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The importance of lavs from the POV of post.


Henchman

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I get that perspective is gone, but I think present and "wrong" sound can be achieved with a mix track primarily on the boom.

My old show (mixed at your place of work, Mark) always sounded falsely present. I sat in the mix a couple of times, and visited the editors often. I knew what the producer asked for. It was achieved on a show that was almost entirely boomed. Same with another show I did for the same network.

Perhaps it requires extra work, I don't know. 60 one-hour episodes.

I guess in the end, if the producer is happy and we all keep our jobs, then our job has been "well" done. Sometimes that means more work for you, and sometimes it means more work for us.

That's what this all boils down to. You want more "good lavs", which makes your job easier and ours harder. We want a nice mix, primarily using a boom and not wiring everyone, which makes our job easier and yours harder. Nobody is right or wrong here, although I contend that my way sounds better :-)

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Whew.... What a read, and excellent points made. None of this discussion is going to change the way I work. I work in the current conditions of todays market, and am happy to wire 100% of the time. We also boom 100%. There is always a boom out there.... always! 70% of the time, there are 2 booms out there. It would be foolish of me to assume that post is using my MIX track only. I've been told that the MIX is used, when all variables in editing allow for it. I am grateful that our post team, listens to our MIX track. Whether Henchman uses or listens to the MIX track doesn't bother me, even if he worked with my tracks. If my mix is all boom.....it'll be all boom in his mix...Sweet!! It's how he has been brought up, through his experience. His original statement is solid.

 

My problem, is that this is one mans opinion, and we all need to realize that.  What he says, and how he works is valid, but it's not gospel. I wish we had more post production mixers, giving their opinions on this topic. At this point it's really just one opinion vs. the group.

 

Thanks for listening!

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start with a PSM's mix and try to repair it with isos

 

And here, again, it seems to boil down to doing proper work while shooting.

Shooting today often seems to be more about the arrows than about the archers. Three RED cameras, lots of big HD screens for all the important people, but not enough cabling to place those ballasts out of the room.

"Unreasonable expectations" and "Years of experience" (or lack thereof?) come to mind.

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I just got word yesterday that the next project I'm mixing is going with Alexas -- thank the Good Lord!!!

 

At least that's one variable that seems to have come down in our (Sounds) favor... yeah, now if we can get the juicers to actually use those head feeder cables...

 

Either way, I'm definitely gonna mix each scene, as always -- Post may not want to bother with it, but as pointed out before, there are many "users" along the way who definitely benefit from a quality production mix track -- including those who hire me ; )

 

~tt

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It's hard enough to do an intelligent mix on any set with rf mic's on everyone and 2 booms swinging. To quote the grand daddy of multi track, Mr Jim Webb, "Solo a track and you don't hear the other seven".  Jim always tried to make a good mix on the films of Robert Altman's multi camera & multi track extravagances in the 70's and 80's that he mixed. The issues exposed then are true today and far more the norm than anyone back then could ever imagine. Jim knew the elements of his mix were going to be completely remixed by Post but he had to hand off something that made sense so that Altman could watch dailies and the editors could start cutting. Same goes today on most productions (- the dailies). "The Mix" is the starting place for Post. Personally my feelings won't be hurt if they completely redo my mix for the final product. I just find it silly and caviler to dismiss the PSM Mix as any rule of thumb.

CrewC

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Even if they re-mix what I do, and I relish in making a great mix, I really don't care. It's their choice, in the end. But like Crew says, the dailies are heard by many people, and they are hearing your mix track. Confidence from the DP, Camera ops, Executives, UPM's goes a long way on set and in negotiations later for extra gear or additional crew. And let's not forget the video editors cut to your mix track, and the director, producers is in there, hearing your mix, again, as well. Your mix track is being analyzed by many people. You can feel good about that, right?

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Whew.... Wha I wish we had more post production mixers, giving their opinions on this topic. At this point it's really just one opinion vs. the group.

 

Alrighty Then! :)

 

"Production Sound Mixer A" provides great mix tracks. Phase free, nicely transitioned. 

 

In my experience, it's problematic to assume this is possible, for two reasons:

 

1. Whenever the output from two mics (recording the same sound source) is mixed together there will always be phase artefacts unless the two mics are precisely equidistant from the sound source. So it's not a case of "phase free" or if there will be phase artefacts, it's a case of how much/noticable those artefacts are. Henchman asked earlier in the thread how phase issues can be avoided and no one answered, except one person mentioned the "3 to 1" ratio which usually acts to minimise rather than eliminate phase issues. Furthermore, the phase relationship between the two mics often varies slightly rather than remaining constant, due to the actor's head movement and/or movement of the boom.

 

2. "Nicely transition" is also potentially problematic. It might be nicely enough transitioned for reviewing the dailies but is it nicely enough transitioned for use in a final mix? Even if the answer to this question is "yes", will those transitions still be as "nice" once the picture has been edited or after other required audio post processing?

 

The most flexible and quickest solution to any of these issues invariably involves going to the iso tracks. I'm not saying that it's absolutely impossible to create a nicely transitioned and phase free production sound mix but personally, I so frequently encounter phase issues that it's just not worth the time of going through the prod sound mix and identifying/solving the problems when >90% of the time I'm just going to end-up going to the isos anyway. I don't want to come across as a Henchman fanboy but I have to agree that it's common for me to dismiss the prod sound mix without even listening to it, except possibly as a reference as used by the pic editor.

 

I also agree with the basic premise of Henchman's thread, that I end up turning to the lav tracks more than I would like and find myself frequently wishing that more care had been taken with them. I'm certainly not aiming for a percentage use of lavs as someone suggested, I'm just using whatever will arrive at the best result given the time available. Given equally well recorded lav and boom tracks, I'd pick the boom nearly 100% of the time but in practise I'd say that 60% lav use is probably fairly close to my experience. This of course is a guestimated average, some scenes maybe nearly all boom or nearly all lav, some shows may average 30% lav and others 80%, it maybe that I've never mixed a show with exactly 60% lav, just as there is no family which actually has 2.4 children. I certainly get why Henchman started this thread and I wouldn't want PSMs to concentrate on the lav tracks to the detriment of the boom tracks but on the other hand, knowing now how much we often have to rely on the lavs may impact some of the decisions PSMs make in certain circumstances, to the benefit of us all.

 

G

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...knowing now how much we often have to rely on the lavs may impact some of the decisions PSMs make in certain circumstances, to the benefit of us all.

 

G

It certainly has made me more aware and vigilant when wiring people up. It doesn't take me that much longer to make sure my ISO's are solid. If I can save the next guy from being dumped on with crap sound I will do it. That's why I initially contacted Henchman to sit in on one of his sessions. I was lucky that he was kind enough to fit me in to his already busy schedule. For that I will always be thankful!

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My problem, is that this is one mans opinion, and we all need to realize that.  What he says, and how he works is valid, but it's not gospel. I wish we had more post production mixers, giving their opinions on this topic. At this point it's really just one opinion vs. the group.

 

I agree. I do think it would be great to hear other post-sound mixers take on this so it's not just Henchman having to defend his statements. 

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I guess my next question is who actually gets our sound reports? For example, my Nomad creates sound reports that I hand over with my files. I'll take the time to make notations if the lav or boom sucked in a certain take , or if I was able to get tone, or etc. etc. etc. The hope is that I'll save the post-sound mixer some time down the road if he/she was able to refer to my notes. Does this info even make it to you guys? Or maybe this is the case on bigger budget gigs? I don't know, but I sure would like to. 

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I guess my next question is who actually gets our sound reports? For example, my Nomad creates sound reports that I hand over with my files. I'll take the time to make notations if the lav or boom sucked in a certain take , or if I was able to get tone, or etc. etc. etc. The hope is that I'll save the post-sound mixer some time down the road if he/she was able to refer to my notes. Does this info even make it to you guys? Or maybe this is the case on bigger budget gigs? I don't know, but I sure would like to. 

This is a great question. I fear the answer may be that no one ever looks at it. But let's see.

 

I also tend to take good notes, including "Remix from Isos" whenever I am not able to nail a take or I am somewhat unhappy with the background noise or overall mix. My hope is this would be read further down the line to save post-sound some time. I further hope that post sound trusts the ears of the production mixer. When I make a note that a take is "Good" or "Excellent" I would hope they believe me and attempt to use it.

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Another post mixers view here.

Longwinded post ahead sorry...

Although I'm from Sweden and have unfortunately never had the experience using a US style mix track. Here it's always a two channel mix with boom on 1 and lavs mixed to 2. And it is really only ever used as a reference for editing and dailys.

I wouldn't mind us also just mixing to a single mono track. But that still doesn't mean that we'd use more of it in post.

Some PSM questions, I know very well how this is done here in Sweden, so this is relating to how you do the mix track in US in general.

How much do you "work" the sound? How much do you eq and filter the tracks that go to the mix track?

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Regarding mix tracks:

How do you expect post to be able to rework a scene when choosing between a mix track and ISO's?

I can say that many PSMs simply do not understand what is required during the mix and what possibilities directors and producers expect to have at their whim.

If I had to try to level, pan, split, filter, eq, de-noise just using a single mix track from a take it would make me handicapped during the mix. And it would make the mix sound worse.

Room noise sounds different when it's mixed to a single track, transitions when crossfading between mics will change the sound of the room. With a really good PSM it may be slight, but it will change. In post I can choose what bg sound part of the recording I will use when I make my crossover from one channel to the next, you can't do that on set, so we can minimise noise in ways simply not possible mixing live just by very basic editing.

When dealing with a transition from boom to lav and back again, you have ONE chance to get it right, I can rehearse and change it as much as time allows to optimise the transition.

When you give me a mix track it will either need to be severely EQed because booms and lavs simply sound different as such. Lav placement and distances between mics, reflections etc adds more complexity to the job.

Or perhaps you are super talented mixers doing all the eq needed for the mics to match perfectly (this I doubt as again you don't have the same time we do in post to make it perfect), then when I DO have to use the ISOs I will then have to match your changing levels, filers and eq, and I will NEVER know what you did to the signal on the mix track so I will be chasing your changes. If you mixed the scene during the recording with levels and eq and filters changing during the take it just makes it even worse.

So to be able to use the mix track in dialog editing I will also get the severe drawback that I will not know what mics were used to create the mix when I need to remix from ISOs.

What parts are mainly boom and what parts are lav?

I need to know as they ALWAYS gets treated differently.

With a mix track I will not know and have to split it up by hand as I think it needs to be split to be able to process the different tracks to create a coherent sound.

When I have a mix track I have no "handles" I can't simply just extend one channel here where you may have cross faded the signals less than 100% perfect to get that exhale or last syllable.

There's simply a large amount of extra work to prep both a mix track and ISOs in editing. And it will clearly make mixing more complicated most of the time.

Mixing audio is a "hi tech sport" we use a multitude of tools to create the sound requested by directors and producers.

Using a premixed mix track will severly limit the options during the mix.

And one thing is for sure... We do NOT want to spend precious mix time to rebuild a scene from ISOs then and there if it is needed and the dialog editor only supplied a mix track.

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Regarding extended lav use in general:

Yes TV drama is getting worse, more and more wide and tight shoots limiting the usefulness of the booms from set. Low/mid budget films aren't much better either at times.

I am fortunate enough to not have to work on TV shows with such extreme time limits as Henchman does, and happy for it!

But regardless yes we do use a lot more lavs then we did in the old days when there were mostly single camera shoots.

What you may see on set as a "airy" boom, will at the end of it all just sound like a bad recording with bad intelligibility when it has to compete with sound fx, walla and music in a way you could never foresee on set.

As a mixer My preference is clear:

Tight boom>semi tight boom>lav>lav>lav>lav>lav> wide boom>really wide boom (is really mostly useless 90% of the time, honestly).

But this isn't always the case, a semi tight boom just may not get the "contact" and intimacy I need on a close up that has been shot w multiple cameras. Then I'm very grateful for a great sounding lav, and I'll take it to the bank and deliver what the scene needs.

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I am also fortunate enough to be in the position that when the post producer heard they wanted to do a lot of tight and wide shots on our next series, they made some tests and asked what I thought, and I said, yes it can be used, but dialog quality will suffer the more multi camera shoots there are and that it will be near impossible to deliver a really great dialog sound under those circumstances.

He agreed with me and decided to ban multi camera shoots unless it was totally necessary to make a scene work as he wanted the best possible sound for the show.

Those types of phone calls make me a happy man as that will mean more and better booms, and more individual slates where lines will be repeated making replacements and avoiding ADR easier.

If you made it through reading this far, thank you for taking the time to read and spending the time trying to understand a mixers point of view in these matters.

Sincerely

Erik Guldager, Sweden.

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Erik, I don't think any PSM is asking you or other post guys/gals to only use our mix track, even though for decades this is all post had to deal with and I must say I'm often more pleased with the final sound tracks from then as compared to todays mixes. I'm perplexed by the disregard for the mix and the love of the lav you & Mark and others seem to have. I'm happy to mic everybody as well as boom the hell out of any shot I record, but what do you suggest I turn in for the editor to begin cutting with? For the Director to listen to on the set? Just the ISO's? I think we all know how that would sound. A PSM's gig is to make each shot sounds like it looks. If i have a shot of a couple in bed am I to waste my time and Post's with  2 lavs on them that can't be used? I think there is a mind set that a lav is a magic thing that solves problems. I think many don't understand the limitations of lavs in practical film making.

Personally I would never tell a Post person what to do on their end.  I would invite any Post mixer to visit me and to record my days work. It involves more than laving up actors and hitting the red button.

CrewC

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No, I get you. We all want what may not be attainable in the course of making product. I love 1 camera. I love rf. I love lav's on rf's. Best tool we have on certain type shots. They are just not the best tool for all the shots. The best tool set is to get people who know what they want and how to get it from every department in front and behind the camera. When that happens you get something well made. Most of the time it's just product we end up with. Either way, at the end of the day, I'm mixing a track as my primary responsibility and ISO'ing the elements I use for that track. If those who hire me want lav's on all and will pay for it.... Fuckin A. They sign the checks. I hear Mick singing "Ya can't always get what you want" as I type.

CrewC

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Erik, I don't think any PSM is asking you or other post guys/gals to only use our mix track, even though for decades this is all post had to deal with and I must say I'm often more pleased with the final sound tracks from then as compared to todays mixes. I'm perplexed by the disregard for the mix and the love of the lav you & Mark and others seem to have. I'm happy to mic everybody as well as boom the hell out of any shot I record, but what do you suggest I turn in for the editor to begin cutting with? For the Director to listen to on the set? Just the ISO's? I think we all know how that would sound. A PSM's gig is to make each shot sounds like it looks. If i have a shot of a couple in bed am I to waste my time and Post's with 2 lavs on them that can't be used? I think there is a mind set that a lav is a magic thing that solves problems. I think many don't understand the limitations of lavs in practical film making.

Personally I would never tell a Post person what to do on their end. I would invite any Post mixer to visit me and to record my days work. It involves more than laving up actors and hitting the red button.

CrewC

Crew, it's not at all about love for lavs. I love and prefer booms, use them most of the time when possible. I fight at length to avoid just using just lavs for a scene if at all possible. But a lot of the time it just doesn't work.

It's about getting sound that works well to tell the story, gives us a good chance to deliver a mix with good intelligibility, gives us as rerecording mixers a sporting chance to do our job and deliver on time, according to spec and keeping the client happy.

You will NEVER know on set what camera angle will be used during editing on a tight & wide shot. So how do you mix it? Wide? Tight? In between? And neither will work well in most situations. As they are likely to cut between both cameras as well.

And yes I applaud PSM that turn in a really good mix for the editors to use, it will tell the editor and director what qualities there are sonically during a scene that would otherwise only be possible using a dialog editor to prep the scene ahead of actual editing. So what you do and deliver is really important! The better it sounds the better the edit will sound, the more it will correspond to what we will then do in post. And obviously whatever you mix is also what is heard in the cans on set, what is heard during dailies and the basis of decisions about sound on set.

It does not mean it is a great and usable track for post, it just won't be most do the time.

And yes on some types of projects with insane time schedules a good mix track might be just what is needed to get the dialog good enough rather than wading through all the ISOs and spending time on creative work rather that corrective dialog editing. But that is no way to deal with dialog for a drama or a feature.

I have enormous respect for PSMs and boomers, I know I do not know what you folks know about getting the best sound possible on set. So I rely on your expertise to give me the best source material possible.

Please respect what we do as mixers as well. Your job on set is to deliver the best sound possible giving as many good sonic options for the rerecording mixer as possible while focusing on one thing, to capture great sounding dialog.

Edit: this does not mean I want you littering the set with extra mics for "sonic options" that just results in recording 99% crap, this means that every mic recorded gets the attention it needs to sound as good as it possibly can.

On our end our job is similar but also very different, delivering a mix that works well, pleases the client and sounds as good as we can make in the time we have available, and we will do that by any means we have access to.

So, please do take care to make sure those lavs sound as good as possible because we may need them in situations you do not realise.

Lavs should simply not just be recorded as emergency support as they will have to be used more often than you think. And the lavs need your love to.

Otherwise your recordings will sound worse in the end as we may have no other choice than to use that lav with clothes rustling, buried in all that cloth making it sound really bad.

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Again... I am happy to be remixed. I cannot pretend that my mix would be as good, given the disadvantage of not knowing which camera is going to be used and what the actor is going to do.

I do, however, object to a whole scene being mixed to lavs because a couple of lines into the scene some sound editor, who has been told to not listen to the mix, has abandoned the boom track because he/she went to the lav ISOs after the boom ISO "missed a line".

If the mix is listened to, it can be determined that the boom track might be good for the remaining 90% of the scene (in TV that's ALL the close ups). Time could be better spent doing a bit of remix on the opening, then working with a single boom track for the remainder.

As Crew wrote, it's not as simple as just putting on a lav and hitting record. Yesterday, for example, an actress adjusted her sweater on her only line. Noisy shirt and scratchy bra. It was NOT a good time to ask if the performance could be changed. The lav wouldn't work. We had shadow issues and the boom op very skillfully managed to strategically hide several shadows to get the lines beautifully. This was also the last line of a scene where the lav played on only one character. If the dialog editor abandons the boom track after discovering #1 is on lav only, it'd be almost impossible to mix the scebe with the other two lavs that were nearly impossible to get clean.

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Well, whenever you folks give me or one of our editors a great sounding boom, I promise we do use it, whenever I turn to lavs it IS for a reason. Boom of axis or not reaching, actor suddenly turns away from the boom making the boom unintelligible for example.

I don't play lavs because I love to fiddle with less than perfect sound (because they don't sound as good as the boom requiring more work), I do it because I have to.

If an editor threw out perfectly good boom parts just because a single or two lines had to use lavs I would be very crossed and be a really upset mixer. They wouldn't get many more chances if they didn't apologize and not repeat the mistake.

I also get upset when editors just work and deliver the boom when it is not 100% and there are good sounding lavs that compliment it. That makes me equally upset.

And when a scene plays perhaps only 50% boom or less then we are getting to the point where there is no sonic reason to keep the boom as it only increases workload and as the boom has to be compromised to match the crappy sounding lavs that will have to be used because the boom isn't working. Then I may as well use lavs for all the lines in the scene, because that may end up with a more uniform sound that matches the picture in a better way.

There are no rights or wrongs to this, the end result is everything, the way to get there is only a journey. Each step is as important as the next.

When you deliver a great sounding boom in 90% of the time and I have to make do with less then perfect lavs for the rest, I promise I won't complain.

But when I get booms recorded that just isn't good enough and lavs that clearly no one listened to or even noticed it needed reattaching between takes as it rattles and scratches away. Then you simply haven't done the best job you could.

And this is the way we often get sound to post, thus the frustration in the OP and showing in my posts.

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Very seldom do I hear wires on the shows I work. My mixer plays the wires in the wides but I'm all over it in coverage. Most of the time post will use the wide for such a short amount of time that they'll use my boom track from the first cut for the wide as well. On camera dialogue (at least) is boomed and I'll always fight to have separate runs of wides and tights with mixed results. Kinda aggravates me to hear that some shows don't even have a boom operator. Sounds like a poor production decision if they aren't allowing the mixer to have one if he wants one.

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Very seldom do I hear wires on the shows I work. My mixer plays the wires in the wides but I'm all over it in coverage. Most of the time post will use the wide for such a short amount of time that they'll use my boom track from the first cut for the wide as well. On camera dialogue (at least) is boomed and I'll always fight to have separate runs of wides and tights with mixed results. Kinda aggravates me to hear that some shows don't even have a boom operator. Sounds like a poor production decision if they aren't allowing the mixer to have one if he wants one.

Are you really sure about that? ;-)

With a good sounding lav placed in the hair or so, I can make it match a boom so closely that I think you'd be very hard pressed to be more right then wrong saying what is what.

I can also make booms sound like lavs but there's not much enjoyment in that.

With lavs in close proximity to clothing it's easier to hear the difference obviously.

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I doubt any sound team ever just puts a lav on someone without making it the best sounding they can at the time. We all want them to sound good for us and Post. But we (PSM's) are most likely using them in various degrees on any given shot. The thing about PSM is it is a real time event and the fact is you live it once, without the luxury of trying out the options available. Those options are for your team and I'm certainly happy to deliver as much as I can for you all. If the best final mix is redone on your end or mine from the day makes no difference to me personally other than I hope we are not embarrassed and we can all say, "I did that" and be proud.

As for mixing wide and tight on the day, we of course have to mix tight using a lot of rf's for that reason alone. It may not produce the best sound because a wide shot seldom used is dictating a recording style, but I didn't make that decision, I only live with it.

CrewC

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