So how is everyone mixing narrative these days?

[Oliver Mac]

I know a lot of you are staunch mono-mix supporters, a lot of you are split-track supporters (whether that's boom L, lavs R, or boom 1 L, boom 2 + plants R, etc etc), and I know this has been rather extensively discussed in the past, but most of those discussions seem to be from over a decade ago. How is everyone mixing in 2025 and beyond, with the ever-changing landscape of filmmaking (particularly narrative, of which I come from), shooting on 2, 3, 4+ cameras all the time, and ever increasing cast counts, plus all the other challenges of modern day filmmaking. Has anyone changed their approach towards production sound?

 

Those of you mixing to 2-tracks,what are you monitoring? What are you sending to IFBs? What do picture editors request from you these days? 

 

I predominantly do a mono-mix to track 1,isos to track 2 and beyond, but lately I've been experimenting with a 2-track mix. Not sure how I feel about it yet, but I shall keep on with it for the time being and try to refine it. 

[The Documentary Sound Guy]

I'm not narrative, but I mix to mono unless I have a mid-side or diegetic music source, in which case I'll do a 'real' stereo mix.  I don't do boom-L lavs-R unless I'm feeding camera, which has been happening less and less.

[Mungo]

Ready-to-use mono mix to all cameras via camera hop, sometimes (mostly when it's about music) a stereo mix. So the footage can immediately be used for viewing, broadcast and internet, primiraly social media.

Additionally providing a TC synced multitrack file.

[Philip Perkins]

The bigger the budget the more the iso stack is likely to be used.  The lower the budget the more likely your mono or 2 chan split mix will be used.  There are lots of reasons to make a full mix as you go regardless of where the iso stack is going, but don't expect the sort of sympathy, rehearsal or support that the sound dept got to do this in the '80s and before.

 

[Oliver Mac]

1 hour ago, Philip Perkins said:

The bigger the budget the more the iso stack is likely to be used.  The lower the budget the more likely your mono or 2 chan split mix will be used.  There are lots of reasons to make a full mix as you go regardless of where the iso stack is going, but don't expect the sort of sympathy, rehearsal or support that the sound dept got to do this in the '80s and before.

 

 

I agree completely. I always do a mix of some description, typically mono, so those with IFBs (and myself) can get a sense of how a scene is working.

 

I am curious though, as I don't often get to speak to the editors on a lot of the stuff I work on, how do the picture editors work with a 2-track mix (if they're doing things properly)? Would they have Trk1 coming out the left speaker, Trk2 coming out the right speaker, or would they have both tracks coming out the center? It feels to me that doing it the former way would be distracting to hear the different sources coming from different speakers, but the latter way would possibly introduce phasing on the tracks, as I assume the phase alignment happens later down the chain, during audio-post. 

[The Documentary Sound Guy]

In my experience, even when picture editors do know a bit about sound, they will probably either play it as delivered (so, L-boom, R-lavs), or they will pick whichever track sounds best to them and disable all the others.  When they don't know anything about sound, they'll just let it play however it shows up in their NLE and assume that the rest is someone else's problem.  If they are lucky enough to have an assistant editor, then it's more likely it will be the assistant's job of sync the footage and set it up with a sane default audio track (i.e. sync the mono mix track so the picture edit can cut to that as opposed to the polywave).

 

One thing that has become clear to me while doing post for the first time on my own project (where I did the recordings) and working with a sound designer for the first time is just how little communication there is between the production sound mixer and post, and how little time is spent actually going through our location recordings.  A lot of the "extra" pieces that I record opportunistically ... wild lines, ambience, foley fx, may simply never be discovered by post unless I tell them, and if those takes aren't well documented in sound reports, that pretty much guarantees they won't be found (perhaps unless the director requested them and knows to look for them).

[Philip Perkins]

It is absolutely true that if you don't fully notate audio extras, then tell post, production and anyone else who will listen about them you might as well not bother to record them.  They will never find them on their own.  I have personally delivered such recordings to editorial after the shoot to make sure they got them and understood what they were and why we recorded them.  On several shows we decided to roll certain kinds of sound WITH picture, to make sure that they got to editorial.  On those shows they really only paid much attention to sound that was WITH picture, and wild extras not at all.

[The Documentary Sound Guy]

One other possibility for picture editors.  If you give them a scratch track, more likely than not they will edit off the camera audio unless they are expecting to have to deal with the audio themselves at some point.  Or they'll sync the recorder audio because they are asked to, but then work purely with what they find on the camera.

[Oliver Mac]

On 2/8/2025 at 4:26 PM, Philip Perkins said:

It is absolutely true that if you don't fully notate audio extras, then tell post, production and anyone else who will listen about them you might as well not bother to record them.  They will never find them on their own.  I have personally delivered such recordings to editorial after the shoot to make sure they got them and understood what they were and why we recorded them.  On several shows we decided to roll certain kinds of sound WITH picture, to make sure that they got to editorial.  On those shows they really only paid much attention to sound that was WITH picture, and wild extras not at all.

 

That's very good knowledge to have. I typically take pretty comprehensive notes, but I hadn't thought to reach out directly to certain people to let them know that we recorded this thing, and why we did it. Occasionally I'll send off an email after a shoot day if there was a genuine problem that I wanted to address, but I haven't done it with regards to wild tracks, or ambiences, or things like that. I think I'll start doing that. Thanks!