Room Tone - Repost of Topic from the General Discussion page.

[bmfsnd]

Is anybody really regularly doing 30 seconds of standard room tone these days?

 

I always ask for 30 seconds.  Not because the editors want 30 seconds, but because there's maybe be a good loopable 4-8 seconds somewhere in there (it's always a grip sniffling right in the middle) 

[Philip Perkins]

In dialog editing I'd rather have 10 sec of roomtone that was close to the BG of the scene than the paid-for time to do all the corny post tricks to make and find fill.  I'd rather spend my time making the movie better in other ways in stead of doing the soul-destroying labor of making fill out of tiny fractions of BG.  In a dramatic scene with the mics moving I'll take whatever you can give me (but give me something)--these arguments about end-of-day tone or tone-after-scenes-with-moving-mics being not usable or worth getting are just excuses to avoid conflicts about getting what you need on the set.  You have to ask, just like you have to ask for a cutter re: a boom shadow, for the moving of a noisy HMI ballast, closing of doors and windows etc etc.   In a doco interview, where there may be questions from the interviewer that have to be removed and filled as well as dialog recorded over a long period of time that has to  be edited together then it is even MORE important to have clean accurate tone.  

 

philp

[atheisticmystic]

In dialog editing I'd rather have 10 sec of roomtone that was close to the BG of the scene than the paid-for time to do all the corny post tricks to make and find fill. I'd rather spend my time making the movie better in other ways in stead of doing the soul-destroying labor of making fill out of tiny fractions of BG. In a dramatic scene with the mics moving I'll take whatever you can give me (but give me something)--these arguments about end-of-day tone or tone-after-scenes-with-moving-mics being not usable or worth getting are just excuses to avoid conflicts about getting what you need on the set. You have to ask, just like you have to ask for a cutter re: a boom shadow, for the moving of a noisy HMI ballast, closing of doors and windows etc etc. In a doco interview, where there may be questions from the interviewer that have to be removed and filled as well as dialog recorded over a long period of time that has to be edited together then it is even MORE important to have clean accurate tone.

philp

+1

[Henchman]

For a scripted show, I usually mute or move fill to x-tracks.

The only fill I really want to see, is fill that's used to tie lines together in a scene.

I do not want a solid track of fill, added to a scene from beginning to end.

I work hard enough to get rid of the ugly, grungy grainy roomtone that is the.

I don't need it doubled.

[Marc Wielage]

Mark above is right: double roomtone is no fun. That's a good lesson in John Purcell's Dialogue Editing for Motion Pictures: A Guide to the Invisible Art. (New edition coming out in 2 months!)

 

I just had an experience in the last month with a dialogue editor I know who was putting together tracks from a problematic feature I worked on last year. I asked him if the roomtone was helpful, and his response was "thank god you gave me some roomtone to work with." And yet I know of other projects where the director has insisted, "I've never had the editor use roomtone in my life"... so there you go. 

[Wandering Ear]

I'd rather not use stuff I recorded, than need stuff I didn't.

http://wanderingear.net

[Henchman]

I'd rather not use stuff I recorded, than need stuff I didn't.http://wanderingear.net

You are absolutely right,min that respect.

Cover ones ass is always the best approach.

[dustinguished]

I'd rather not use stuff I recorded, than need stuff I didn't.

http://wanderingear.net

Love it!

 

I'm going to add that to my list of witty wisdom right before:

"I'd rather be looking at it, than looking for it"

[Rich Reilly]

"Yes, you can use noise reduction, but you're not supposed to use noise reduction until the end of the chain. Purcell says we're supposed to smooth out shots using fades and adding room tone around as much as possible even before we apply noise reduction."

 

I would think that would depend on the type of noise. Doing a batch NR on clips before editing (tailored to location etc) might make later editing easier.

[Marc Wielage]

I would think that would depend on the type of noise. Doing a batch NR on clips before editing (tailored to location etc) might make later editing easier.

 

I wouldn't do that unless I spoke to the re-recording mixer first. That's unless you're in a situation where the material is not going to have the benefit of a real final mix. 

 

I think the general rule for the post sound editor is, leave one track un-noise-reduced so that the re-recording mixer can do his thing if they want to. And then put the NR'd track as an alt and make it available in the track list. 

[Rich Reilly]

Ah..I was commenting from a technical perspective as opposed to protocol between multi level post situations. I can see the value of leaving options open for final mixer.

[Henchman]

Removing pops and clips, fine.

Anything else, leave it to the re-recording mixer.

We usually better tools on the stage. As well as a better idea what to do, after all the sfx and music have been added.

[Marc Wielage]

I agree with Mark above, but there are always low-budget situations where the mix happens in the edit bay and goes right to air. It's sad and sobering to see how much this happens nowdays, especially with promos and quick & dirty documentaries and stuff.

 

On the positive side: I just did a short :30 piece the other day where we had a dialogue segment that was marred by a "beep-beep-beep" garbage truck backup noise in the background. iZotope RX's spectral editing allowed me to get it and just surgically slice that out, to the point where it was absolutely positively undetectable and had no artifacts on the track. It pretty much saved the scene and helped us avoid ADR for that segment.

[Rich Reilly]

Interesting..since I would think applying NR would be more tailored based to clip location. Cobble enough clips from different environments together editorially and I would think parsing them out for processing would be difficult.

[Jay Rose]

"beep-beep-beep" garbage truck backup noise in the background

 

 

That's exactly the kind of thing spectral editing has always excelled at, even from a dozen years ago with Retouch. 

 

But pray the DP doesn't find out what you did. Then they'll expect you to 'surgically remove' things like background radios and conversations...

[Bondelev]

As a post mixer I prefer NR done by a specialist AFTER dialogue editing but before the stage. I also want a version without the NR. In case I can make it work without it. There is always a balance between how much noise is allowable versus how much aliasing you can hear on the processed tracks. It's hard to judge until you have all the elements in place.

[Rich Reilly]

Suggesting an NR specialists in between post and rerecording? Assuming a Bus NR plug in can't match a clip specific setting, figured earlier/more specific in process the better. But..have never been availed the tools of high end mixing stages and the talents therein.

[BudRaymond]

When there are noises that cannot be eliminated or dealt with, I'll ask for 10 seconds of quiet after we've hit sticks and before they call action. People never seem to be able to actually stand still after the setup is done. They are, however, used to being still and quiet while we're rolling cameras. And since we're recording to electronic media now instead of celluloid, nobody minds.

Seems to work for me. 

[rb1138]

"Yes, you can use noise reduction, but you're not supposed to use noise reduction until the end of the chain. Purcell says we're supposed to smooth out shots using fades and adding room tone around as much as possible even before we apply noise reduction."

 

I would think that would depend on the type of noise. Doing a batch NR on clips before editing (tailored to location etc) might make later editing easier.

 

I've found this to be right as well. When you apply noise reduction it gates the noise out between words. It changes the roomtone. It seems to kill all of the transients and makes it easier to find generic roomtone that you can loop in the spots that are needed. Once I started doing it, I found it saved me a lot of time. 

 

It's possible that doing all the editing and smoothing beforehand could help and maximize this process, but it also takes a whole lot of time and care. Admittedly, I don't have enough experience to form a definitive conclusion about the whole deal. 

 

The best way is to leave it to a rerecording mixer for sure, if there is one!!

 

When there are noises that cannot be eliminated or dealt with, I'll ask for 10 seconds of quiet after we've hit sticks and before they call action. People never seem to be able to actually stand still after the setup is done. They are, however, used to being still and quiet while we're rolling cameras. And since we're recording to electronic media now instead of celluloid, nobody minds.

Seems to work for me.

 

One problem I've had that this helps with is the actors' breathing. During the takes the actors don't breathe very loudly or at all. But when I ask for roomtone now with the actors in their places (Thanks, Marc!) sometimes there's all this heavy breathing coming from them that wasn't there during the takes. I have to tell them to stop breathing so loud, which you've got to admit is kind of a weird thing to say. Oh well. Anyway I like my roomtones better. Have a good feeling about it that I get everyone on their place. Major thanks to everyone in this thread ! 

[Marc Wielage]

As a post mixer I prefer NR done by a specialist AFTER dialogue editing but before the stage. I also want a version without the NR. In case I can make it work without it.

 

I had a great experience recently: I did some quickie NR for a dialogue editor/friend of mine here locally, and they were so impressed they threw out the ADR and used production sound for the entire scene. The background noise had been a deal killer, and this took enough of a curse off it that it was totally usable, and the director far preferred the original performance. And yep, we had the original un-NR'd version available on another track. 

[Marc Wielage]

 

One problem I've had that this helps with is the actors' breathing. During the takes the actors don't breathe very loudly or at all. But when I ask for roomtone now with the actors in their places (Thanks, Marc!) sometimes there's all this heavy breathing coming from them that wasn't there during the takes. 

 

"Stand by for room tone! Everyone quiet, please! Hold your breath, and hold all talking!"

[sdog]

Maybe it depends a bit on the flavor of the project, but I've had far more experiences like Marc where a little bit of cleaning on the original performances is far superior to my taste over rebuilding a scene through Foley and ADR. There is just something about all of the super-subtle little real things that happen in the original performance that simply can't be duplicated. 

 

I end up on a lot of little projects where I end up wearing all the post audio hats, the dialog editor, the cleaner, the remixer, Foley artist, ADR recordist, etc. It would never fly in N.Y. or L.A., but there's something kind of comforting about knowing exactly what the next audio engineer in the chain is going to need because you are the next engineer in the chain. (Unfortunately, you also know who the previous engineer is that gets the blame for all the problems you are running into because that's you also.) I find that I do a great deal of noise reduction and cleanup during the dialog edit. But I also find that I take a very specific, surgical, artistic approach to that clean up, with the sole purpose of making the whole scene feel like it's one scene and not a whole bunch of different clips. I very, very rarely slap a generic NR algorithm on a clip or a scene or a track. That just never seems to work for me. I lean far more on surgical excision of frequencies and events and spectral editing than on broadband reduction. If I do use broadband reduction, I'm pretty dang cautious with it.

 

If I can talk the picture editor into giving me crazy long handles, I can usually live without room tone, but sometimes it's really handy just to have it in its own take so you don't have to go looking for it. Lately, I've wished more for about 5 minutes of stereo ambiance from each location rather than room tone, especially the dirtier locations. I.e. to use that sound more for sound design than clip glue (and therefore wind up needing less clip glue). The last couple of projects I've done have been the type where I can play with making them as dirty and gritty and real as possible (outdoor markets, traffic, flourescent hum, granaries, AC, busy restaurants, noisy apartments). In the last project, I actually had to add more beeping garbage trucks to a scene. (Well O.K. the garbage truck was grinding rather than beeping, but it was in half the shots and not cleanly removable so the only solution was to blend some more in and make it real.) My experiment has been to see how much dirt I can keep (or add) to a scene and still get the dialog to cut through. I know every project I work on doesn't require this much dirt, but I wouldn't mind if they did. It's been a lot of fun.

 

I just love the artistic decisions of deciding what tiny little elements of sound to clean out, what to add, in order to pull the whole thing into a single scene. Sometimes that art fights with the practicality of an M&E stem, but I'd rather fight the M&E just a little than to lose too much of that original performance/environment.

 

Getting back to the original question, during production, I always try to capture room tone as often as I can, but like others on the list, I'm not necessarily religious about it. I just try to keep my fingers on the pulse of the production. Most directors are pretty good about giving me time to grab it, but sometimes you can just tell that the production is running late and it ain't gonna happen. 

[Marc Wielage]

Lately, I've wished more for about 5 minutes of stereo ambiance from each location rather than room tone, especially the dirtier locations. I.e. to use that sound more for sound design than clip glue (and therefore wind up needing less clip glue). The last couple of projects I've done have been the type where I can play with making them as dirty and gritty and real as possible (outdoor markets, traffic, florescent hum, granaries, AC, busy restaurants, noisy apartments). 

 

Clip glue is the best phrase I've heard in a long time! I know exactly what you're talking about. 

[VASI]

I always ask for 30 seconds.  Not because the editors want 30 seconds, but because there's maybe be a good loopable 4-8 seconds somewhere in there (it's always a grip sniffling right in the middle) 

 

I doing this. Always the post say to me "you record 30 seconds but the clean part it is around 4-10 seconds".

In the other hand if not possible; before the crew call sheet or after.

[Benjamin Gandy]

It depends for me. If there's a shot in a particular location that contains no movement or anything I usually don't bother rolling, but I've had a script supervisor say to me "I've never heard of sound not rolling on anything, even if it is just a static shot of a photograph on a shelf" (which was the context). In that case I won't bother taking any tone if the short amount of quiet is satisfactory. If not, I'll usually ask the AD for a few minutes immediately after the last take is done, so wrap is only called after I'm finished. Sometimes I'll do it during lunch or first thing if the location's quiet enough. Most of the time I know it won't end up in the cut, either replaced or not used, but that doesn't mean I'm allowed to do any less a job on set. A lot of the time my room tone is three or four minutes long because I'm waiting for some intermittent noise (planes, trains, automobiles, whatever) to appear and disappear.

 

I did once ask an AD to leave me ten seconds at the end of this one shot, and an argument ensued over him and the director because the director began talking after he was asked. I did a shoot where the director left thirty seconds after the end of every shot for no reason, wasting hours (I'm sure) plenty of gigabytes. By the second day the DP cut would long after cut was actually called, and I cut as soon as he did.