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Should recording an Impulse Response during production be as standard as recording room tone?


SBretzke

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1 hour ago, Jan McL said:

The real world includes Director, AD and DP knowing they have X minutes to get the scene and the time it takes expands to fill 'X'. "Check the gate!" comes at 12:59 and at 13:00 the production is looking at meal penalties. Even forewarned that RT is necessary 100 x $7.50 means the AD will say, "Sorry. That's lunch." Happens every time.

So true, Jan McLaughlin.

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On 12/25/2017 at 3:29 AM, VAS said:

A room tone usually gets around 3-5 minutes to set up and record it; not everybody is "ready" when AD calls for room tone. Then, you have to be lucky to get a .30 seconds clean room tone. Wasting 9 to 15 minutes (total) on set for room tone, which the post production not going to use it; it's waste of time really. I am not saying room tone isn't usefull. I am saying post production have much more smart tools these days, espacially in the age of iZotope. Agree with Constantin overall here.

Timing with the 1st AD is everything, tell him or her beforehand, then at the completion of a setup say "room tone"

1st AD says "make safe - quiet and still" then you record.

It does not take 15 minutes if you work logically!

 

mike

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No matter what any sound editor says or wants, including me, what Jan says is how it goes down in real life.  Soundies have a limited number of "checks" in our set-request "checkbook", ie the number of times you can ask for something that might be considered "extra" by production, however much sense it might make to you or to the production as a whole.  A mixer never knows exactly how many "checks" they can still write on that set, but you'll certainly be made aware when you are either low on them or out.  So do I expend what good will I might still have asking for a quick wild line to cover a line that was stepped on, or fixing a lav that is having wardrobe issues or asking for part of a read again because of the Harley that just drove by the set...or do I ask for roomtone?  You might think this isn't an either/or situation, but it often can be.  Remember that ADs, particularly, as well as the entire prod. staff of a commercial, don't have much of anything to do with post.  They are about making their schedule, first and last, and getting dope looking shots.  Sound they figure someone down the line will make work.   So, frankly, on my personal production sound list of priorities, roomtone is on the list below getting all the dialog in some form (sync, wild, whatever), covering non-verbal scene action (ie getting them to not declare scenes w/o dialog MOS and thus not quieting the set so I can get some usable track for the shots) and staying on everyone's good side by acting like a go-along/get-along type person.  In a perfect world, sure, we get the whole list done.  On most gigs, pick your battles.

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On 12/23/2017 at 6:22 PM, ryanpeds said:

I’ll ask for roomtone but 9 times out of 10 I’m told there is no time. I was on a shoot and the director was previously an editor. I  got the go for RT and rolled and about 5 seconds after rolling the director yells cut and no one moves because they were so confused since roomtone lasts longer than 5 seconds. Director ruined the roomtone and I never asked for it again. 

 

Ryan, I don't ask for it. I just announce the time that we are doing it. I check with the ------ to see when we are going to do it. Then at that time I just do it.

 

Thanks, Martin

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1 hour ago, MartinTheMixer said:

 

Ryan, I don't ask for it. I just announce the time that we are doing it. I check with the ------ to see when we are going to do it. Then at that time I just do it.

 

Thanks, Martin

I should rephrase and say I talk with the 1st AD and say I need RT. I go about it politely. Usually talk with them early at each location. Maybe I should switch and say we should do it first thing instead of last. Still doesn’t fix PITA directors though. 

 

Fully agree with phil about priorities and mike that it should take less than a minute usually. 

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2 minutes ago, ryanpeds said:

I should rephrase and say I talk with the 1st AD and say I need RT. I go about it politely. Usually talk with them early at each location. Maybe I should switch and say we should do it first thing instead of last. Still doesn’t fix PITA directors though. 

 

Fully agree with phil about priorities and mike that it should take less than a minute usually. 

Ryan, I'm pretty sure I go about it very politely too. In other words if I've already discovered that they want room tone as soon as that scene is over with let's say. Then I'm just simply going to say it's time for that thing that we already know is going to happen. To me it's no different than if I call you and I say what time you want to play tennis and you say 2 o'clock and I say okay I'll see you at your house at 2 o'clock, then I'm not going to call you again to see if you still want me to come over at the time that you told me to come over already. I'm going to show up and knock on your door at 2. I think that's polite. I can't recall anybody ever telling me we don't have time for room tone. Probably 25% of the time it's being announced that that's what we're going to do and I follow along. 

 

Thanks, Martin

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Martin,

 

I assumed you you ask politely as well. You don’t get far with the AD staff if you’re not. It seems to really depend on the show. Some shows it was never a problem getting room tone at the end of the scene. More recently there was a show where it was the last priority for the AD and director and I was constantly shutdown when it came time for room tone. I eventually stopped asking and if there was a location that I felt room tone would be useful to post I would go back some other time and get it even though it wasn’t 100% the same but usually really close. 

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6 hours ago, ryanpeds said:

Martin,

 

I assumed you you ask politely as well. You don’t get far with the AD staff if you’re not. It seems to really depend on the show. Some shows it was never a problem getting room tone at the end of the scene. More recently there was a show where it was the last priority for the AD and director and I was constantly shutdown when it came time for room tone. I eventually stopped asking and if there was a location that I felt room tone would be useful to post I would go back some other time and get it even though it wasn’t 100% the same but usually really close. 

Ryan, I guess we're just working on two different types of something, because I can't remember ever being told that we weren't doing room tone. As I'm sitting here thinking about it, often,  I would probably say maybe in the majority of the time, I am asked if we need it. I never say no, well I can't remember ever saying no. My answer is usually yes. And if I'm sitting there thinking about what a train wreck it would be without that, we'll call it room tone or ambience in this case, I usually give an "o yea, we really need room tone". I can remember shooting one project,  it was in a building with really old leaky windows, leaky in this case meaning audio came right through from the traffic noise outside. Well we were shooting from about 5 p.m. to somewhere around 10 or 11 at night. We started shooting at rush hour and it sounded like rush hour. So I asked if we could get, in this case will call it room tone when it's more of actually the ambience of all that traffic noise, and I was told no will get that after we shot the scene. Well there is not going to be a traffic jam at 10 or 11 or midnight. But that was when I was finally allowed to get room tone. I would imagine somebody had to go out and record traffic noise or something in post.  I probably could have gotten away with 20, maybe 30 seconds would have worked. There's a mixer that did a show, and we all know him and probably most of us know the show. And there's a scene where I can hear the same 18-wheeler going by every 40 seconds. So I'm pretty sure he got 40 seconds of room tone. The average person wouldn't notice this of course, the average viewer. I think I was a little impressed that they actually allowed him 40 seconds of quiet and not demanding that they allowed to be scrambling around like ants. 

 

Thank you, Martin

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  • 10 months later...

When shooting a movie I make sure that the director and AD understand that it is what is best for the project and to allot a minute or two for wild recordings before we change scenes. This includes room tone, IR, wild lines, and sounds that I think are important to the scene. It usually only takes a couple of minutes, and every time I do it, post gets back to me and raves about my work. They also go out of their way to tell the director how great the audio was, and this happens every time without fail. I’ve also killed the need for ADR in the process a lot of the time. 

 

Now, when the show is unreasonably run by people who schedule too much in a day, and I am fighting to do the bare minimum, then all bets are off. But most of the time I am able to override the AD and get them to help instead of hinder. 

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  • 2 months later...

As a Post Mixer, I used to pray for room tone.

But with the "ambience match " plugin with Izotope RX, I can create perfect matching room tone from a 

line of dialogue.

 

Until Izotope can match reverb, yes a convo of the set is always appreciated.

Ive been know to go to the set myself during a series to create one!!

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Quote from JonG..

"Now, when the show is unreasonably run by people who schedule too much in a day, and I am fighting to do the bare minimum, then all bets are off."

 

This is literally every show I work on... without fail. Huge amounts of shots to get .. They don't want to hear anything about 3 minutes to grab something, no matter how beneficial. Shots for camera come first..and a lot of them. Not unreasonably run, just too much to do. I enjoy the OT.

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