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Posted

I'm getting close to a final mix on a personal documentary that I've been working on for the last five years.  We are in post sound right now, and starting to look at studios for a final theatre mix.  I'm getting sticker shock, and wondering exactly what I'd be getting from a day in a mix theatre that I can't do on my own.  In an ideal world, I'd really like to have a pair of experienced ears on my film in a theatre that will let me know what it sounds like in an actual screening.  But it's not an ideal world, so I'm trying to figure out how important this is.

 

My sound designer and I are both location sound mixers.  I'm confident we can get it sounding good on the gear that we have.  I have decent speakers, but they aren't calibrated professional monitors, and they are in an office (well, living room converted to office) not a theatre.  Neither of us have experience mixing for a theatre or mixing to a delivery spec.

 

My plan was to bring our pre-mix to a mix theatre for a final day so we know what it would sound like in a calibrated space, and to have someone more experienced than us help us through a delivery mixdown process, a process that I'm very fuzzy on what's actually involved.

I guess what I'm asking, is, if I had to, is this something I could do myself in my home office, and what, specifically, would a post mixer be doing to turn our pre-mix into a final delivery mix?  Would love to hear some experienced post-sound perspectives on what I'd be losing by trying to do it myself, and how important is getting a day in mix theatre for a very indie feature documentary.

Posted

In the extra-lobudg mostly doco-indie world I live in going to a real dubstage for a playdown is manifestly not in the budget.  What is the point of doing this if you can't fix anything while there?   And making your mix project "dubstage friendly", ie exporting a project on which real work could be done, can be extremely time consuming.  I've had directors who insisted on this, and the resulting session did not make the movie better, I thought.  (It was in fact a distraction from the real work at hand.) Mix notes you can make, as you say, in a regular theatre, especially if you get a cooperative and knowledgeable projectionist.  Where I live (SF area) the Roxie Theatre in SF has a special program that allows filmmakers to screen in the theatre midweek midday for a very nominal fee (paying the projectionist, essentially).  See if you can find a good theatre near you that will work with you. 

Posted

I have done mixes/playdowns etc in both the Stag and in SS dubstages.  The issue for an indie and especially doc filmmaker is that those Meyer sound systems do not reflect the reality of mediocre (mostly JBL or QSC) theatre B chains.  You are hearing your film through the theatre equivalent of a test instrument:  I have heard things in mixes @ the Stag that I never heard again, anywhere...  In the hands of really experienced mixers who are given the time and support to do their work and can build the mix from the sound cut up great things will happen that will translate well.  If you are only going there to listen once through and will not be able to make any changes I have found that the info you get is not as valuable as playing down in a real theatre where we might have more time to go over sections a few times, and perhaps bring a remix back for a 2nd listen on a later day.  The difference in price (if one is paying retail, ie doesn't have a personal connection) is dramatic.  I am not trying to sell anyone on not building their mix in a real dubstage if they have the money to do so, but am proposing a methodology that has worked well for me on lower budget projects where that kind of work is not affordable, for decades now.

Posted

I may have screwed up the context of Philip's post since I deleted my post which preceded it.

 

I said that while I am not a post mixer and I don't know anything about mixing, I worked at Skywalker Sound. I questioned the value of getting a beautiful mix in a calibrated dubbing stage only to have it not sound the way you expect once it gets to theaters and is watched on iPhones*.

 

But Skywalker Sound noticed this years ago. They did these beautiful mixes only to find out they couldn't hear the dialog or other features of the mix in a regular theater. Thus, along came THX to standardize theater performances. But theaters aren't THX theaters. So Skywalker audited theaters for their noise levels and spectrum of that noise. They duplicated the average of that audit and they have a noise generator that simulates the 'average' theater. They can turn this on and off in the dubbing stage. This aids them to do mixes that will be heard and understood out in the wild.

 

That may be one thing you can get from a mixing stage or as suggested, go listen to it in a regular theater.

 

*One of the Skywalker folks lamented to me that they do these beautiful mixes only to have the movies watched on phones.

Posted

We're in an apples vs oranges thing here.  I know very well that the SS mixers  have developed very sophisticated techniques for ensuring that the mixes they build translate everywhere--I have experienced this first hand.  What I thought was being discussed here was going to such a facility for a simple playdown of a mix made elsewhere, one not built @ that facility and with no time budgeted for making a version of the mix project that could have meaningful work done on it there and no budget for having the room for long enough to do that work and then compare/view/tweak it.  If what is being asked about is demoing a mix made in a small studio to see how it translates to a real theatre then what I suggested has worked for me quite well.  The "regular" theatre is the sort of environment an indie film (esp. a doc) will play in @ festivals, vs a ultra hifi SS type screening room where it will probably never be shown again.   I will say that often where such a demo screening ends up taking place is often down to the personal connections of the filmmaker, so we go wherever we can go, ultimately, and learn what we can in the short time we have the place.

Posted

Thank you both!  It sounds like I could get away making mix notes in an actual theatre (I think Cineworks is a local filmmaker cooperative that could get me access to the modest theatre), so I'll look into that.

 

I'm still a bit unclear what I would be missing in terms of delivery workflow, but I don't think my delivery specs will be particularly stringent, so I guess I'll take the attitude that I can figure it out on my own.  Would still love any insight you can give about the process of turning a pre-mix into a deliverable.

 

Paul, I hear you about the disconnect between a high-end mixing studio and people watching on their phones.  I think music has much the same problem, and I know it has become a practice to test mixes on multiple types of playback devices, including cheap earbuds.  I kind of think my pre-mix will stand in for a decent TV mix, and I'll consider doing a pass listening through a phone if I end up finishing for home access (home streaming / DVD).  I still think making a separate theatre mix is worth doing for the festival circuit, but I'm imagining that my pre-mix will be closer to what I want for a consumer / broadcast release.

Posted

What deliverables you make is up to who you are working for, and what is in any contract they've signed.  In cases where the filmmakers have no real "deal" for the film at the time of the mix (common in indies and docs) I mix to the current PBS level standards and give them a 5.1, a stereo and a set of split-stereo "food group" stems as standard.  If they need more than that (especially something like a fully-filled M+E) then that is a separate negotiation (and more money).

Posted
On 1/26/2025 at 3:41 PM, The Documentary Sound Guy said:

I'm still a bit unclear what I would be missing in terms of delivery workflow, but I don't think my delivery specs will be particularly stringent, so I guess I'll take the attitude that I can figure it out on my own. 

 

Are you familiar with making DCP files for theater presentation? Just a thought.

Posted

https://dcpomatic.com/

 

This is a free app that makes DCPs that have worked for me in several theatres.  Just follow the directions and make sure to get it to the theatre several days ahead of your screening to make sure it works with their system.  If the theatre allows it you can upload the whole deal to them or you can drop it off ahead of time on whatever flavor of drive they want (in my experience exfat has been fine).  Since they always seem to want to play off their own server, I have never needed to deal with EXT etc drives.  If you have your 5.1 stems together making the DCP is non-rocket science: the app prompts you.

 

Posted

Sorry, but making a DCP requires some knowledge about color space and how to convert that to proper XYZ.
If you do it wrong you will end up with either overexposure and crushed blacks, or vice versa, grey black and grey white.
(I've made a hundred or so, I used a very nice affordable package that is unavailable now due to the fact that the developer suddenly was beamed out of this world.)

Posted

No it doesn't, if all you are about is making a temp demo from a viewing copy to listen to in a theatre.  Those of us successfully using DCP-O-Matic for this are not trying to make DCPs for distribution, we send fillmakers to Cinematiq or SimpleDCP etc for that.  But for making something you can watch, and more to the point listen to in a real theatre our homebrew DCPs have worked flawlessly and saved filmmakers thousands of dollars.  We make no claims whatsoever about the accuracy of the picture in our DCPs--they are totally about getting to hear the mix via a real theatre B chain.

Posted
3 hours ago, Bouke said:

Sorry, but making a DCP requires some knowledge about color space and how to convert that to proper XYZ.
 

Davinci takes care of this.

 

 

Sound Guy, here is a good tutorial about the whole DCP rigamarole and how to do it with Davinci. It's pretty thorough.

 

 

 

 

 

Posted

In all cases, become friends with an operator at the local theatre, and get time for screeners.
(Make a couple of test files to see if the audio mapping is correct, and how the colors / levels turn out.)
Setting up a home DCP player is a hell, as there is no simple way of calibrating the whole stuff.

Once you've got a winning team, document it, and save a couple of frames as a reference.
(The next version of yadda WILL change / break something, it's always like that....)

 

 

 

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