely matching room tone is an essential requirement and even specifically recorded room tone is sometimes unusable because someone has moved, the mic is not in exactly the same position or some other extremely minor change which is enough to alter the room tone. In this case the dialogue editor will try to manufacture room tone from the actual take. However, there's no point in trying to achieve the highest commercial standards with your sound if the rest of your film is not also to the highest commercial standards. It's about finding an appropriate balance of how to spend your available time and resources and minimising the chances of not involving your audience.
I personally don't have any direct experience of the Tromadance festival but I believe that audience expectation is considerably below the level of commercial quality films, in which case, trying to achieve very precisely matching room tone would not be a good use of your time/budget. Using your ears, being aware of room tone issues and spending a bit of time playing around with some room tone which is at least similar would almost certainly be "good enough" (from the little I know of the Tromadance festival). Your film will not be as good (involving) as it could have been but if you put in a bit of time and effort it can still be quite a long way away from being "fucked"!
The youtube vid Cheeseandachallenge posted earlier had music playing over some of the examples and you could still clearly hear the room tone cutting in and out. Music will mask to a degree though, maybe enough to hide room tone which doesn't match too well, especially if you can create a longer cross fade on the room tone. You've obviously got to ask yourself whether music is appropriate to your scenes though, no point using music to solve an audience involvement problem by creating another potentially equally as bad audience involvement problem!
G
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WHERE THE **** IS THAT BEEPING SOUND?! WHERE IS IT!!!
Countdown to evisceration by audiophiles in 5... 4... 3... 2...
Gonna miss ya, kid.
LOL!! It's half the experience....