How many "room tones" does one need?

[atheisticmystic]

Buenos Morning!

I'm struggling with a sound edit that I recorded in 12/10 that the re-recording mixer is previewing.

We shot at a dilapidated cabin in the desert over four days; the cabin's windows and doors were missing, and so there was always environmental noise including heavy wind and rain. I thought I was being proactive by getting out to the location each morning before anyone else and recording large chunks of "tone" (with the same mic used during production) that I could lay down as a mono fill track, and that would capture a variety of ambient noise.

The re-recording mixer looked at my PT sessions, and said I should have filled my DX with "tone from each scene" rather than "cut DX around the (chunked tone) ambiences".

What was the error in my production strategy?

Would it have been better to record room tone during each scene?

How many times during a shoot at one location does one record room tone?

Que tengan un awesome Saturday!!!

[Q]

You would record room tone any time the conditions in the room change significantly, and yes, even scene to scene if necessary. Number of people, number of cameras, whether or not door are open or closed, etc. can all change the sound of a room. And if your are using it to fill in between dialog edits, the room tone should be a recording of how the room sounded while the cameras were running. Remember, digital cameras these days have fans that start and stop during use. This also changes the sound in your room.

[Philip Perkins]

For shot fills we often patrol the sync takes looking for bits of silence we can cut in. On many locations the baseline "room tone" changes frequently from moment to moment, esp if you have wind or traffic or rain etc etc.. The quiet early-day tone you recorded would be useful, but isn't a substitute at all for getting bits of tone from time period when the sync scenes were actually shot. Making fills work is one of the major labors of dialog editing, it sometimes requires a great deal of work to make the dialog flow seamlessly.

phil p

[gpiegari]

Great that you were putting in the extra effort, but what you recorded in the early

mornings was more like "ambience" and not "room tone". As others have stated, room tone

is essentially the silence within the scene. Ideally the exact same mic, at the same gain,

in the same position as when the dialogue was recorded. The "silence" of that space.

Good ambient tracks are also an essential part of the sonic construction, but serve a very

different purpose than room tone.

Glen

[studiomprd]

" Would it have been better to record room tone during each scene? "

Well, actually, that is what you do, and that is the room tone you need to edit.

Most takes can offer up a few little pieces that can easily be looped, and sometimes, when the set gets quiet after "roll", you can engineer a little by holding off for a couple seconds before "speed". There is also often a pause before "action" that provides good room tone for editing.

The early morning ambience's you recorded might be used if the scene was actually shot on a nice quiet sound stage.

[atheisticmystic]

Thanx Phil, Glen, and Brian...

As the shoot had eight actors in improv mode for the entire shoot, in this "open to the exterior", creaky, raised-wood (I'm not frustrated, I swear) cabin, would you have assertively and professionally held people for room tone throughout the day?

And Phil, now that I'm finding mostly creak, overlap improv, and crew on my sync tracks, are there no options for fill, and did I royally bone myself in one of those "so painful that I'll never commit that error again" fashions???

Thank you for your time and effort comrades!

[atheisticmystic]

Great "engineering" strategy Senator... duly noted for the future.

[RPSharman]

I typically only get room tone in a situation like yours, when the room has a very specific sound which is loud enough to encroach into the s/n ratio of the performance, and which likely cannot be masked by ambiance in post.

I especially get room tone if there's an uncontrollable noise which might change during coverage, or which appears after coverage has been shot.

Room tone is hard to get, and therefore should be asked for very selectively. Get 30 seconds. You only need a few seconds, but that's all you'll get in 30 seconds with a room full of people. And as pointed out, conditions must match. So best to keep all people, including actors wearing lavs, and your boom in the same spot. And noisy cameras will need to roll to be in the same "mode" as while rolling.

[studiomprd]

" did I royally bone myself "

no, the movie-maker royally boned her/him-self.

[studiomprd]

well said RVD!

[joecrabb]

If the situation is one where I know for certain that I'm going to need room tone, I will try to get the AD aside before the shot as RVD suggested. As a wrinkle on the "timing in his/her head" aspect I like to ask if we can get the 30 seconds at the start of the scene before action is called on the first take. Often times this can guarantee a quiet set as the crew is quiet for the first take anyway.

This is really effective on hosted shows (cooking, crafting, etc.) where the hosts will stand there for the 30 seconds and then just go right into the show without stopping.

[Jan McL]

In some situations, a well-placed "tone" mic may be employed and recorded on its own iso track.

Like for the INT dinner scene that has rain FX for its light on the windows. I set a mic up in one place (farthest from the dialog yet in the room) for all the takes so it would be the same, focusing on the FX.

-- Jan

[Philip Perkins]

In some situations, a well-placed "tone" mic may be employed and recorded on its own iso track.

Like for the INT dinner scene that has rain FX for its light on the windows. I set a mic up in one place (farthest from the dialog yet in the room) for all the takes so it would be the same, focusing on the FX.

-- Jan

Bless you!

phil p

[Marc Wielage]

What was the error in my production strategy? Would it have been better to record room tone during each scene? How many times during a shoot at one location does one record room tone?

I'll add to what's said above by commenting that a good dialog editor can go through unused takes (or even copies of used takes), eliminate all the dialog, and salvage room tone inbetween lines or even words. By judicious use of cross-fades, taking care to avoid crew noise, coughs, footfalls, clothing noise, and so on, they can typically extract a minute or more of room tone from the actual dialog takes.

John Purcell's excellent book Dialogue Editing for Motion Pictures: A Guide to the Invisible Art goes into this in great detail. Purcell stresses the need to avoid laying down room tone on top of dialog, instead using crossfades to add room tone only to the gaps inbetween lines, so that you never have the problem of "double roomtone" (a roomtone track + actual dialog).

I try to grab at least :20 seconds of roomtone at the end of every scene (before a location change) but not on every single camera set up. At the pace people work at nowadays, it's hard even to get that. Everybody gripes about it, but I've been thanked for it later on by the producers. On my last shoot, the DP was helpful enough to ask if I'd like to record room tone with the camera rolling, which was actually thoughtful (and correct).

--Marc W.

[Jan McL]

Bless you!

phil p

Good. Glad this idea works for post. Have never heard from the post folks relative to this strategy for ongoing friendly fire situations, but it made too much sense not to do it.

Did a similar plant mic thing when I knew the kids would be let out of school during the course of our day for night work, with the hope that post could phase reverse the tracks and reduce the impact of the sounds of 100's of joyously loud kids in the "middle of the night". It's been years, but it's possible, right?

How ya been, Phil?

-- Jan

[atheisticmystic]

And the same strategy applies to exteriors?... Grabbing as many moments of tone as the production will tolerate/allow?

[Jan McL]

Yes, Steven, this also applies to exteriors.

The boom generally finds good what-i-like-to-call 'air' - tone clean of the dialog that captures a wide image of the background that (equally importantly) does not phase with the wires.

It's my thinking that should a transient offensive sound pass by (e.g. aircraft or vehicle), post would thereby be able to cut one quiet angle with the noisy angle via extending the offensive sound to a logical cross-fade moment over the other, quieter take.

No?

-- Jan

P.S. I sometimes use a boom in yelling-down-fom-the-window scenes where I ask the op to point at the buildings across the street to give me more slapback and enhance the echo (depending on the emotional content).

[Christian Spaeth]

In some scenes when it is apparent that ambience tracks will be added in post (such as an office ambience etc.) the time and effort of getting an extra room tone recording can be saved, as the added ambience will likely bridge the gaps.

[RPSharman]

In some scenes when it is apparent that ambience tracks will be added in post (such as an office ambience etc.) the time and effort of getting an extra room tone recording can be saved, as the added ambience will likely bridge the gaps.

Agreed

[stevegrider]

A sound-friendly director I used to work with would simply wait several seconds after the conclusion of a take to call "cut". He realized that was the time the crew would be at its quietest, and all mics would be in use. I was able to get little chunks of room tone this way, and seldom needed to ask for more the end of a scene. This guy was old school, these days it seems like many directors barely wait for the last syllable before they call "cut".

[Marc Wielage]

A sound-friendly director I used to work with would simply wait several seconds after the conclusion of a take to call "cut". He realized that was the time the crew would be at its quietest, and all mics would be in use. I was able to get little chunks of room tone this way, and seldom needed to ask for more the end of a scene

I worked on a couple of Tyler Perry movies in post, and I was always impressed that on the last take of a scene in a specific set, he would yell, "cut and sound keep rolling for room tone please! Settle, everyone!" And damned if we wouldn't get :30 solid seconds of perfect room tone. That's the first and only time I've ever seen that in dailies.

Perry is another guy who does very few takes. They do tons of rehearsal prior to production, and they nail it in 2-3 takes, tops. Very efficient shoots. (And I believe he was just named by Forbes as the highest-paid celeb in Hollywood, as I recall.)

--Marc W.

[studiomprd]

" It's been years, but it's possible, right? "

errr, maybe, sort-of, but generally speaking, no!

" when it is apparent that ambiance tracks will be added in post "

and they will have to be added to the dialog, too.