Hello. This is my blog. It used to be just about sampling but now I write about sound design and film audio as well. If you’d like even more content then what you find here, I suggest you visit and ‘like’ my Facebook page. Also, I have the beginnings of an online store hidden away behind that ‘Downloads‘ link to the right. There you’ll find sampled instruments and original sound effects for sale.
What’s the aural equivalent of negative space? Silence is the obvious answer, but what we call silence is not really silent at all. Practically speaking, the aural equivalent of negative space would be the refrigerator humming in the background, the buzz of the guitar amp between notes, the cellist fidgeting in her seat during the rests, the wind in the trees outside the window next to the man being interviewed. Sometimes we want to get rid of this background noise and the tool we turn to is often noise reduction software. It’s possible though to turn subvert the intended use of this software and instead use it to extract what we would normally be trying to get rid of. It can be used to highlight rather than obscure noise.
One of the more popular pieces of noise reduction software, Izatope RX, has a little checkbox in the upper right hand corner of it’s interface which says “output noise only”. By checking this and adjusting the controls for tonal reduction separately from broadband reduction, it’s possible to separate just the tonal elements of a sound. This technique applied to the sound of an idling car engine sounds like this.
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Noise reduction plugins work their magic based on a “noise profile” which is supplied by the user. Normally, this would mean supplying a small portion of just the offending noise. A little bit of guitar amp buzz from a small section of the recording for example to reduce the guitar buzz throughout the whole recording . It’s possible however, to use completely unrelated sounds for the noise profile. The following example clip contains a series of sounds followed by the same sounds treated with some creative noise reduction. The first, is of a motorbike driving away with my voice as the noise profile; then a bowed cymbal with a guitar rift as the noise profile. This is followed by a drumbeat with the previous bowed cymbal sound as the noise profile and finally the sound is of a car driving past in the snow but, instead of outputting just the noise like I did for the others, I did a more traditional noise reduction but with the reduction settings set to max and the filters meant to prevent digital artifacts turned all the way down.
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I used similar techniques to make a series of Kontakt instruments from recordings of a long cardboard tube fitted with a metal cap drug across the hardwood floors in my living room. The un-processed recordings sound like this.
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Then I did quick drags and slow drags with the tube and then processed the sounds with iZotope RX, using different noise profiles including my voice. Here’s a song featuring the resulting instruments along with some piano.
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Also, here’s a great link to the work of composer Richard Eigner who has taken denoising to a whole new level.
Here’s a quick tutorial video I made about creating a faux dj scratching sound out of an instrument case and a plastic fork. The concept could easily be applied to other materials as well. The result is not meant to sound exactly like vinyl scratching but rather a unique variation on that concept.
It’s an organ. Played by the sea!
This week’s sounds were made for the short film “When I Grow Up” by Colin Hesterly. The video is an homage to the cartoons of the 40s and 50s so I wanted the sound effects to be reminiscent of that era as well.
I found these inspiring videos about the sound effects masters behind the old disney cartoons.
What strikes me watching these videos, is how creating sound effects was so much more of a performance in those days than it typically is now. I love the comment about how many sound effects artists back then were drummers. Makes sense. Being a competent musician is still helpful for modern day sound designers, but with digital technology performance is often taken out of the equation in a way that just wasn’t possible when these cartoons were made.
For my contribution to “When I Grow Up” I wanted to incorporate some of these performative elements back into my workflow. Of course, being a child of the digital era, I couldn’t help but do a round of processing as well. To make the train sound, I first performed the sound by huffing and puffing into an empty plastic ketchup bottle, then I pitched and EQ’d the sound a bit in Pro Tools, layered in a bit of an actual train recording, and edited my performance to better match the tempo of the music. The ketchup bottle also came in handy when making the sound of the river boat.
Here’s a song I made recently as part of a guest posting on the popular blog “Designing Sound“. The song is made entirely from a bowl of pistachio shells.
And here’s a video that explains some of the techniques I used to make the song.
This weeks sound is from my sample library Fractured. Fractured is a collection of multisampled Kontakt instruments made from acoustic guitars played every possible way except for the “correct” way. A large part of the time spent making the library went into experimenting with all the different ways I could combine the guitar with other items and get cool sounds. One of my discoveries involved threading a pair of children’s scissors through the strings in such a way that when flicked they would bounce back and forth and make a very strange noise.
Fractured can now be purchased bundled with my other sample library Violence. Click here to read more about the bundle and listen to music demos for each library. The following audio file is a collection of raw sounds from both Fractured and Violence followed by those same sounds in their processed form put together into a very short musical piece.
I was zeroing out the vocal booth after a recording session one day and for some reason I found myself walking past the microphone with a stapler in my hand. So of course I stopped for a moment to see what kind of sounds I could get out of it. This is the sound of me thwacking the stapler against the side of my hand and letting the internal mechanism jangle about.
With some processing to really bring out the spring sounds, it sounds like this.
That’s a pretty cool sound on it’s own, but I took it a step further and layered together a bunch of processed versions of that sound to create something much bigger and more dramatic. The following sound clip plays through each of the layers seen in the image below. First, you’ll hear the sound run through iZotope’s Iris, then the same with added reverb, then the same sample played through Iris again at a higher register, then the sample heavily bandpassed to bring out one resonant note, then a version processed to accentuate the low end, then a pitched down version of the bandpassed note then finally everything mixed together.
This sound is included in the “Cinematic Impacts Volume 1″ SFX pack available for purchase on my downloads page.
I don’t think there’s an audio post engineer in existence who doesn’t have dozens of stories about awful production sound or tales of great movies ruined by unrepairable audio. But instead of dwelling in the negative, I’d like to go through the various stages of film making and talk about examples of best practices for achieving good audio.
A qualification first. I know a great deal about my little corner of the film making process, but I don’t claim to know much about the process as a whole. What follows are just the ideas and opinions of one person observing film making from one particular vantage point. This is more geared towards people who are new to film making but even those who have been in the industry for a while might pick up an idea or two.
Screenwriting. Good audio starts with the script. There are many examples of great sound ideas happening well after the script was written – like the disembodied train sounds from the restaurant execution scene in the godfather - but other times there needs to be some narrative setup or visual reference for the sound to work. Also, just as feasibility and expense come into play when writing scripts for low budget productions, the screenwriter should at least consider cost and feasibility of recording audio in say, a busy train station or in the rain.
Speaking of feasibility, sound can also be a very affordable way to include action that would otherwise be too expensive. A spotlight and the sound of a police helicopter is much cheaper than an actual helicopter. Can’t afford a huge explosion? How about sound effects, lights and a shot of a crowd reacting? There’s huge potential in this idea and I think it’s one of the most under utilized tricks in indie film making. (btw the webseries JourneyQuest utilizes the off camera action device very well a number of times. Here’s one)
Location Scouting. Experienced directors think about sound when choosing locations. If you’re shooting a scene in a hotel with thin walls, finding one away from highways and flight paths will be to your advantage. Seems obvious, but don’t underestimate the very human tendency to filter out and ignore sound. I bet if you stopped reading this right now and paid attention to the sound around you, you’ll notice ten things you weren’t previously aware of. This natural tendency of our minds, combined with the current cultural emphasis on all things visual, makes it very very easy to overlook the sound issues of a location unless you make it a priority to listen for them. Or better yet, bring a sound person along and ask them!
Production. Hire the best production sound team you can afford and value their input on set. You will thank yourself later. This isn’t my area of expertise, so I’ll leave it at that. If you would like a very thorough laundry list of complaints and suggestions from on set sound crews, read “An Open Letter From Your Sound Department”.
Post Production. The problem with post production is that it’s at the end of the process. It’s all too easy to ignore sound up to this point when the primary focus of production is getting great shots and great performances. It’s also far too common for production budgets to eat into post budgets and for film makers to run out of money by the time they get to post. The films I’ve worked on with the best sound paid attention to sound from the beginning and kept their post budgets in tact.
So there are a few basic ideas to avoid terrible audio. Getting really fantastic audio can be much more complicated. When it comes to post production, the level of audio quality that can be attained starts with and builds upon the quality of the production audio. Audio post can be about trying to fix and rescue poor production audio or it can be about using sound to further enhance the story.
Next, I’ll briefly go through the various stages of audio post production.
Dialog Editing. The dialog editor is the person who first deals directly with the audio recorded on set. Dialog is separated from non dialog sounds, decisions are made concerning which mic source to use (lav, boom, plant etc) and the ambient sounds or “room tone” is crossfaded across cuts so everything plays smoothly. Hopefully clean quiet room tone for each scene was recorded on set for the dialog editor to use. Dialog editing is a very technical process, but also a much more artistic process than many people realize. If you’re interested in learning more there’s an excellent book available on the subject.
Sound design/sound effects editing. The sound designer is the person who works with the director to establish the audio aesthetic for a project. Think of it like cinematography for audio. The sound designer then works with a team of sound editors to realize this vision. Sounds are either pulled from sound effects libraries or, depending on budget, recorded in the field and custom made for the project. I always say the reason sound gets ignored and reason it is so powerful are one and the same. The reason being, that while our conscious mind is focused on the visuals, sound creeps around back straight into our subconscious minds. While it’s true that audio sometimes fulfills a merely functional necessity, there is also huge potential to draw upon the metaphorical and emotional potential of sound to enhance the story.
Foley. Foley is any action that is performed in sync with the picture. The more obvious examples include footsteps and clothing sounds, but it can also include props when something needs to be performed in a way that can’t be replicated using sound effects from a library. Foley can be very subtle and if the production audio is noisy it frequently gets lost in the mix. It’s tempting to think of Foley once again as purely a functional necessity, and often it is, but once again there is huge potential to use it as a story telling device. The way a character drags their heels when they walk for example, can tell us a lot about their emotional state. Very detailed Foley work was used to great effect in the film “The Hurt Locker” to illustrate the tension and hyper awareness felt by the characters.
Music. This is obviously a huge subject and I won’t really go into it here. Music composition usually takes place at the same time as audio post production and then the finished score is delivered just before the mix. I think it’s best if the composer and sound designer collaborate, but this doesn’t always happen. Another thing worth mentioning here is the concept of the “locked cut”. While it is possible to do further edits after music composition and audio post production are under way, it can be hugely time consuming to re-conform the audio and music to the new edit. Music especially can be thrown off by even the smallest edit. If you’re on a budget at all (and you value your composers sanity), lock your cut and keep it locked before audio and music work commences!
ADR, called “looping” in other parts of the world, is the replacing of dialog recorded on set with dialog re-recorded in a studio after the movie has been edited. In some movies %100 of the dialog is replaced this way. In others, none of it is. Sometimes lines need to be replaced because the quality of the recording isn’t good enough. Other times it’s because the director wants a different performance or lines have been changed.
Some actors are very good at ADR, but many actors and directors find performances done in the sterile environment of a recording studio don’t live up to the vibrancy of performances delivered on set. Sometimes a dialog editor, armed with sound reports and well organized production audio files, can edit together multiple takes to save a line. Another trick is to pull actors aside after shooting a scene on a noisy set and have them re-perform the scene immediately in a quieter location. Even without visual reference, sometimes actors can nail the timing and this can be synced up with picture in post. Or at least give the dialog editor something more to work with.
Remember that dialog recorded on set should be as free and clear of background sounds as possible. Indie films tend to be a little more loosey goosey about this, but even something as simple as a door shutting while a character speaks could be reason to replace that line with ADR. Savvy directors who wish to avoid ADR should direct their actors to wait until simultaneous actions are completed. This isn’t always possible of course, but sometimes even just waiting a half second until that garage door shuts or until the crumply bag of groceries has been set down can make the difference between a line being usable or unusable. This goes for overlapping dialog too. Yes, sometimes it’s worth the hassle, but if it’s not necessary, your dialog editor will really appreciate the extra breathing room between lines and any pacing issues can probably be tightened up in the edit. Actors should also be aware of who is actually on camera and refrain from moving about and making unnecessary noise during someone else’s close up for example.
One more indie film tip. If you have lots of extras in a scene, consider taking some time after the scene is shot to record some walla on set. A full budgeted production would do this in post by hiring what are called loop groups. These are groups of actors dedicated to the task of performing background speech. Sometimes a generic sound like “bar crowd” can be pulled from a sound effects library, but more specific sounds like “cafeteria full of geriatric women with New Jersey accents” might not be so readily available. If you already have the extras on set, an extra 15 minutes recording some background talking will save you a lot of money and make your post team very happy.
The Mix. The mix is where it all comes together and where the director and re-recording mixer get to work together and really shape the audio track. It’s frequently the funnest and most gratifying part of the audio process, but it can also be exhausting and frustrating if things don’t go well. It can be difficult for a non-sound person to communicate ideas to someone who has long ago forgotten what the world sounds like to the non-audio-obsessed. There are also a lot of strange things having to do with the psychology of perception when it comes to audio. I won’t go into too much detail, but try this experiment. Pick a scene from your favorite movie and really listen to one detail from the audio mix. Listen to the footsteps for example. Play the scene over and over again and really listen to those footsteps. Chances are they’re going to start sounding loud and out of place. Welcome to the hall of mirrors that is audio mixing.
A good mix experience, like a lot of things, comes down to relationship and trust. Directors ultimately need to trust their mixers and mixers need to morph and adapt their style to best realize the directors vision. I know things are going well when the director says “Hey can you turn up that….” and I’m already reaching for the right fader. That’s when you know you’ve reached an understanding.
That’s that. Are you still with me? Film making is an incredibly complicated and laborious process and I’m constantly in awe of people who have the vision and tenacity to shepard projects from conception to completion. It’s also one of the most expensive art forms and like everything else, really top notch audio can cost a lot of money. But compared to other expense, audio is one of the cheapest ways to increase the perceived production value of a film. And getting decent to good audio is often just a matter of choosing quiet locations and hiring an experienced sound crew for production and post.
Finally, those of us afflicted with an obsession for sound are usually more than happy to talk shop. Actually, it can be hard to get us to shut up once we get going. As evidenced by this post. Point being, feel free to contact me if you’d like to talk further.