How do you determine Room Tone is unusable?

vrc2250 · 12th March 2010

Howdy All,
Reading some good posts on Dialog editing and have a question. What's your criteria for using room tone or not?
Here's one. 1 camera red shoot. Sound guy on the day didn't ask the camera crew to tone down the fans. Dialog is overlapping with actors stepping on each other's lines but there are cuts where the editor put a gap. The Entire scene has no silence between actors. The room tone recorded was prior to shooting so the fan on the red was at full blast.. Went hunting for tone and got either actor stepping on line or the Red fan noise..

Gohanto · 12th March 2010

Usually the best place to find room tone is in the handles of the shot. That way the noise floor is identical to everything else in the shot. RT taken at a different time is the 2nd option, and it's only useful if the noise during the take and the noise while room tone was recorded are similar (in your case that would be if the RED's fans are relatively the same). You might be saved if you put the RT with louder fan noise onto its own track, bring that down in level until it matches the level of fan noise in other shots.

Also, another plug for John's AWESOME book on the subject Amazon.com: Dialogue Editing for Motion Pictures: A Guide to the Invisible Art (9780240809182): John Purcell: Books

philper · 12th March 2010

Feeling your pain, but that soundie has NO control over the Red's fan noise, and the camera guys have very limited control. If it is at all warm on the set the Red's fans will be on--they have to be. It's too bad the soundie couldn't get the camera dept to roll the camera when he or she rolled RT, but that happens pretty often--the production just wants to move on and doesn't think RT is important enough to even devote 15 sec to. In your case you will have to construct your own room tone/ambiance for the whole scene to back fill those holes. Some work but doable.

Philip Perkins

Big Andy · 16th March 2010

If the Room Tone is really bad, do the best you can to clean it out of the Dialogue and then be creative and recreate the Tone using either ambiences and quazi Room tone from a library or find an option from a different shoot location.

I always save good tone from films or tv shows I've work on to use down the road on other projects. It's always good to have something stocked away just in case.

Jfriah · 16th March 2010

Quote:

Originally Posted by philper

the production just wants to move on and doesn't think RT is important enough to even devote 15 sec to.

I just had to explain this to some film students last week.

Philip gets "Quote of the Week"

Jeff

RoundBadge · 18th March 2010

I just did a shoot with three Red[latest Mysteruim X chips] cameras in an enclosed[and very warm] space.
the DIT couldn't turn the fans to the lowest[near quiet] position for fear of shut downs.
I was pulling my hair out over the three cameras combined fan noise..awful

12th March 2010	#1
vrc2250 Gear interested Joined: Aug 2007 Posts: 27 Thread Starter	How do you determine Room Tone is unusable? Howdy All, Reading some good posts on Dialog editing and have a question. What's your criteria for using room tone or not? Here's one. 1 camera red shoot. Sound guy on the day didn't ask the camera crew to tone down the fans. Dialog is overlapping with actors stepping on each other's lines but there are cuts where the editor put a gap. The Entire scene has no silence between actors. The room tone recorded was prior to shooting so the fan on the red was at full blast.. Went hunting for tone and got either actor stepping on line or the Red fan noise..

16th March 2010	#4
Big Andy Gear addict Joined: Apr 2009 Location: Los Angeles Posts: 361	If the Room Tone is really bad, do the best you can to clean it out of the Dialogue and then be creative and recreate the Tone using either ambiences and quazi Room tone from a library or find an option from a different shoot location. I always save good tone from films or tv shows I've work on to use down the road on other projects. It's always good to have something stocked away just in case. __________________ Beetus

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12th March 2010	#2
Gohanto Gear nut Joined: Mar 2009 Location: Honolulu, Hawaii Posts: 97	Usually the best place to find room tone is in the handles of the shot. That way the noise floor is identical to everything else in the shot. RT taken at a different time is the 2nd option, and it's only useful if the noise during the take and the noise while room tone was recorded are similar (in your case that would be if the RED's fans are relatively the same). You might be saved if you put the RT with louder fan noise onto its own track, bring that down in level until it matches the level of fan noise in other shots. Also, another plug for John's AWESOME book on the subject Amazon.com: Dialogue Editing for Motion Pictures: A Guide to the Invisible Art (9780240809182): John Purcell: Books

12th March 2010	#3
philper Lives for gear Joined: Dec 2005 Location: San Francisco area Posts: 2,422	Feeling your pain, but that soundie has NO control over the Red's fan noise, and the camera guys have very limited control. If it is at all warm on the set the Red's fans will be on--they have to be. It's too bad the soundie couldn't get the camera dept to roll the camera when he or she rolled RT, but that happens pretty often--the production just wants to move on and doesn't think RT is important enough to even devote 15 sec to. In your case you will have to construct your own room tone/ambiance for the whole scene to back fill those holes. Some work but doable. Philip Perkins

18th March 2010	#6
RoundBadge Lives for gear Joined: May 2004 Location: Los Angeles ,Ca. Posts: 8,853	I just did a shoot with three Red[latest Mysteruim X chips] cameras in an enclosed[and very warm] space. the DIT couldn't turn the fans to the lowest[near quiet] position for fear of shut downs. I was pulling my hair out over the three cameras combined fan noise..awful