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HOMEWORK: Principles Of Sound Design

In response to this thread:
http://www.indietalk.com/showthread.php?t=45351


Operating on the theory that "well begun is well finished"
Help me get this opening scene of my short "The Hot Rod" as well designed as I can!

The feel is comical, I have prerecorded music track that the band "in the bar" should be playing, I want the music to be heard through out the sequence

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ebn8Jra7fg&

Where do we start?


For those of you looking for a scene to practice sound design on, you can download this same footage from vimeo:
https://vimeo.com/57632322
Password: it-rt440

Id rather you didn't publicly pass this around too liberally, but feel free to post your results back here.

FYI: Production sound only: Recorded by IT member 2001Productions with a Marantz pdm660 (the old 16 bit one) Oade brothers moded ... bomming an AT835b mic, it sounded pretty dang good but still a bit hissy. Plus there was a light rain that you could hear as added hiss..

I used adobe audition CS5.5 patterned based noise reduction to clean it up, worked pretty good. There is a bit of "flanging" on one shot , I need to redo the NR on that one..
 
That reminds me of something I read in the DV Rebel guide from Stu :

"Kill your babies".

He mentioned that the editor almost never uses the take the Director would pick because he is emotionally attached to that take for whatever reason. Therefore, when you are a one man crew, you lhave to learn to not use THAT take if you haven't the faintest hint of "I'm using this for but I don't know why".
 
So yes, do the audio post last. This is not how it is done at the budgeted level where there is usually a very rough basic first cut within a couple of weeks (or less) after shooting wraps. This is what the audio post team works with. Yes, there will be many, many changes, but the budget has accounted for that...

Down here in the weeds at the l/n/m/m budget level, dealing with inexperienced editors and directors, I prefer the final locked edit.

While what you say is frequently how it works in practise, this is not how it is supposed to work! The audio post team/s are not supposed to start before they have a locked-off edit and this is usually stipulated in the contract. In practise though there are often 2 problems: 1. The audio post team have been contracted to start work on a particular date but the filming has run over schedule and/or 2. The director is sitting around for 2-3 months with nothing to do while the audio post team are working, except to ponder all the editing they have just done with the picture editor. Eventually the urge to make some minor "improvements" becomes overwhelming and the re-editing starts! Rarely, if ever, is re-conforming budgeted for because in theory it's never supposed to happen. There have been several commercial films released over the years with just a temp mix and no final mix because the production has run out of money doing re-conforms and the audio post was never completed!

G
 
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