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Weird on-location mixer technique; YouTube link


Corbin

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Background: I have some audio knowledge, but probably less than 99% of all of you when it comes to film sound.

Clip:

Question: What is going on in this clip?!!!!! Why is the mixer/recorder manipulating the faders on nearly every syllable of the actors' lines? Wouldn't this be audible? What is the purpose? Is this SOP for you guys? What am I missing?

This clip has bothered me since I saw it a year ago. The guy is using an Aaton Cantar, so one would assume he knows his stuff. Appreciate you all helping to solve the mystery.

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Looks to me like he is mixing 3 mics, on three different actors - they might be booms, but are most likely radio mics. He is certainly mixing for each new incoming actor, and seems to be making some level changes within words. His fingers move rather more than mine do whilst mixing, but it seems to be working for him!!

 

Kindest,

 

sb

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Same ole same ole perhaps:

Director threw in an additional actor without telling sound.

Production added an additional camera going wide without telling sound.

Rehearsal was different than the take, and again, without telling sound.

Roll was called without telling...blah blah blah.

Everyone sounded on-mic, so that was good.

best

Steven

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Maybe - Two characters walking in from a doorway, he's gradually transitioning from radio to boom when the boom becomes favorable, either because of camera framing, boom op position, background/crew noise, or whatever else. 

 

The fader bumps potentially create more separation between noise and dialogue for editors to lay in. So, he's doing his job. 

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Maybe - Two characters walking in from a doorway, he's gradually transitioning from radio to boom when the boom becomes favorable, either because of camera framing, boom op position, background/crew noise, or whatever else. 

 

The fader bumps potentially create more separation between noise and dialogue for editors to lay in. So, he's doing his job. 

 

+1 Pretty much summed it up! 

 

Lav cuts probably due to male actor putting some clothes off. Maybe on.

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Mixing! That was beautiful and of course it all sounds even better because it is French! I have often mixed in very much the same manner, sometimes cross-fading, sometimes not, emphasizing words even within a sentence, keeping an "unused" mic open while riding gain on two active mics, and on and on. It may seem odd to some to WATCH these things being done but only if you haven't done it much yourself or you have a different philosophy of mixing. This is not to say one method is better or worse than the other, it is not a question of right or wrong, it's really just how does it sound? Making that many fader moves can certainly get you in trouble on your mix if you aren't really good at it (but of course in this day when we have all the isos and you even have some younger sound mixers asking us if we ever really still MIX a scene) so I would suggest that you do less rather than more. When done properly and skillfully, none of those seemingly wild and arbitrary fader moves will never be evident to anyone other than the sound mixer or someone looking over their shoulder on the day.

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I had never seen what film mixing for dialogue actually looks like in real-time. Thanks for the explanations, folks!

I would love to have had some video of me doing the same sort of mixing but with rotary pots and no safety net with multiple tracks. Of course back then we didn't have video on our phones, we didn't even have phones with us on the set to make phone calls. Hard to imagine such a time --- you had to be there.

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It wasn't only film mixing that was done that way - almost everything was.

I cant even remember the amount of documentaries I did, in real time.  Let alone a year of Saturday night tonight shows, in real time, often with 2 bands. 

All on round faders too...

Jeff's right - you had to be there. But by God it was wonderful.

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I've worked once as a sound asssist with a Fench Mixer on a movie. He also used to move continually his fader maybe not to the extent of the mixer in the first vid, but It seems to me that it was more a way of being reactive...the finger already in slight movement might react faster if you decide to adjust the fader than a resting hand waiting for something to happen.

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I like the first vid, you can actually listen to the mix he is doing. But I think the image is flipped left /right (mirrored). You start - stop the Cantar at the very right side of the machine and for me it would be natural to have the boom at the leftmost fader (which I guess he is having)

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The moment I started watching the video I was thinking almost the same as Thunderbolt did but the thing is that it didn't sound bad at all.... it sounded pretty damn fine to me. 

Since I'm young and I've been mainly educated in digital sound, I've always been told not to move my faders that much, that i shouldn't change that much the Voice/background ratio, that this is done in pro tools in post with the ISO tracks.

I guess I just learned something new today!

 

Thanks to Thunderbolt for posting and the rest for explaining. Now I've got to do some fader riding training and try it in my next short!!
 

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The moment I started watching the video I was thinking almost the same as Thunderbolt did but the thing is that it didn't sound bad at all.... it sounded pretty damn fine to me. 

Since I'm young and I've been mainly educated in digital sound, I've always been told not to move my faders that much, that i shouldn't change that much the Voice/background ratio, that this is done in pro tools in post with the ISO tracks.

I guess I just learned something new today!

 

Thanks to Thunderbolt for posting and the rest for explaining. Now I've got to do some fader riding training and try it in my next short!!

 

 

As Jeff says above, part of "riding" faders is keeping the background consistent behind the moving faders if you can't cross fade without buggering the noise levels. Until you can figure out how to do that and some other mixing things, you're better off in the big picture not riding much IMHO. I don't twitch levels as often as we see in the first video; if one's going up, another's going down.  I've seen those who do that though. I suspect it has to do with finding the sweet spot as opposed to knowing intuiting where it is.

 

I've heard there are mixed opinions about mixing from a post perspective. Suspect it depends on the quality of the mix :)

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I just wonder how they do it without their script marked up in different colors. I'd get lost when I'd have to think "Next is Charles, and Charles is on fader 4", much easier to see: "Next is Blue".

 

I don't twitch levels as often as we see in the first video; if one's going up, another's going down.  I've seen those who do that though. I suspect it has to do with finding the sweet spot as opposed to knowing intuiting where it is.

It's something classical music Tonmeisters often do while setting spot mic mix levels. Though this is done during rehearsal, not when actually recording. Has to do with hysteresis effect. When you bring up a spot fader you'll notice its effect only when it's too loud - when you bring it down you notice the lack only once it's obvious -  so you move your fader up and down: too loud - too soft - now it's right.

Why not work similarly with dialog?

 

I've heard there are mixed opinions about mixing from a post perspective. Suspect it depends on the quality of the mix :)

If you don't actually mix, post will use the isos.

If you do mix and it's not what they need, post will use the isos.

Therefore I think it's better to mix, even if it's just for training oneself.

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I think tickling the faders can affect the dynamic range of the performance. It's not our job, and it's risky. It might be necessary to anticipate dialog on a lav if you have clothing noise issues, but you can easily miss words. I feel the original video shows he was late a couple of times, although it still sounds pretty good in general. The cross fades are nice, and it is a balanced mix, keeping multiple mics open to nicely balance the openness.

As utility sound, I watched mixers and listened closely to the results. Many different techniques and results. I also found the faders tended to move a bit more when someone of importance happened to be watching.

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It is flipped but hard to figure out how or why. The magnetic faders, as you can see in the picture I posted here below, are on the left hand side of the machine and above the rectangular display screen. In the video it looks like the faders are on the right. [Jeff Wexler]

 

You're right, Jeff, the image does seem to be flipped.

 

Maybe everyone understood, and my observation is unnecessary, but I did think it worth pointing out that the operator in the video isn't using the magnetic faders built into the Cantar. Rather, he is using an accessory Canterem mixing board that uses Penny+Gilles faders with a 104mm sweep.

 

Faders on most panels have a logarithmic (or similar) actuation. At the bottom of the sweep, a small movement yields a rather large change in level. Conversely, at the top of the scale, a fairly large movement produces only a subtle change.

 

From my viewing of the video, the operator appears to be cross fading between individual microphones for each speaker (it's not clear if these are radios or several booms). He adjusts the faders to emphasize the microphone for the speaker and reduce signal for others. This style of mixing helps keep noise from multiple microphones from adding to the total mix and also reduces the artifacts of the microphones all hearing the same signal. Since no microphone is completely closed off, there is some audio from each source and anyone speaking suddenly, taking the mixer by surprise, would still be audible in the mix. Even if half a beat behind, the mixer is likely to produce a track that sounds natural.

 

The twitchy movements of the faders that seem to follow individual words of the speakers all seem to occur at the very top of the scale where relatively large movements yield only small adjustments in level.

 

David

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"The twitchy movements of the faders that seem to follow individual words of the speakers all seem to occur at the very top of the scale where relatively large movements yield only small adjustments in level.

 
David"
 
Thank you for that, it helps to fine tune people's understanding of basic principles of mixing, particularly useful considering the title of this thread: "Weird on-location mixer technique". Understanding that faders (potentiometers or encoders) have characteristics (often referred to as their taper) that can be logarithmic or linear --- watching the video now, it is clear that maybe it isn't so "weird" after all.
 
I remember early on having to learn the basic principle of mixing two microphones, cross-fading and striving to keep backgrounds consistent, and after much practice (and of course a fair amount of failure) I got pretty good at it. Learning to trust your ears and learning that even if you make some rather peculiar (or weird) fader moves, if you like the result you should feel free to do it again. It then becomes part of your mixing style and it should not be a worry if not everyone does it the same.
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I remember early on having to learn the basic principle of mixing two microphones, cross-fading and striving to keep backgrounds consistent, [Jeff Wexler]

 

Parenthetically, did you ever employ the technique, with rotating faders, of linking two knobs with a rubber band wrapped in a figure-8 configuration? With one hand, one could simultaneously increase level on one fader while making a concurrent (and proportional) reduction in the adjacent channel.

 

Doug Schulman told me that a mixer he worked with used that technique when he had more than two microphones in play. I couldn't find a place for it in the article so I thought I'd share it here.

 

David

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I never did employ the rubber band method or really any linking of rotary faders, but I did, of course, develop some rather strange hand-finger contortions to be able to turn the pots the way I needed to.

 

I remember watching an old time sound mixer (yes, older than I am now) putting bits of masking tape as markers for where the rotary pots were set based on the voice and its relation to the background --- this to accomplish returning the fader after potting down, back to the same place to keep backgrounds consistent. I never liked that technique because it seemed to be a futile attempt to quantify something which was often rapidly changing from moment to moment.

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I don't think I usually move around that much, but I find myself doing things with the faders that might seem odd to your average observer.. To me, it's all about keeping the active speakers signal at an average with the ambient noise and room sound keeping phase alignment in mind.. You eventually get a feel for what sounds good in different situations. ISO tracks have taken away a little bit of the rush you used to get from mixing multiple channels to a mono or stereo tape set for two different mono levels.

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