Mixing Audio For Beginners - Part 2
According to the previous article, we mentioned the importance of establishing an intelligent workflow in your audio production process. As per defined by the dictionary, the word workflow means “the sequence of processes through which a piece of work passes from its initial phase to total completion.” Such definition, of course, can be integrated with the audio post-production workflow phases in order to see how they work in different types of productions.
Pre-Production
A pre-production reunion is the meeting that gets you together with the production officials, whether it is the production company, director, or the advertising agency before the production starts. If you happen to be invited to this meeting, you can, of course, express your opinions to the production team, which might even save them hours and effort. If they seem to be open to receiving additional creative input, you could help develop the soundtrack at the concept phase. It means that your insights on the project can also have a certain impact on selecting the audio budget, which is always a positive thing. Remember: an hour of proper pre-production will spare you 10 hours of possible setbacks.
Production
Makeup artists make their magic, services are consumed, lights are turned on, actors deliver their best performance, video is shot, audio is recorded, computers are then used to animate existing action sequences, etc., and the pretty much the whole budget is spent during this phase.
Video Editing
Once the visuals have been recorded and created, the director works with the video editor in charge to pick the best footage and assemble the moving images in a way that tells a compelling story. Once the editing has been done, the audio editor or sound engineer will receive a finished version of the audiovisual project that, in theory, will not suffer further changes —that’s known as “picture lock.” This final version of the recorded footage can only be achieved once the deadlines have been met and the budget for those processes spent.
Creating The Audio Session - Importing Data
The video editor is responsible for passing onto audio professionals an AAF or an OMF export compiling all the audio edits and additional media so they can re-create, or create from scratch, their own audio edits. Once sound editors and audio professionals import the files, they will have a much clearer idea of what they’ve got to do.
At this point, audio editors also import the moving images and the edited video, making sure they are in sync with the audio from the aforementioned exports (AAF and OMF).
Spotting
During this phase, both the director or the producer sit down with audio professionals to tell them exactly what they want and, more importantly, where they want it. The entire film or video project is played, so audio professionals can take notes regarding the dialogues, the sound effects, the score, and the music, etc.
Dialogue
Dialogue is perhaps the most important part of the entire soundtrack. Experienced audio editors will always separate dialogue edits into different tracks, one per each actor. Sometimes, when audio is recorded on location, the audio person responsible for recording those tracks often records two different tracks for each actor —a clip-on mic and the boom mic. Once in the studio, the audio professional assesses both tracks and chooses the one that sounds best and is more consistent throughout the entire length of the moving images.
In case of coming across noise on the dialogue tracks, a common technique that sound editors employ is using noise reduction tools or similar software to repair that audio without compromising the final mix.
ADR
We’ve covered ADR before in previous posts, just in case you don’t know what ADR means.
If, after having used the techniques mentioned in the last paragraph, the audio cannot be repaired through the use of noise reduction software, audio professionals always resort to performing ADR.
ADR means having the actors and the talent go to the studio to carry out several tasks, such as:
Replace missing audio lines
Replace dialogue that couldn’t be saved
Provide additional dialogue in case of further plot edits.
Actors have projected their scenes so they can recreate their lines. Normally, a cue is used to make sure they record in sync with what’s going on in the film. They also do four or five takes in a row, since the scenes are projected in a loop over and over (hence the word looping). The sound editor or audio professional then picks the best line and the best performance and replaces the original noisy/damaged take with the newer version. In order to match the intended ambiance, sound editors may use the same mich as the original take, but they will likely have to use further equalization, compression, and reverb to make the new performance be in synch with the timbre.
*The images used on this post are taken from Pexels.com