-
READ BEFORE POSTING!
- If posting a video, please post HERE, unless it is a video as part of an advertisement and then post it in this section.
- If replying to threads please remember this is the Promotion area and the person posting may not be open to feedback.
watch M&E Tracks
- Thread starter sonnyboo
- Start date
Saved the best for last I see. A lot of really good info here.
Every single time I see one of these I learn something new. Thank you Sonnyboo.
Both. Some gun shots were stock, others were re-recorded. There is a lot of foley work done by the post-sound house in L.A., clothes rustling, guns clikcing, etc.
- Ross
Thats very good. Its nice to see the film with the sound effects and then without.
I was watching footage of Star Wars sans the sound effects and it was almost laughable. It was the scene where Priness Leia was watching her home planet being blown apart by the Death Star. Some guy in the background yelled 'bang' when the planet blew up.
It was funny really...but in the finished product with the music and the proper sound of a planet blowing up after being shot with a laser - made it so real and fantastic.
I was watching footage of Star Wars sans the sound effects and it was almost laughable. It was the scene where Priness Leia was watching her home planet being blown apart by the Death Star. Some guy in the background yelled 'bang' when the planet blew up.
It was funny really...but in the finished product with the music and the proper sound of a planet blowing up after being shot with a laser - made it so real and fantastic.
Upgraded this to HD on Vimeo
This is a bit old, but still a good video to watch for people doing features. https://vimeo.com/64859583
This is a bit old, but still a good video to watch for people doing features. https://vimeo.com/64859583
There are two considerations about M&E mixes which is not really made clear in the video but are worth noting for those unfamiliar with making commercial content:
1. Regardless of whether a distributor or broadcaster is actually planning to licence the rights to your film or TV program to a foreign market, it is standard procedure for an M&E mix to be one of the required deliverables. Obviously for a film festival an M&E mix is not required but for virtually any type of commercial distribution (with the exception of internet distribution) an M&E mix will be necessary.
2. All the sound effects have to be in the M&E mix, this also means that no sound effects can be present in the dialogue stem and this is where life gets tricky for the film maker. Even in the clip of film just with the production sound, there were all kinds of noises in addition to the dialogue, clothes rustling, rattles and other noises from the guns, a slap, a fake explosion, etc. None of these sounds can be present in the dialogue stem, they all have to be present only in the sound effects stem. If these production recorded sounds occur between lines (or words) of dialogue they can be easily cut out and moved to the SFX stem (if they are usable) but if they occur during the dialogue it's likely to be impossible to remove them. So, not only does the commercial film/program maker have to budget for all (or the vast majority) of the sounds to be manufactured/recreated/sourced during audio post but also budget and time has to be allocated for a considerable amount of ADR, even though the sync dialogue might appear to be of acceptable quality.
G
1. Regardless of whether a distributor or broadcaster is actually planning to licence the rights to your film or TV program to a foreign market, it is standard procedure for an M&E mix to be one of the required deliverables. Obviously for a film festival an M&E mix is not required but for virtually any type of commercial distribution (with the exception of internet distribution) an M&E mix will be necessary.
2. All the sound effects have to be in the M&E mix, this also means that no sound effects can be present in the dialogue stem and this is where life gets tricky for the film maker. Even in the clip of film just with the production sound, there were all kinds of noises in addition to the dialogue, clothes rustling, rattles and other noises from the guns, a slap, a fake explosion, etc. None of these sounds can be present in the dialogue stem, they all have to be present only in the sound effects stem. If these production recorded sounds occur between lines (or words) of dialogue they can be easily cut out and moved to the SFX stem (if they are usable) but if they occur during the dialogue it's likely to be impossible to remove them. So, not only does the commercial film/program maker have to budget for all (or the vast majority) of the sounds to be manufactured/recreated/sourced during audio post but also budget and time has to be allocated for a considerable amount of ADR, even though the sync dialogue might appear to be of acceptable quality.
G
Could you explain why is it so fundamental for the dialog tracks to have not a single hint of sound effects in it ? What's the problem if at some point, a cloth rustling is in there ?
You can sometimes get away with a hint of a sound effect in the dialogue stem but the general rule is nothing in the dialogue stem but dialogue. I've noticed that cloth rustling is rarely used as a sound design tool by no/micro budget film makers but in commercial film/TV it is a very commonly used sound effect used for a variety of functions, the two most common functions are to focus the audience's attention on a character or event which is not centre screen and/or to create movement and/or pace in a part of a scene which would otherwise be lacking. These clothes rustling sounds must be in the SFX stem (and therefore part of the M&E mix) but if these sound effects are in both the SFX stem and the dialogue stem you will have double the amount of clothes rustling sounds when you mix the dialogue stem, SFX stem and music stem to create the complete mix.
As I said, you may be able to get away with a hint of the SFX in the dialogue stem, provided it doesn't clash with the Foley created for the SFX stem and provided it doesn't add to the level of the Foley in the SFX stem. You also have to consider how strict the broadcaster's/distributor's QC is, and what amount or "hint" of sound FX in the dialogue stem is going to cause a QC failure.
G
I am by no means an expert on this topic, but I can tell you when I cut sound for my feature, each and every bit of dialogue was completely isolated, down to fractions of a frame, and looped room tone laid over on a separate track so that there weren't any noticeable shifts in background sound during the scene, which seems to happen in a lot of indies. This also makes the M&E mix a piece of cake, since I just need to shut off the dialogue tracks and re-export.
On the rare occasion when an important sound was recorded on top of a line of dialogue (e.g. door closing, cigarette lighter flicking, etc.), I first tried to replace the line with an alternate take in which the sound did not overlap. On the 1 or 2 occasions where that was not an option, I duplicated the sound on an effects track so it would still be present in the M&E mix.
Clothing rustle was all recorded as Foley tracks or, occasionally, imported from library effects.
The point is not that the clothing rustle is there, but the fact that it is missing.
The idea behind an M&E mix is that when the film is dubbed in a language other than the original no other sound work should need to be done.
Let's go with a specific example.
In the scene Tony cocks his pistol and puts it to Steve's head.
It was decided that the pistol cock recorded during production would be used in the final mix. If the sound edit was done correctly the pistol cock was placed on a sound effects track (as Greg/APE mentioned).
However, if the pistol cock remains on the dialog track there is no pistol cock in the M&E mix.
This one is fairly obvious, but a huge percentage of indie folk edit and mix sound themselves, and don't know proper audio post protocols, so the pistol cock remains on the DX track. It would have to be replaced along with the dubbed dialog, and the whole point of an M&E is that nothing but the dialog needs to be dubbed. Any sound effects that are missing from the mix will need to be replaced, increasing the cost of the dubbing process, infuriating the foreign distributor, and generally placing you on everyones sh!t list.
---------
Now we are getting into the more "scientific" and practical aspects of film sound.
I have mentioned often that your brain possesses an "editing and mixing" function. There are sounds that fill your world, and most of them are not "useful" to you most of the time, so your brain "mixes them lower" or "edits them out" so they do not distract you from what is important to you at the moment. It's a film cliché when a character says "It's too quiet." Yet the absence of a sound is a warning to our most primal selves - everything is not normal, so our fight or flight response awareness kicks up a notch. You're not paranoid or adrenaline-filled, but something is wrong so pay just a little more attention.
In the scene Tony cocks his pistol and puts it to Steve's head.
What other sounds are in this little example? There is Tony's jacket rustling when he cocks the pistol, but, more importantly, Tony's jacket rustles when he extends his arm and points the pistol at Steve's head. From a purely practical POV when someone extends their arm ("It's over there") your brain edits out/mixes down this very quiet, subtle sound. But when it comes to film sound if this clothing rustle is missing your primal "something is wrong" instinct kicks in. Now, obviously, seeing a pistol pointed at another human beings head does not fit with everyday life, but the missing cloth rustle will pull the viewer out of the illusion created by the filmmaker.
When it comes to M&Es missing details (like cloth) leave the dialog disconnected from the rest of the sound track, which will, of course, pull the viewer out of the film.
---------
The artistic side.......
Now, from a sound design point of view, having the clothing rustle may be extremely important to the tension of the scene. If Steve's tied up in a chair and watching Tony cock and aim the pistol his fight or flight instincts are at an extremely high level, and his senses are kicked into overdrive, so the director and sound team may make the cloth rustle very prominent in the mix to emphasize this fact.
Thank you both for your answers.
But I feel I meant something a bit different with my question. The sound FX you're talking about are 'wanted'. I'm talking about 'not specifically wanted FX but doesn't harm if it's there' and a cloth rustle falls often in that category (not the whole rustle for the whole shot/scene, just a bit of it).
What I mean is, APE mentioned spending lots of money on ADR because dialog and SFX got tangled during production. I can understand when it's an important sound like THE gun-shot that plays when Tony blows Steve's brains out. But some of them are not critical to the story and not critical for the ambiance either (the whole ambiance sound won't suffer if one-third of a second of one effect among many others is missing). Am I right ?
But I feel I meant something a bit different with my question. The sound FX you're talking about are 'wanted'. I'm talking about 'not specifically wanted FX but doesn't harm if it's there' and a cloth rustle falls often in that category (not the whole rustle for the whole shot/scene, just a bit of it).
What I mean is, APE mentioned spending lots of money on ADR because dialog and SFX got tangled during production. I can understand when it's an important sound like THE gun-shot that plays when Tony blows Steve's brains out. But some of them are not critical to the story and not critical for the ambiance either (the whole ambiance sound won't suffer if one-third of a second of one effect among many others is missing). Am I right ?
As sound guys we consider ALL sounds to be important. That 1/3 of a second may be subconsciously perceived by the audience as a discontinuity. That's part of the brains "editing and mixing" function that I was talking about. The absence of sound or the cutting off of a sound is a big instinctive "something is wrong" trigger.
I can hear the argument about old films versus new films, but as we become more detailed in our sound design processes our brains react more in "reality" mode than "we're being entertained" mode.
When I wear my dialog editor hat I do everything I can to eliminate "unwanted" sounds from the DX tracks, and then rebuild the soundscape from scratch when doing Foley and sound effects.
This is what APE and I mean when we discuss changing your way of thinking when it comes to sound-for-picture. As sound editors/designers/mixers our job is to create an immersive, believable sonic world using things like mics, recorders and speakers that capture and reproduce our world in a very unnatural way.