I have an outdoor scene and in one or two clips there was some high winds causing the leafs on the tress to rustle around giving that "krrrussssaahhhhhhhhhhh" sound. it doesn't seem to blend well with the other shots and i have messed with it a lot but i can't seem to get rid of the rusting leaf sound. Any ideas?
leaf rusting removal background
- Thread starter mrpink89
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No specific tricks for this one, most likely the noise is quite broadband, throughout the mid freq range and maybe even into the high and low freq ranges. Therefore you'd be looking at the usual combination of tools; filters plus a bit of targeted EQ, maybe an expander and certainly NR. If you don't have all these tools, you'll need a pro who does or the other option is ADR. Depending on the skill of the pro, how much leaf noise you've got (and how much you need to reduce it), you might still be looking at ADR as the only viable solution.
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You steal lines of dialog from other takes; a little slicing and dicing, maybe some VocAlign, and voilà! It's fixed!
Spectral repair is a great tool, particularly good at dealing with tonal noise/s; whistles, sirens, whines, etc. It's also good for a range of other repair jobs, for example removing the odd click or impact type noise from otherwise clean room tone. However, it's generally of limited or no use against broader-band type noises (which occur over the dialogue).
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You're right!
I'm just trying to show off my new found audio expertise. heh heh.
Great advice as usual. There i no way I can ADR any of it. I'm gonna try my best. What would any of you guys recommend for the future when I film in the woods? i don't want to cancel a shoot because it's to windy. maybe record some wind passing through leaves and use it like a room tone?
The reason that room tone works is consistency. The room tone recorded just after the shot needs to be virtually identical to the room tone recorded as part of the shot, thereby allowing your specifically recorded RT to be used interchangeably and invisibly with the RT captured under the dialogue. This raises the issue of where that point of "invisibility" exists because it's significantly different on say a laptop as compared to say a cinema or even a half decent home cinema system. In fact, this issue of consistency is a biggie and I generally don't like to mention to filmmakers that somewhere around 50% of the time their recorded RT is useless and I have to revert to manufacturing some from the actual take itself.
Baring in mind the above, your suggestion raises three issues:
1. Although it may superficially sound like it, wind and even more so, wind passing through trees/leaves (or other materials) is never truly consistent. The reason it may superficially sound consistent is that the human ear/brain is insensitive to gradual change. Unfortunately though, it's exceptionally sensitive to sudden change (even relatively tiny change) and of course intercutting RT results in just such a sudden change. To give a visual analogy; think of two different visual patterns, A and B. Hard cut from A to B and the difference is obvious, smoothly and gradually morph from A to B over a period of say 30 secs or so and the difference is less obvious. Sound perception is different to visual perception though, smoothly morphing over this period of time would not make the difference between A and B less obvious, in all likelihood it would make the difference completely imperceivable! However, cut out a section of the morph, even just a second or so, butt up the remaining material and that very subtle but sudden change becomes instantly noticeable to the human ear/brain.
2. If it's sometimes impossible to match RT even in a relatively quiet and stable interior environment like a bedroom or sitting room, how much more impossible is it going to be in a relatively noisy and unstable acoustic environment like a windy forest/wood?
3. Although RT is technically sound rather than dialogue, in film all the RT is by necessity dealt with by the dialogue editor and forms part of the dialogue stem, rather than the Sound FX stem/s. Although specific to each location and, as mentioned above, variable even within the same location (over time), RT is fairly nondescript. This means that loosing all the RT along with the all dialogue is not such a huge problem in the M&E mix as a generic room RT can be added to the new, dubbed dialogue. However, in this case the RT would not be nondescript, it would contain leaves rustling in the wind, a SFX which would be missing from the M&E mix and would be grounds for a QC rejection. This point is not much of a concern for no/lo budget indie filmmakers who are self distributing, using some form of online hosting or VOD service, just screening at film festivals or four-walling but is a major concern for professional filmmakers who will need to deal with commercial distributors and/or TV networks, all of whom generally require an M&E mix.
You therefore have three solutions for the future: 1. Only film when there is no wind. 2. Use a skilled, well equipped PSM who can reduce the leaf rustling to a level manageable by skilled, well equipped audio post personnel, or 3. Plan on ADR'ing the scene/s. There is potentially a fourth solution, which could provide significantly better results than standard ADR but it's tricky: Record the ADR just after filming the shot, Advantages: Actor still "in character", actor and mic can be positioned for optimal audio quality and the results are generally both far more realistic and more interchangeable with the actual production sound than studio recorded ADR. Disadvantages: As the picture hasn't yet been edited, you will have to guess which take to ADR or ADR several of the takes, you'll need more time and the PSM will require more equipment at the location and, of course, you'll only end up with significantly cleaner dialogue if changing the position/direction of the actor and the mic actually makes a difference. A collection of sound blankets and stands will help a great deal as could careful planning of the location in the first place. For example, filming on the edge of the woods, towards the interior and then recording ADR with the actor facing 180deg in the opposite direction would mean the pick-up pattern of the mic is now facing away from the woods/the source of the noise.
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