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Practical Tips for Film Audio Pros Part 1
Mark Edward Lewis is the owner of online education website Cinema Sound . He has over 30 years of experience writing and producing musical scores , re-recording , mixing , developing sound design , editing , writing , and directing . Through Cinema Sound and its production partner , MZed , Lewis has created over 85 hours of audio education videos for independent media creatives . He was the post-production supervisor on Marvel ’ s Avengers STATION interactive experience and , in 2016 , he led the Sound Advice tour through North America and Australia where he taught over 1,200 filmmakers to improve their production value with better sound .
For more , visit www . cinemasound . com and www . mzed . com / mzed-pro .
PS : What are some common mistakes that you see even experienced film audio professionals making when either recording on-set or in the field ?
Mark Edward Lewis : I don ’ t know any sound recordists who consider sound delay when it comes to the on-camera reference microphone , whether it ’ s in-camera ( please god no !) or on-camera . I ’ ve seen situations where they were very happy to have a Rode video mic on a camera and say , ‘ This is going to be the reference ,’ and the recordist has lavs on the actors and there are booms and they are 16 ft . or more away from the camera .
If we know that at 72 degrees at sea level , sound travels at 1.1308 milliseconds per foot , what we can very quickly realize – especially if we know that at a 24p [ framerate ], that ’ s about 42 milliseconds – is that at 16 ft . or so , that means your audio is hitting the camera reference half a frame late . At 36 ft ., it ’ s a full frame late .
I ’ ve had people say , “ But look , I ’ ve got Plural- Eyes or I use Adobe Audition ,” and I say , “ Yeah , but it ’ s syncing it to your reference , which is one frame late and by the time it comes to us in post , we ’ re like , ‘ Why are all the lips rubbery ? Who recorded this ?’” What we find out later is that they just thought it was a reference and no big deal . They just put a mic on the camera or , worse , used the in-camera mic . Sound moves pretty slow and
MARK EDWARD LEWIS
at 36.8 ft . you ’ re one frame back and there is no solution for it . The only thing that we can do is , if you absolutely cannot run your mixer to the camera for whatever reason or you ’ re too far away or the camera is moving or they don ’ t want it and the actors are far , then notate that in the log . We ’ ve got to know in post that we ’ re listening to audio that is probably half , three-quarters , or a full frame late or more because it was on-camera audio .
PS : Likewise , what is a common mistake that even professionals make in the studio ?
MEL : It used to be that people would put an AKG C12 in front of a person to do ADR , but the whole purpose of ADR is to recreate what was done on-set . So , fortunately , now we ’ re starting to see people at studios everywhere who are putting lavs on them or they ’ re finding out what the original shotgun mic was and either pulling it out of their mic cabinet or renting it so that it ’ s the exact microphone that was used . That really helps us .
But I think the primary thing that I see is mixing levels being wrong . I ’ ve been into several studios where they were doing a mix for the internet and the studio is tuned at 85dB dialogue , and that is great for cinema – though it ’ s actually too loud for me because I can ’ t mix for a 10-hour day at 85dB ; I can do 80 , but I can ’ t do 85 . But on the internet , man , nobody listens to anything at 85dB . At worst , they listen to it on tiny little speakers , or even worse , headphones .
If you ’ re listening to your mix at 85dB , by the time it gets out of that little speaker , the dialogue is going to be so loud compared to the music , images , and foley because in a full-bandwidth environment at a strong decibel level , you ’ re going to have a lot more bass frequencies and a lot more high frequencies . But by the time we get to a tiny little speaker , obviously it ’ s stripped out all the low frequencies , maybe even from 200 Hz down , and it exacerbates the frequencies of dialogue . So if we were to mix at a lower level and take into account the roll-off of these speakers that most people are going to be listening on , we ’ re going to find that our dialogue mixes are way too loud and we need to mix them down or mix the music up or do really clever , what I call ‘ notch EQing ,’ which is layering the EQ into the music or sound effects or the images so that we can bring up the music – the emotional and immersive elements – without disturbing the dialogue , which might be not so great for the cinema but for the internet delivery , or even some DVD deliveries , we can accommodate that .
I hear so many online mixes on my laptop where I ’ m like , “ Wow , nobody thought about this and it ’ s on YouTube .” No one is going to watch a YouTube video in the theatre . Why would we ever put a cinema mix or even a DVD mix on YouTube ? You wouldn ’ t , hopefully . So , we shouldn ’ t be referencing our mixes at 85 dB . They should be 75 dB and some kind of roll-off .
In part two in the December 2018 issue , Mark discusses the common causes of poorly-recorded dialogue and , on the flip side , how to fix poorly-recorded dialogue in the studio .
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