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What are you actually mixing?


Scott Selman

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Hello all,

 

I've been learning a lot since finally finding this site - even bought a great shotgun mic earlier today from a member on the board and I even learned to use my real name!!

 

Anyway - I hope to get slightly beaten around - but can someone tell me what you are mixing?  And by that I mean - we have these great recorders that record iso tracks, we even have wireless that can record their own iso tracks - so with all the outboard mixers I'm seeing on your carts - and 788/664 add on units --- why?

 

Is the goal for you to create the best two track mix for them to use in post and they'll only go to the iso tracks if needed? Is it just for the hop or IFB feeds - so everyone is getting the best possible sound in their ears?

 

I guess since I am usually a one man band- booming while wearing my mixer I can do my gain adjustments but don't always concentrate on what the L/R mix sounds like.

 

Thank you to Jeff and to all of you for this incredible resource - and I can't wait to learn and improve through osmosis!

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Is this spawned from you reading the importance of lavs posting? Truth be told I am mostly in the same boat as you. I thought that even in Hollywood that the modern LR or mono mix provided by mixers along with their isos was for dailies only. Much will disagree but I wouldn't want my mix I provided no matter how good I was at mixing down multiple tracks into a couple to be used for actual broadcast. With much much more time in post to do a precision dialogue mix to fit their needs I would rather them use my isos to make something really well done. I got out of live audio because of its lack of exacting precision/human error and staying power...unless working at the microbudget phase where everything goes straight to broadcast it doesn't make much sense to me either. For me in a reality setting I use the faders for yes IFB and camera feeds...while some are used for actual gain adjustments on the transmitter through zaxnet. 

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It is unreasonable to expect someone to produce a broadcast mix out of a bag, with multiple sources, with one hand on rotary faders, while watching actors and holding a boom with the other hand. Frankly, narrative work should never be done this way.

I expect my mixes to be mostly ready for broadcast on TV. On my last TV show, the studio received the cut for approval before it went to post audio, so my mix was important in that respect also. Honestly, I doubt most of them would know the difference between a proper mix and all faders up, but I try.

On scenes where I'm mixing multiple lavs, I have every expectation that they'll be remixed to picture. Lavs can't follow head turns and anticipate performance changes like a boom operator. Post has the advantage of the cut. If we knew exactly what the actors were going to do, and which shot and take was going to be used, we'd all be producing much better mixes.

On movies with time and money in post, I expect every scene to be remixed, although I try pretty hard to stick to one or two booms if the shooting style allows for it. If I were a RRM with time and budget, I'd remix everything. Why not? But I still work to get a nice mix. For me, for the director listening, for the editor cutting, for people watching dailies, etc.

The other thread discusses a TV workflow with virtually no time or budget. Henchman finds time is wasted even listening to the mix, so goes straight to boom ISO, and more often than not ends up remixing the lav tracks. The counter to that thread being that with no time or money, wouldn't using the production mix more often be more efficient. In his experience, not. I think that just shows the lack of skill of the production mixer. I certainly have "issues" from time to time, but I believe it'd be faster to use my mix and go to ISOs when fixing is required. But having no post experience, I might be wrong. Perhaps I'm not as good as I think I am.

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"Is the goal for you to create the best two track mix for them to use in post and they'll only go to the iso tracks if needed? Is it just for the hop or IFB feeds - so everyone is getting the best possible sound in their ears?"

 

Yes, to all above...  and yes to everything Robert has said about one-man-band jobs. At the very least on a scripted narrative, a mix is vital for everyone else's purposes (the director, script supervisor, camera operator(s), video assist, etc.). When time and budget allow (both production and post), the mix track is the fundamental and primary basis for the final mix on the project. 

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It is the only sound that anyone involved on the project will hear until post sound gets their hands on it, which comes fairly late in the game.  And when I say "anyone" for some projects, that means hundreds of people, including the producers, the directors, your peers, and anyone who would have a decision to hire you again on something else.

 

If something needs to have ADR done on it, the best way to check sync on a take is to compare it to the production track and when it's spot on, it will double the sound without "phasing".  Actors will also repeatedly listen to production sound to gauge the emotional match of their performance, more so than the look of the picture.

 

If the boom is good, you "mix the boom".  If the lavs are good as a backup, you mix the lavs.  You know that one is good enough for a select take, because you as the production mixer are mixing these in real time and your being paid your day rate to be competent enough to assemble this production mix on the fly and put your stamp of approval on the sound track as "good for sound".  Back in the day of mono or stereo Nagra tape recorders, obviously the role of the production mix was critical in getting something that could be used for the final mix.  Now that necessity is obsolete by multi-track technology, but the production mix is still the best real time QC check on your ISO recordings and proof of concept that a mix in post will work.

 

I've been doing a lot more unscripted television work lately than I did early in my career and something that I notice is that the production mix tends to drive the production.  It is what you are feeding to your producer's IFB and when some sort of action starts, they will hear it before they see it on their monitors (usually in some half state of working at the time).  Good camera ops will listen to the hop feed and it helps them keep on top of picking off shots.

 

Even in traditional narrative work "done right" DP's, operators, and even ACs will occasional ask for an IFB.  If you doing PMP through a windshield, as an operator you'll want to hear what's going on inside so you know when to adjust framing or pull focus.  On super tights and super critical shallow focus pulls, this all becomes near zero-margin-for error and the production mix along with body language all become important cues to utilize in order to get the camera work right.

 

Its great for the junior mixer that can go out and buy a 633 or Maxx as their first mixer and get wonderful multi-track recording capability with ISOs... but remember, the technology does not drive the job requirements, it is the production, and there are many productions out there for certain types of jobs (not narrative picture making) that expect a usable production mix.  When you work on these jobs, they generally don't pay for ISO recording capability, they pay for a 302, 442, or 552 type of mixer, it's up to you if you want to bring a more expensive machine to the party, but also bring your chops to deliver a 2-mix.  As soon as you say "well you can use the ISO track" you've suddenly completely changed their workflow, required post to put the brakes on, do something unconventional for them, and have basically cost the production a lot of time and money and make them think that perhaps they should have hired someone else more experienced.  In the field, if you are providing ISO for free, don't use them as a crutch for not getting the mix right.  Do your job as a mixer and insist on another take for sound, which begs the question, why are you rolling ISO again anyways when it's not asked for?

 

Everyone is free to go out and purchase whatever gear they want, but I really do believe that for people up and coming and working in markets similar to my own, not starting out as an apprentice, a 3rd, boom, 2nd mixer, 1st mixer, but going cowboy, buying gear, donning the bag, and putting shoes on the streets like myself, you should at some point have an honest to goodness analog mixer to cover these jobs.  It's a great backup, it's a great monitor controller for playback situations, good emergency input expander for your recording rig, and the appropriate thing to bring to a $450 labor + $200 gear ENG/EPK/small unscripted show that I see so often, rather than being "that guy" that brings a 788t to every job because that is the first piece of gear that they bought or had bought for them when they decided to become a sound mixer, reinforcing the idea in producers' heads that they can get that type of gear for peanuts.

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Thanks Tom - not only does this make a lot of sense - but I think it also helps answer my internal thoughts about why I would want to buy a 442 or something like that.  I currently use a Tascam DR680 but I think that not only would I benefit from the amazing preamps and direct outs - but it would be great for single system shoots where I am just feeding the camera.  I love this website!

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In my post experience we would use the mix in smaller spots and docs where time was a concern, usually the budget wouldn't allow us to slave over it. Also having the mix be a good representation of whats available allows the post sound supervisor on narrative to determine whats usable and whats ADR, these choices are made often before a dialog editor sees it especially in television.

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  • 2 weeks later...

We do have to keep in mind that a lot of newer generation editors don't know what the mix track is for. And truth of the matter these days is that on the rough edit, stringouts, or anything before audio post gets a hold of it, you get all your tracks mixed in together all the time. Yes it usually sounds like crap.

Sammy Huen

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The irony has always been that the lower budg the production, the more likely it is that the PSM's mix will be used.

phil p

This is very true. The majority of my work is reality, but when I do indie (low budget non-Union) movies from a cart and have a boom op, most of the film ends up being my mix. when I first switched to a multi track, there was part of me that wondered if I was "mixing for Comteks", but found out from producers that they really do rely on that mix as the dialog track. The post sound people have enough to do that they don't have the time to remix the dialog of the entire film.

Reality on the other hand, is like what Tom said. What you feed is what producers get attention to. At least the companies I usually work for, I know their post people will dig through the iso tracks. They are often shooting two or three camera coverage of the situation (with one sound mixer), so I never know what to focus on sound wise. I can't mix like I do in something scripted, but what I have in the headphones is with the producers know it's happening. This is not always the case, there are definitely some doc-reality shows that count on your mixing. It's good to know what the workflow is so you know how to attack it.

that's also why a lot of reality shows are moving away from a two channel camera hop and going with a Mono mix track. That's where the ERX is a perfect tool for reality. I always used a mono scratch track on narrative for dailies, but I'm getting a lot more usage out of them now.

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Another factor with your mix track is that you need something to send to the video camera.  It's true that many high end productions don't care about this (and the cam depts are very hostile to the idea of attaching an RX to the cameras) but every other scenario I work in insists that there be sound to the camera as a ref track and so they can hear something if they do a playback on set (since, nowadays, there is very often no video assist person on the job).  

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