Around 2 years ago I needed to record some atmos/SFX for a scene for a feature film which featured some driving in a van. To cover it adequately for a 5.1 surround mix I used 6 microphones and did some takes or passes where I was using audio cues in headphones to “perform” the driving … Read more Multitrack Recording Van/Vehicle Sound Effects
Airwiggles recently held an online conference (AirCon 2023) covering many aspects of audio production with “over 50 hours of live talks, panels, and interviews featuring inspiring audio professionals from around the world.” A lot of the events sounded interesting but the times of the events were usually not great for me to attend in real … Read more AirCon Audio Conference Recordings
Craig Smith from the School of Film/Video at California Institute of the Arts undertook a huge digitisation project to archive rolls of film and tape containing sound effects from the 1930s to 1950s from Hollywood, and shared them on freesound.org under a Creative Commons 0 license. This is a generous and valuable undertaking to preserve … Read more Classic Hollywood Sound Effects on Freesound
New Zealand Sound Designer Tim Prebble from HISSandaROAR has written up a blog post discussing the importance of audio sync for sound for screen, including a brief discussion on some of the key considerations and materials for post to help ensure sync. It might serve as a useful reference for those that are new to … Read more Sync for Audio Post
A big topic of discussion about films and TV recently has been intelligibility of dialogue. I’ve linked to other discussions of it before (https://versed.com.au/intelligibility-in-films) and it is a real issue with many variables coming in to play. Vox have put together a neat video explainer that discusses the main issues at play at: https://www.vox.com/videos/23564218/subtitles-sound-downmixing-dialogue-movies-tv Personally … Read more Why we all need subtitles now
Sound Particles have put together a great short video series that covers the basics of 3D or spatial audio, which serves as a great primer for people interested in learning more about this area. They also have a free eBook that covers similar content. Thanks Sound Particles for creating such neat and easy to understand … Read more All You Need to Know About 3D Audio
Something that has been bothering me lately is the variable playback loudness in cinemas, with most cinemas playing back well below the Dolby Reference standard level of 7 (or calibrated to 85dB SPL), but seemingly there pretty much being no standard anymore. Unfortunately films being mixed at lower levels, to make for louder mixes, which … Read more Sound Levels in Cinemas
The slashfilm.com website has posted up an article discussing some of the reasons why it has often become more difficult to understand the dialogue in films these days. There are a number of points that cover creative choices such as Christopher Nolan’s approach in various films and mixing with theatrical dynamics that doesn’t necessarily translate … Read more Intelligibility in Films
A couple of months ago The Feed on SBS did a piece about Foley which a couple of people suggested I check out. I finally got around to watching it and it turns out it is a really good profile of Footsteps Foley studio in Canada, where they have a fantastic custom “Foley House” set … Read more Footsteps Foley on The Feed
Music Tech Explained have produced a neat explainer video giving a rundown on Dolby Atmos, and importantly, the current state of affairs with regards to some things to keep in mind about mixing with it and how Apple Music handles it downstream. A great introduction to these aspects in this video: