Andrew Bellware

Thanks Jeff, that's very interesting. BTW -- the way I've seen it done (and done myself) out here is to read all the stuff on the slate while sound is rolling, then the camera speeds and the camera operator calls "marker", so that the camera isn't running while the slate is being read. That burns up a lot less film.

I have a question is about the head slate. I know that at least on low-budget stuff on the East Coast the 1st AC or clapper tends to say the name of the take out loud after they hear "speeding" from the sound department. I suppose it's the old - fashioned way. I like that method because it tends to make the script supervisor and the mixer hear what it is that the camera department thinks the take is. Sometimes they have a different idea from what the script supervisor thinks it is, sometimes it's the only way I ever find out what it is! ;-) But for productions where the mixer is saying the name of the take via the slate mic just before the clapper is dropped, is there any way to "pre record" the scene and take number? Or do you have to wait until after "roll sound" is called?

Are these for shows that already exist? Or for a show that's "made up" as part of the movie? Typically, if there's sound reinforcement, the actors are on wireless lav's and/or the stage itself is area - mic'ed. I would try to take a feed from the front-of-house console which would have the premixed dialog/singing. Along the lip of the stage may be some Crown PCC 160's (which look a bit like PZM's but are actually cardioid) and possibly some cardioid and hypercardioids for the "downstage" positions. They might have some choir mics hanging and/or shotguns planted behind teasers or in the rafters for "upstage" singing/talking/what-have-you. And they might perhaps have some well thought out plant mics positioned around the stage. Occasionally some off-stage areas are mic'ed if there's some singing or talking that has to go on off-stage which must be heard. But for a house that's more than a few hundred seats, and with a show which is adequately budgeted, the performers would likely wear wireless lavs (theater tends to prefer Sennheiser wireless) and there may be minimal "area" mic'ing of the stage. In any case, typically the front-of-house mixer(s) would either be following the show on book or have it memorized and so the best sound would be from that mixer unless camera lets you get right in on top of the performers with a boom. I hope any of this helps!

This could be interpreted another way: There are two main kinds of deliverables on a motion picture which was made in the English language world: the English language versions, and the Dialog, Music, & Effects (DM&E) versions. The coffee cup example is a good example of what the problem is when delivering the DM&E's. When you mix those DM&E's you have to come up with that exact coffee cup sound without the English dialog or your mix will get rejected by the QC department of the distributor's dubbing facility. Their priority is to make sure that their "dubbed" version of the movie sounds exactly like the English language version of the movie, just with their own language added. But IF you ADR'ed the entire picture, then QC CAN'T reject your M&E mixes because they absolutely WILL sound identical to the "Full English Mix". There are no other production effects on your dialog tracks! (The problem with us in the English speaking world is that we feel the performance gets skunked when we don't have that on-set recorded dialog with the real performance which happened during the shooting of the picture. I have a bunch of half-baked theories about English-speaking people and their relationship to language, Shakespeare, and Stanislavsky, regarding why that's so much more important to us than it is to cultures who have a higher tolerance for movies dubbed into their language, but I won't get into that here.) Getting back to the original point -- I have seriously considered ADR'ing an entire picture for the DM&E mixes which go out for non - English speaking countries, yet retaining as much as I can of the production dialog for the North American version. It's cheating but it works like this: when you deliver the DM&E's there is an English dialog mix (the "D" in DM&E) which is entirely ADR. There is no production background sound on the dialog tracks. The Music and Effects make up all the rest of the audio one hears on the English language tracks in this "overseas" version. But then we go and mix a completely different version for North America. This version has the production dialog in it and a somewhat different effects mix because of the production sounds that we keep. Therefore we have BOTH ADR'ed the entire picture AND used as much production sound as possible. It's cheating because the English - language mix we delivered for overseas as a "reference" for when they make their own mixes is not actually the one we release in North America. But with the exception of Australia and the UK they won't be using that mix anyway, just referencing it for their own mix (at least that's the way I justify it in my own mind). I doubt I'm the first person to think of this and I suspect that some people have been doing it for a while. Just my incoherent two cents, Drew

That's interesting, I've always thought that more of a feature than a flaw. There are times when I need identical versions of the same application running -- say one window with one set of preferences going while another with another set of preferences. Especially with applications which won't hold more than one project at a time like 3dsMax, or when I want to background render in one application while editing in another. Other than that, I feel I'm pretty platform agnostic. I use XP, OSX, and Vista every day. (Mostly working in Samplitude on the PC, Final Cut Pro on the Mac.) I do think, however, that Vista has no reason to exist. ;-)

If you live/work anywhere near a rental house you might consider renting (at least for a while) production sound gear. Rental houses tend to have excellent rates for us sound mixers -- frequently making it so that unless you're working a LOT, it's cheaper to rent than to own. Other advantages of renting are that you get to try out a bunch of different gear to decide what gear you really want to own, you don't have to worry about maintenance, and you can have more expensive and higher-quality gear to work with (which, in my opinion, almost always makes the job easier.) As far as what kind of equipment to get, it depends on the kinds of work you might be doing.

OK, I promise to stop coming back to this, really I do! ;-) But are you coming in digitally to the 03D or DM1000? If so, what would be screwed up? That channel or buss EQ or compression would be on? Otherwise, as long as fader gain is 0dB (which is delightfully easy to tell on both those mixers), 0dBFS=0dBFS! ;-)

Of course, in this example, you're helping a picture editor with his technical incompetence. I would certainly hope that Warner Brothers would be able to generate their own tone files and set up their gear on their own! ;-)

Wow, that's quite an Auralex rig. I've gotten funny looks from the AD just with the triangle! The zeppelin trick doesn't sound as good as the Auralex in my experience, but if you need something quick and dirty, it'll do it for you. Best, Drew

I think there are two things going on here. One (reference level) is I believe a "legacy" from all - analog systems. The other (peak levels) is still important when interfacing digital gear with analog gear when the signal chain has "issues" with their gain staging and headroom. In the digital world it's irrelevant where you decide your "reference" level is. You can say your reference level was -50dBFS and still put your dialog peaks at -4dBFS. How would anyone know? (Well, they'd know that if you had 46dB of headroom you'd have a pretty interesting mixer, but still.) Unlike with analog tape where one could set up one's recorder at, say, +4 over 350 nanoWebers/meter, or +6 over 350nW/m; in the digital world -20dBFS is always -20dBFS. It's not like someone playing back your tape should be wondering how you'd set up the electronics because the numbers are absolute. -12dBFS on your digital machine can't and won't play back as -18dBFS on their machine. The real question I think, is where you are putting your program material. Typically, in an all digital system, the only rule you need to know is to never ask the A/D converters to go above 0. But in some (especially, in my experience, broadcast) facilities, the analog outputs of digital recorders and playback machines were not properly gain-staged taking into account the headroom of the head-end (analog) electronics. What this did was give us a situation where broadcasters are dictating that the signal never go above, say, -10dBFS. (I blame the picture-centric EIC's who installed digital machines in place of analog machines without changing the gain staging.) I imagine this issue might also be true with optical dailies, although one would intuit that it should not arise with digital dailies. -- So the issue isn't what you are REFERENCE to in a digital system, just how your digital peaks might be above the headroom of analog electronics further down the signal chain. If your (analog) recording mixer's headroom is, say, 24dBu, you can set up your digital recorder so that you can go right up to 0dBFS without distorting from a "reference" level of -6dB, -12dB, -18dB, or even -24dB. You can put tone on a digital file at any level you like. But if your digital PEAKS come out as an analog signal which is above the headroom of the next (analog) device in the chain, then it would be necessary to ask that recorded signal never peaks above that level. In other words, if you have a DAT machine feeding an analog device, and the DAT's analog outputs produce +24dBu at 0dBFS, but the next analog device can't handle signals hotter than +18dBu, then you better keep the peaks you record onto that DAT at -6dB (although doing so effectively reduces your digital system by a bit of resolution). So my point is that: Reference level and tone in a digital recording system? I don't see any reason why post still asks for this. Maximum digital peaks? In an all-digital system this shouldn't be, but with badly gain-staged analog systems further down the signal chain it might be a necessary evil. My .02! Drew

I've been using an Auralex Xpander on the back of boom mics whenever we want to "dry up" the sound a little bit. The foam doesn't seem to adversely affect the response of the microphone and seems to work pretty well in many "live" rooms. http://www.bswusa.com/proditem.asp?item=XPANDERSET I've heard that some people will take the "nose" off a zeppelin -- using the zeppelin itself to absorb some sound energy coming from the rear, that's why I thought of the Auralex (which I use in my VO booth to help dry up its sound too.)

A question I've had for a long time is: what is it that people really mean by "Audio Reference Level" in a digital format? I've seen this in broadcast specs too. I've always thought that was a legacy specification from analog days, maybe it isn't? I understand it from an analog tape standpoint, like + or - so many dB's over so many nanowebers/meter. But from a digital standpoint the "reference level" is... well, 0dBFS at whatever bit-depth one's working in. So obviously they mean something else. Do they mean where dialog should average if using Vu meters? Or perhaps the RMS level while dialog is present? Andrew Bellware

For mults or other "live sound" stuff I use One Dream Sound. They tend to be more theater-oriented in their inventory.

Wow, that's very informative Oleg. I'll keep that in mind. Suddenly, I feel very very old... ;-) But I'll also fear line levels to cameras less. Thanks! Drew what was right with betacams ( beta sp came in 86 if i remeber correctly) , is completely wrong with digi betas and hd 750/900 blue ray xdcam and hdxd cam ( dont know about panasonic 900 and 27 , never checked the schems ) they are all have line level and preamp in line which is passed by by the way, you can pass by the line inputs an go digitally to the camera ( 700,790,970 digi beta , 750,900 hd , and of cours the xd which dont need any external equip) most of the new compact hd and dv cameras in procumer level also have line and mic separate cirquets and they sound not fur away what your dat gave you 5 years ago .

I've been mixing to cameras for a lot of years @ line level w/o issues except w/the Canon miniDVs. When running a snake across a set full of HMIs, AC and etc I really want the signal in my cable to be line level. I think you are right about line in being a padded mic in on the cameras, but they sound fine to me. Philip Perkins That's just 'cause you're a much better mixer than me! ;-) Man, I just find mixing to cameras punishing. You're right though, with HMI's there's just way too much garbage in the air to trust mic level. I will say that I've found more recent cameras to be less of a problem to send line level to than those old Sony (analog) Betacams (which is how I got on the "mic-level to camera" bandwagon in the first place.)