Olle Sjostrom

Are they using the same scale?

I, too, believe that intelligibility issues begin on set and carry over all the way to the end. I changed my career to radio a few years back, but I linger here because occasionally relapse into film shoots, and the obvious difference is we don’t have any cameras and mostly treated rooms. The problems we tackle are more on subtle language and expressions that have to do with editing. And that IS a post issue, even in movies, where wall to wall dialog is just so tightly edited that you don’t hear any breathing, so unconsciously you’re not hearing the words cus you are gasping for breath, sort of. And that’s an intelligibility issue too. And then again it just comes down to understanding what sound is and what information we get out of it. And some directors and producers don’t think of it that way, simply put. Again I’m preaching to the choir.

There may be confusion as to which article you’re referring to, there are links to two articles above where one was inserted into Jeff’s post. Intelligibility on set is kind of a trap, since everyone reads the script, everyone knows what the actors are saying and therefore hear everything. That’s a given to us, of course, no need to point it out in a group of pros, but it’s easy to forget that not everyone listens the way we do and we are always outnumbered and outgunned, unless the director is a person who trust us. And that boils down more to luck than anything else in my experience

I think it’s called U-Crane nowadays anyway, I agree with Wyatt. You can play the track conservatively through the speakers of the car if you can wire it up properly, A transmitter from your bag wherever you are. One solution I’m dreaming up is using a SIP or WebRTC transmitter through phones. I have a daily job in radio broadcasting nowadays and we use our own SIP server to connect devices all over the world , phones or dedicated hardware. I could really see a use in movies and cars. There are apps and solutions for it, the simplest one being Zoom (which is heavily encoded, yes, but still sounds good enough for playback to phones).

Please allow me to senator: it depends

I'm obviously not one of the people working on that movie, but I've worked on lots of sets with soft spoken of mumbled dialog; Soft dialog isn't really an issue on a quiet set where you can get up close. I can really see why actors want to play it like that. Sure, it's hard to mix but intelligibility wise it's fine as long as you can get it clean and close, and as long as the directors and actors are aware that you, in a sense, are locking the mix. The bigger issue with soft spoken dialog is the fact that you need to be so close, so booming is really tricky. Some actors don't like getting a mic all up in their faces, duh, but at least then you can tell them you can back out but it comes with a cost

Maybe you can find some tips and tricks here!

I'd like to add that I think going to the tech scouts is also important for team building, as in getting to know the rest of the team and building relationships and trust, or just getting a sense of who these people are. In Sweden the sound mixer is very often invited to scouts but would have little or no say over the choice, but there's no question that we should be there. I have no experience with working in the states so I don't know the on set dynamics at all, but over here we are a tight knit team and every single position is paramount to the production, and every one is a team player and everyone is telling a story. And if you’re going to be able to play that part well (and endure) , a tech scout might aid that transition, even if you have no say over the location.

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Yes, no.

Sad to see this show coming to an end. But very happy with the end result and that it didn’t disappoint in any way shape or form. Just brilliant. Again, Phil, amazing work. What a show!

I think electric cars and motorcycles should have a bicycle bell

Such an interesting field. I tend to hear a Renault Zoe very clearly, they have a very distinct hum to them, I think it's a major seven chord humming. Very effective. And thank you for the podcast recommendation, have to check it out

Bots are hilarious.

I'd venture a guess, based on my short experience in post on short turnarounds: Everything is mixed in huge (at least that's my experience) rooms with very good acoustics, comfortable listening levels etc. Then when everything is edited and goea into final mix, there's not enough time to actually go through every line and every syllable to make them audible. Instead you put a chain of compressors and dynamic eqs on each channel of dialog, make that stem have a nice reading on the meter, maybe even out and level some runaway lines. Then the fx and music comes in and you do the same kind of deal and you just look at the meters cause that's all you have time for, sort of. The music might even be pre-mixed and have a good loudness level, but the meters and LUFS readings have to match so that the dynamic range isn't too big or whatnot. This is an extreme case, but I have seen at least one mixer churn out episodes this way, year after year. And they all sound not good. But I have to say I don't really agree with mixes. I watch netflix and HBO a lot and I have no issues at all. The times I do have issues is more like artistic choice with low dialog or mumbling actors.