Advice on Post Technique: Sound Editing Basics
In co-directing The Red Machine, I’ve found that there are a lot of things I don’t know yet. But fortunately, I spent over a decade as a journalist writing about the art and craft of filmmaking, and in doing that, I met a lot of people who do know about those things. So my strategy is to call them and beg for advice, suggestions and overall guidance — which I’ll post here so that other filmmakers can take advantage of that information, too.
I recently had lunch with a friend who spent a number of years as a sound editor, then switched over to music editing. My questions for him were mainly about workflow and tools for post sound, and how to set up our process so that we could maximize creativity and quality, and minimize problems and tears.
At the moment, Pro Tools is still the dominant application for editing the sound for movies, and if you want to fit into the standard sound world, you need to be using at least v.6, and preferably v.7. At the moment, we’re running v.6, because that’s as far as we can go without upgrading our hardware, but that may have to change soon. My friend pointed out that while it’s possible to do some serious work in the less expensive Pro Tools LE and DV Toolkit, you can’t use TDM plug-ins, because those run on the auxiliary hardware necessary for full-blown Pro Tools, and you’re limited to 96 tracks.
While 96 tracks may seem like a lot, those can get used up very quickly when you start breaking down your tracks the way mixers need to have them. He explained that it’s important to keep different types of sound separate so that everything is grouped together in a way that will make it easy for the mixers to find what they need. For example, there could be different groups of tracks for:
- Production dialog
- ADR (dialog recorded by the actors after production to take the place of production audio)
- Source music (music that plays as part of the story)
- Score
- Sound design elements
- Backgrounds
- Hard sound effects
And so on…
Although he’s never been a dialog editor, over the years he has picked up a few techniques on grouping dialog tracks. Most importantly, it’s better to have them grouped by sound than by character. For example, if a scene is recorded on both a boom mike and a wireless body mike, it’s better to have one track for each type of mike, rather than put everything for one character on a single track. The reason is that during the mix, the mixer will add EQ to each track to even out its sound, but the type and amount of EQ will depend on the overall sound or “air” of the audio, and each mike will have its own type of air. If different types of mikes are on the same track, the air will keep shifting, so it won’t be possible to apply the EQ evenly to the whole track.
At the same time, simplicity is important — especially on a low-budget production. Part of the craft of dialog editing is learning what should be on different tracks, and what can be put onto a single track yet still made to sound homogeneous.
Audio levels can be set on the sound editor’s system, so that the mixers aren’t given sounds that are too quiet. While most mixing consoles give the mixer a range between +6 and -∞, the area where they have the most control is generally between 0 and -20, and even if a sound is going to play very quietly — a background, for example — it’s still better make it so that it falls into that sweet spot for the mixers.
At the same time, it’s also important not to tie the mixers’ hands. For instance, while it’s possible to apply audio effects in Pro Tools, then render those effects permanently, doing so would mean that the mixers can’t remove them and apply their own. It is possible to render two versions, though — one without the effects, and one with, for reference.
And sometimes, the goal with applying plug-ins in the editing system is to create a totally new sound, for instance, a backwards gunshot. In a case like that, you may prefer to permanently render the effect — because it’s gone beyond just being an effect. The bolder the stroke you want to make, the more you can leave your experimenting behind and declare the sound permanent; the subtler the adjustments you want to make, the more you should leave your options open.
Finally, there’s foley, which is the recording of sound effects that match action on screen, such a footsteps. While other sound effects, such as the sound of a glass being put down, are often also recorded on the foley stage, my friend said that he’d been able to save money by only foleying sounds that really had to be done by a foley artist — again, footsteps, which are very complex and need to match the on-screen action. But a single sound that could be easily moved around — the glass being put down, for example — could be recorded much less expensively off stage. And, he pointed out, many people overlook foley as a creative part of the filmmaking process: choosing a different sound for a footstep or a glass being put down can change the entire tone of a scene, even altering the feeling of a performance.
