If I could borrow, for a moment, from a famous (at least here in Canada) W.O. Mitchell book---Who Has Seen the Room Tone (ok, Wind, but...)
My last few projects have been increasingly frustrating; I will not get into a editorial discussion. However, suffice to say that I am finding it more and more difficult to put dialogue tracks together, rather than easier, these days. I can't remember the last time I actually saw a location report that actually said
ROOM TONE
in it. Ah, wait, the last student project, because they were being graded. It was only 10 seconds, but as I was told by a producer once, "you only need 2 seconds, I know what you guys can do."
Just wondering what other people are seeing out there these days, or if we're all at the same funeral. I'm the guy wearing black.
Jeff
__________________
"I'm not saving lives, I'm helping to put something up there on a screen for people to glance at between text messages."
- Me.
Haven't seen room tone in a while either, though if it's not recorded for every camera setup it can be only marginally useful. Those friggn gaffers move the lights around and all the buzzes can change. Usually I can find what I need in alt takes and comp together enough from the "acting" beats and dead space where the newb director forgets to call action.
I think on one hand DX editing has gotten easier, what with all the Pro Tools and Izotope and split recording of iso's.
The saddest thing as a production mixer is when the producer or 1st AD looks you dead in the eyes and says, "We don't have time for room tone." Usually this comes after "No we can't move that light ballast" and "The air conditioner has to stay on."
__________________
Tom Boykin
Re-recording Mixer IMDb Credits
People on set often don't understand why room tone is useful *cough* AD *cough*. They also don't understand why getting that 30 seconds of roomtone after everyone wraps and leaves is also not helpful... The best I can really hope for is to talk the director into holding for 5-6 seconds between "Settle" and "Action".
I did a kickstarter video once that was shot in a dance studio but they only rented out one room... So throughout the whole day different songs and different music styles were constantly heard through the walls as they tried to do takes. Good times.
__________________
Jesse Flaitz - Production sound and audio post. Greater NYC area. http://pedanticsound.net
“A cable is a source of potential trouble connecting two other sources of potential trouble.”
For the project I am working on, I got 20 odd minutes of room tone and walla.
Only because the sound recordist left the recorder running by mistake. At the end of the file is when you hear "Action!"
__________________
Vedat
Automatic volume riding for Pro Tools®
Wave Rider RTAS and AAX for Win and Mac.
For the project I am working on, I got 20 odd minutes of room tone and walla.
Only because the sound recordist left the recorder running by mistake. At the end of the file is when you hear "Action!"
I forget to stop recording every once and a while... Hopefully nothing incriminating got recorded :D.
When I'm in the field, I always try to judge if there is enough RT between dialog lines, and only ask to record if there is not enough. And that is very rare. I recorded only one or two of them for a month and a half worth of feature film production. Wallas, on the other hand, I will fight like lion to capture them, even if it means waiting for the whole crew to pack the camp and leave, leaving only the extras, AD, boomop and me.
Asking for RT only when really needed will give much better recordings, because the AD and the whole crew will be thankful for not bothering them after every scene, and they won't mind keeping really quiet every once in a while.
When I'm in the field, I always try to judge if there is enough RT between dialog lines, and only ask to record if there is not enough. And that is very rare. I recorded only one or two of them for a month and a half worth of feature film production. Wallas, on the other hand, I will fight like lion to capture them, even if it means waiting for the whole crew to pack the camp and leave, leaving only the extras, AD, boomop and me.
Asking for RT only when really needed will give much better recordings, because the AD and the whole crew will be thankful for not bothering them after every scene, and they won't mind keeping really quiet every once in a while.
This is a very good summary of how I think about it. As somebody already said light setups, camera positions etc change all the time, so the best roomtone to fill a certain take, is almost always in the take itself or an alt from that shot. As a production mixer I'm also listening more for overlap problems, if I need wild takes, wild action sounds etc. I've always 2 sec rec preroll engaged so the silence between "sound" and "speed" is another given, you gotta love modern technology ;-) OTOH wallas, cars, special sounds,... on location I will always request to be recorded separately (which I often do when the crew has left). On my last film I also recorded Altiverb sweeps for every room we filmed in (always after wrap, without bothering the crew too much). That's another source for clean roomtone (without lighting etc.).
Maybe someone should come up with a room tone plug in... A reverse izotoperx2 Haha
Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk
I actually did this using Spectral Repair. There was a line we needed to ADR and there was no room tone, so we captured the whole clip, selected the line, and used the "Replace" function, leaving us with smooth tone to lay under the ADR. I highly recommend it.
__________________
Sam Ejnes
Sound Editor/Re-recording Mixer
I actually did this using Spectral Repair. There was a line we needed to ADR and there was no room tone, so we captured the whole clip, selected the line, and used the "Replace" function, leaving us with smooth tone to lay under the ADR. I highly recommend it.
There's a video somewhere showing a dialogue editor using GRM Freeze to create a few minutes of tone from only a small section. It's pretty special!
I have a classic story I just received FROM an A.D. today, in fact. He's working on another show and just finished directing/show-running a series of shorts. He sent me his call sheet for day one of his latest project. "See anything that stands out to you?"
He had scheduled in wild lines and room tone but because it was 2am when he was making the schedule and printing, he forgot to change the times allotted:
Well RX does that too. Click "output noise only" I believe.
Actually, I use that feature for 'alien radio transmissions' and such. Handy little layer to be able to fade in and out of. Crank the reductions and export 'output noise only'.
The saddest thing as a production mixer is when the producer or 1st AD looks you dead in the eyes and says, "We don't have time for room tone." Usually this comes after "No we can't move that light ballast" and "The air conditioner has to stay on."
Then they tell you to come back after the shoot is done and record it..."it's just silence, come get it when nobody is here!"
Did a video last week, director actually called for room tone himself. Love my in-house crew for thinking of me. Amusing video as well of the talent just sat there staring blankly at each other and everywhere.
I've pretty well given up on recorded RT. It's typically either corrupted with one noise or another, or it simply doesn't exist. I create almost of my RT from ALT takes. It usually works, but it's a huge time sucker, and the result is rarely as natural as the real thing. Of course, the real thing has its own problems, typically matching issues, but at least give me a choice and a chance.
I always, always provide room tone whenever possible on my location sound gigs. I generally will take the director or AD aside when there's about 30 minutes left on that particular set up, and will say, "hey, when we get to the last take, please give me another 10-20 seconds for some room tone." They'll usually agree to it, unless we're getting thrown out of a location or some other similar disaster. And I'll roll it in multitrack, even on wireless mics, in case the dialogue editor choose the lavs for a particular line. I think this and avoiding dialogue overlaps are pretty basic stuff that everybody should be doing.
My general experience is that the sound editors may not use the RT, but the picture editors do use it for their rough cuts. The sound editors generally go in, strip out the dialogue from used and unused takes, snip out any bumps, and then crossfade all the background sound as needed. Usually, that seems to work out better than roomtone per se, especially in cases where the camera isn't running or the nature of the room has subtly changed.
The only director I've seen who is extremely demanding on getting roomtone on set is Tyler Perry. When they finish the last take of a scene in a specific set or location, he'll call out "alright, that's a cut but keep rolling sound for roomtone please!" So he gets it.
I generally will take the director or AD aside when there's about 30 minutes left on that particular set up, and will say, "hey, when we get to the last take, please give me another 10-20 seconds for some room tone."
A good trick that works for me when I'm sitting close to the director is to raise my arm towards her a moment before she calls 'cut', and make a 'high-brow' face, like I'm listening carefully for something very important After 5-6 seconds I will make an arm gesture towards her like I'm saying 'hold on, hold on......', then continue staring (with dramatic face) at my recorder, occasionally doing more of the same hand gestures, and after 15 seconds, I'll nod my head towards the director, and she'll call 'cut'. Noone knows what the hell had just happened, but I got the best RT ever, because everyone is breathless in those moments, waiting for the 'CUT'!
A good trick that works for me when I'm sitting close to the director is to raise my arm towards her a moment before she calls 'cut', and make a 'high-brow' face, like I'm listening carefully for something very important After 5-6 seconds I will make an arm gesture towards her like I'm saying 'hold on, hold on......', then continue staring (with dramatic face) at my recorder, occasionally doing more of the same hand gestures, and after 15 seconds, I'll nod my head towards the director, and she'll call 'cut'. Noone knows what the hell had just happened, but I got the best RT ever, because everyone is breathless in those moments, waiting for the 'CUT'!
A good trick that works for me when I'm sitting close to the director is to raise my arm towards her a moment before she calls 'cut', and make a 'high-brow' face, like I'm listening carefully for something very important After 5-6 seconds I will make an arm gesture towards her like I'm saying 'hold on, hold on......', then continue staring (with dramatic face) at my recorder, occasionally doing more of the same hand gestures, and after 15 seconds, I'll nod my head towards the director, and she'll call 'cut'. Noone knows what the hell had just happened, but I got the best RT ever, because everyone is breathless in those moments, waiting for the 'CUT'!
And let me correct myself and say "I always, always provide room tone... unless the director and AD are hostile to what they perceive as 'delays' by the sound department." I hate when this happens (as it did the last few days on a recent project).
So sometimes, even when you ask and expect for roomtone at the beginning of the day, real-world schedules and closed minds prevent it from happening. But we do try.
Sometimes I try and cheat and capture room tone on a separate day, of course at the same location.. but the producers always know and can sense that non genuine RT in post. Ive learned after countless extrusions that in order to capture correct RT it must be within (at most) the same hour of filming the scene and with the same amount of people on the set. Otherwise it throws the whole film out of kilter.
Not the same hour, the exact same moment.
I think production mixers should drop the RT thing and try to take that little time they have (if they have it) to make more wilds !
To me, today's sound level of definition dictates a rule : if the room tone is not from the same take, it'll change so much that using my library tones wouldn't make any difference. So we are forced to play within the take and have some strong atmos build on top of it.
Some directors have that technique, to let the camera roll and take some time before cutting after the end of the lines. It allows them to grab some more natural actors behavior. That means 5 sec of perfect RT for us : a bit of silence in all takes is the best solution ever.
I also use freez in extreme situation, it works fine but create a very dead environment so it can be too long, and it is really for the very close parts of the clip region, go a bit further in the same take and you have to do another freez ...
When it comes to scraping together some roomtone out of the production dialogue during the dia edit I do one of the following.
Strip Silence: You can use this function to strip away everything but the room tone... in my experience this works to great effect 90% of the time.
GRM tools Freeze: When strip silence fails I find playing with this plugin and recording the result onto a separate track can sometimes yield surprisingly good results.
I have to disagree with the 'would rather record more wilds' statements. However, you do by default get a certain amount of dead air between lines, etc. without people moving.
It's just that my experience is that the actors never 'perform' because they're not being directed to do so... the lines themselves are often useless but if it's air you're looking for, I suppose!
When I'm editing dialogue I can generally find the RT I need from alt. takes or the pauses between lines in the production sound.
The times when I have real problems are when there is a phone call and the dialogue lines on the other end of the call are being fed to the actor by the first AD (or similar) on set.
It's really difficult to find enough fill to cover the removal of the feeder lines for a natural sound.
I used to be a production sound mixer and know how hard it is on set to get your needs met on set but if any of you production sound mixers can record enough RT at the time to cover the feeder lines during phone calls the post guys will really appreciate it.
New Reply 
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
editorial discussion. However, suffice to say that I am finding it more and more difficult to put dialogue tracks together, rather than easier, these days. I can't remember the last time I actually saw a location report that actually said 
