Clarification on usage of prod. audio - and dialog - in major motion pictures!!

[MrCrowbar]

I have been noticing serious use of noise gates in a lot of recent movies and TV shows. I'd actually prefer if the gate was not as pronounced and a bit of ambient noise kept in. Sounds very artificial at times and takes me right out of the action, imagining myself turning down a knob to make it sound better.

[charles maynes]

usually gated dialog is bad, and if anything, is explained by one of these conditions-

1- not enough time to do the job.

2- Director demands the gating due to other offensive background noises

3- Mixer is inexperienced and treating it as a musical performance, not a dialog track.

these can be combined too.

[Gohanto]

Originally Posted by MrCrowbar

I have been noticing serious use of noise gates in a lot of recent movies and TV shows. I'd actually prefer if the gate was not as pronounced and a bit of ambient noise kept in. Sounds very artificial at times and takes me right out of the action, imagining myself turning down a knob to make it sound better.

Simple: Just watch TV and movies in rooms with a higher noise floor so you don't notice the gating then.

[danijel]

If the scene is surreal, and requires 'clean' sound, I sometimes prefer having a couple of distracting lines, than ruining the whole scene with noise.... This usually happens in close-ups, when the scene becomes a bit subjective, and it requires wallas and other realistic noises to go down in the mix, so there's nothing to even out the gate bumps.

[Enos]

I watched Zatoichi by Takeshi Kitano this week and noticed quite extreme gating on most if not all of the dialogue! In some of the exterior scenes I could REALLY notice how the hiss/noise jumped in everytime a line of dialogue was spoken! I usually think it is less distracting just keeping the hiss/room tone constant and reduce it as much as possible, but keep it constant. Cuts are more noticeable than a constant hiss or roomtone. The brain somehow seems to filter it out and focus on the dialogue being spoken.

Regarding ADR, I have done quite a few recording sessions and have seen actors that are GREAT at doing ADR and others that are simply horrible. I had a session in which the actor simply gave out the most boring, stale delivery you have ever heard. When I asked him for changes and variations in his delivery he would simply gie out the exact same delivery. Not on purpose but he just was not good at doing ADR. On the other hand, I recently had an ADR session and the lead actor was AMAZING in his delivery in the studio, many times slightly improving the original performance! I was sat down recording his deliveries and actually was being moved emotionally by his lines. It was pretty amazing. For a scene in which he ws eating, we made him eat and deliver the lines with his mouth full (had to do some cleaning afterwards :p), we also had him almost choke on water and cough as he delivered the following line to replicate the screen action. Later on in the film, he had a scene in which he is talking as he cries and has his nose all blocked up and snotty. After a while of recording he turned around and asked us for some tissues. He had tears rolling down his cheek and snot coming out his nose! Quite amazing! He had somewhat of an ego to deal with but boy am I thankful for those deliveries!

[Jfriah]

I can attest, having once been a full-time ADR mixer, that yes, some actors intentionally try to 'throw' ADR sessions. Some actors also intentionally try to GET into ADR situations with their location sound (depends if they have contract clauses where they get paid or not for ADR, hahaha).

I have had situations ranging from people doing one take, crumpling up the ADR sheet, tossing it on the floor, saying "doesn't get any better than that" and walking out, to what you described---'method' actors or those that actually want their stuff to look and sound like it MATCHES.

My favourite line to get another take (other than "sorry, I missed the start of that one. Can I get another right away?") was "yeah I guess that's ok if that's what you think, but what do I know---it isn't MY face up there on the big screen people are looking at, haha"


Jeff

[mattiasnyc]

I just read through this thread and there's some really interesting info here.

One question the original poster asked that I think got a bit lost though is this:

If we look past the dialog itself, and look at what goes on between lines, what does one do with that sound?

So suppose an actor says; "Hey, how'd you like to rob that bank right now?"; the other answers; "Not now, my pet hippo needs a spongebath. How about tomorrow?"; and between those lines we can hear various nat sound. Let's say, for arguments sake, that one person moves his body and is wearing a leather jacket for example.

So is the decision of how much to leave in and how much to leave for foley something done at the beginning of the process and by whom? I assume the dialog editor is not the person making that call.

And I also assume that if the decision is made to take out any noise that lives between lines of dialog, the editor will then create "filler" room tone to cover. Is this right?

The reason I'm asking is because I, just like another person here, have noticed both in TV and film a "gate-like" effect, where I can hear high-end "hiss" come and go as the dialog comes and goes. It's really distracting (depending on the listening situation of course). And I was wondering if this is because of what I just described: The stuff between the dialog is "cut out" and there isn't "proper" room tone to fill the gaps...

?

[Etch-A-Sketch]

Originally Posted by mattiasnyc

I just read through this thread and there's some really interesting info here.

One question the original poster asked that I think got a bit lost though is this:

If we look past the dialog itself, and look at what goes on between lines, what does one do with that sound?

So suppose an actor says; "Hey, how'd you like to rob that bank right now?"; the other answers; "Not now, my pet hippo needs a spongebath. How about tomorrow?"; and between those lines we can hear various nat sound. Let's say, for arguments sake, that one person moves his body and is wearing a leather jacket for example.

So is the decision of how much to leave in and how much to leave for foley something done at the beginning of the process and by whom? I assume the dialog editor is not the person making that call.

And I also assume that if the decision is made to take out any noise that lives between lines of dialog, the editor will then create "filler" room tone to cover. Is this right?

The reason I'm asking is because I, just like another person here, have noticed both in TV and film a "gate-like" effect, where I can hear high-end "hiss" come and go as the dialog comes and goes. It's really distracting (depending on the listening situation of course). And I was wondering if this is because of what I just described: The stuff between the dialog is "cut out" and there isn't "proper" room tone to fill the gaps...

?

On the big motion pictures I've seen the Dialogue protools sessions for, yes everything is moved out of the dialogue tracks except for the dialogue. That's not to say ALL films are like that, just the ones I've seen are.

The dialogue editor moves most of that kind of stuff onto PFX tracks. But will also remove some of it. Things like lip smacks, movement off camera, clinks off camera, etc get deleted.

Fill is sometimes made, sometimes not.

In the end it comes down to the director and mixer to choose whether to use the PFX tracks, foley tracks or both. But they are always mixed to the FX stem and not the dialogue stem. that way you can mute the dialogue adn ONLY the words go away but everything else is still intact.

If you cut the dialogue so you left all the movement, room tone, etc on the same dialogue track with the dialogue, when you mute the dialogue (to say do a foreign language version) all that additional sound will go away and could make certain on camera actions feel fake because you don't hear sound to go along with it, or the tone changes since you are now only hearing the foley instead of the foley plus prod sound effects.

If you can hear a "gating" effect on the dialogue, it is probably because of time factors. Technically speaking, if you make a fill track through a scene, every time the take that you used for fill plays, the noise level will jump up 3dB unless you cut the noise "out" on the PFX track for those regions. But even if you did that, there's no guarantee that the mixers will have the level of the fill/room tone be the same as the level of the room tone behind the dialogue. So you could be hearing it the jump in volume because of that.

You could be hearing it because there was no fill track to try and mask it or no fade ins/outs to hide it coming in an out.

Or you could be hearing it simply because the mixer didn't have enough time to remove the noise. If there is something like that in a scene, you can use Cedar to pull out some of the noise on the top end to hide that "in/out" effect of the noise.

Or it could be a combination of everything people have mentioned. I've worked on a project where the dialogue was so noisy and the deadline so tight that noise gating was the only way to minimize the noise without completely destroying the dialogue with noise removal tools. It's not that I liked doing it or thought it sounded perfect... but it was the best I could do on the stage I was mixing on within the time I had to mix. Such is life sometimes...

[Etch-A-Sketch]

Oh and I should probably add, the way I was taught dialogue editing, you never technically delete/remove anything from the session. You just move it to a different set of tracks. Even things like the lip smacks and off camera noises, etc.. I was always taught to put them on "X" tracks at the bottom of the session... because inevitably the one sound you delete because you think it is insignificant will ALWAYS be the one sound the director is looking for and/or missing when watching the mix on the dub stage. HAHAHA...

So you put it on tracks that are muted or inactive, and it's there (still in sync) for the mixer to turn on in a second and continue mixing.

[mattiasnyc]

Thank you so much for your (VERY fast) reply Derek.

So one more thing then -

I understand everything you mentioned here and it all makes perfect sense. But it seems that there is a huge difference in the time one has to spend then between cutting out the non-dialog nat sound on tape and putting it on its own track, versus simply cleaning dialog up and leaving that stuff in.

So, when is that decision made and by whom.

Most of my work has been relatively low budget stuff (we're talking 6 figures or below rather than above), and I've ended up delivering stems for a different engineer to spread out to 5.1. At this budget-level everyone is concerned about time and I've simply left the non-dialog nat sound in because nothing else was feasable. There was either no time or no budget to foley "everything", and there have never been any delivery specs that clearly stated what you just said.

So assuming a bit higher profile work: Would this split out be specified in a spec-sheet or would I be told this by some supervisor?

Also another question if you don't mind:

If I have a dialog track and cut out the dialog, I'd perhaps then create room tone to go between the lines in the scene, to make the whole thing seamless. Now, suppose I also take the stuff located on set that is possibly useful (door openings etc) and put that on it's own track (PFX=ProductionFX?).

Seeing that all of this have a certain "tone" to it, and perhaps noise, how would you treat the issue of "fill", or "room tone" when you now aren't just going between that and dialog, but in addition PFX? Would you just have the tone/fill lay in there throughout the scene under both dialog/PFX, or would you cut it out whenever either of those is playing back, or?...

I'm just not sure how much should be left to the mix-engineer to deal with.

[Etch-A-Sketch]

Originally Posted by mattiasnyc

So, when is that decision made and by whom.

So assuming a bit higher profile work: Would this split out be specified in a spec-sheet or would I be told this by some supervisor?

Well, as far as I know it is required by dolby. They will reject your dolby print if you don't have a fully filled foley track (M&E with no dialogue), or so I've been told. I've never actually tested them to see just what you can get away with.

So it is usually decided on at the beginning. The Post Supervisor or Supervising Sound Editor would probably be the one telling you (one of the dialogue editors) that you need to pull all that stuff out onto separate tracks.

But bear in mind lots of films still don't do that. I worked as a dialogue editor on a low budget film (about a $5mil~$6mil film) that mixed at Universal and has been playing on Cable and is out on DVD in blockbuster. We didn't do any of that type of separation when I was editing the dialogue. So these types of things aren't "rules" so much as preference by the mixer, post supervisor and/or any specs they need to meet.

Originally Posted by mattiasnyc

Also another question if you don't mind:

If I have a dialog track and cut out the dialog, I'd perhaps then create room tone to go between the lines in the scene, to make the whole thing seamless. Now, suppose I also take the stuff located on set that is possibly useful (door openings etc) and put that on it's own track (PFX=ProductionFX?).

Seeing that all of this have a certain "tone" to it, and perhaps noise, how would you treat the issue of "fill", or "room tone" when you now aren't just going between that and dialog, but in addition PFX? Would you just have the tone/fill lay in there throughout the scene under both dialog/PFX, or would you cut it out whenever either of those is playing back, or?...

I'm just not sure how much should be left to the mix-engineer to deal with.

The answer would be both or neither. It's really up to the mixer and how much time he/she has to mix the film. If it were me, and I had a decent amount of time to mix the film... I'd want the Dialogue only on DX tracks. Room tone on Their own tracks and PFX on their own tracks. For the room tone, I would prefer two tracks, for the spot where PFX happen, put the fill on the second track. If I end up using the PFX and pushing it up, I an automate a mute on the second fill track. But if I end up turning the PFX down and you can hear the sound of the room tone drop, then I'd leave the second fill track on and balance it so you don't hear the volume of the tone drop.

But... on the other hand... if I only had 5 days to predub and mix a feature film (which has happened to me), I'd say forget it. Leave it, the least amount of tracks, the quicker I can get through it. The more time I have to take auditioning tracks and playing with different level configurations, the slower the mix is going to go.

So in that scenario I'd tell you to leave the room tone and fill on the tracks with the dialogue that it belongs to. Separate out the big PFX stuff, but don't go crazy splitting out tracks.

And honestly, if you talked to 10 other mixers, they would each probably give you 10 completely different answers as to what they want given the two scenarios listed. So it helps to talk to the Supervising sound editor and/or rerecording mixers.

[minister]

Originally Posted by Etch-A-Sketch

Well, as far as I know it is required by dolby. They will reject your dolby print if you don't have a fully filled foley track (M&E with no dialogue), or so I've been told. I've never actually tested them to see just what you can get away with.

Dolby requires nothing of the kind. Dolby is there to assist in the Printmaster and make sure the room is calibrated and all goes well with the MO Disc you create. That's about it. How you have stuff routed or organized in your session, or what is in your M&E is not the purview of Dolby. In fact, M&E's are often created without Dolby even there, nor do they go through Dolby.

I think you are confusing Dolby with Distribution Company Deliverables that are reviewed by a Lab contracted by the Dist Co. that does QC reviews. But M&E's are for when the film goes to Sales or Distribution; the list of deliverables is part of that agreement and is beyond the original mix.

It is wise to edit the dialogue so that M&E's are easier to do later, but first and foremost it is to assist in getting the right "movement" to the track and provide a logical layout for the Dialogue (or Gaffing) mixer. I would talk to whomever is going to mix this. If you, then develop your on methods.

[Etch-A-Sketch]

Originally Posted by minister

Dolby requires nothing of the kind. Dolby is there to assist in the Printmaster and make sure the room is calibrated and all goes well with the MO Disc you create. That's about it. How you have stuff routed or organized in your session, or what is in your M&E is not the purview of Dolby. In fact, M&E's are often created without Dolby even there, nor do they go through Dolby.

I think you are confusing Dolby with Distribution Company Deliverables that are reviewed by a Lab contracted by the Dist Co. that does QC reviews. But M&E's are for when the film goes to Sales or Distribution; the list of deliverables is part of that agreement and is beyond the original mix.

It is wise to edit the dialogue so that M&E's are easier to do later, but first and foremost it is to assist in getting the right "movement" to the track and provide a logical layout for the Dialogue (or Gaffing) mixer. I would talk to whomever is going to mix this. If you, then develop your on methods.

No, it wasn't for the Dist. Co. When I mixed a theatrical release over at Mercury Sound, the other mixer I was mixing with (one of their house guys) was making a big deal with the producers about the foley (or lack there of) saying that dolby will fail it without a fully filled foley track. Maybe I misunderstood him? But we had the foley editor cut in more foley. So... I had never heard anything of that nature up until that point. But, seeing as how he'd been a re-recording mixer 20 years longer than I have, and had been nominated for a CAS award, I just took him for his word.

But again... I may have misunderstood. He was talking to the producers, I wasn't part of the conversation. I was sitting at the console while the conversation was taking place next to me... But from where I was sitting, that was the gist of the conversation. Maybe he was just saying that to get the producers to agree to give him more foley?!?! I never followed up with him on that, looking back now I guess I should have! Doh!

[charles maynes]

Derek, Is Sam Lehmer still mixing there at Mercury? he is the guy to ask- It sounds like the mixer you mentioned had a brain fart or something, because that is just off the charts- He probably meant to say something else.... Like the Distributor approving the M&E.

[dr.sound]

Dolby has nothing to do with that, however if there was a large drop out without any sound Dolby would have suggested to put some foley into cover an edit or hole. It may have been their way of saying the lab who would create the sound track would reject it because of the drop out.
In all my years and Dolby Print Masters I never had Dolby comment on the M&E since that is typically done without Dolby around.

[Etch-A-Sketch]

yeah, you guys have to be right. It doesn't make sense for Dolby to QC a project like that. They must have been talking about the lab and I thought they were talking about Dolby.

My apologies...