Krinkle's guide to film-making

[Hudson]

Audio editing is my least favorite part of post, and what I consider to be the most boring part.

[Henry Krinkle]

Audio editing is my least favorite part of post, and what I consider to be the most boring part.

It's my favorite. ADR's a pain, but mixing's great.

[SM]

Audio editing can be good and bad.

The current job I'm one, it's good.  Lots of freedom to create sounds (which I generally just get by recording stuff onto my camera using the on board mic, then pissfart around with it in Audition).

The last job I had was bad.  Badly recorded location audio that I spent months trying to clean up, but never managed to get quite right.  Dialogue ended up being ADRed, then I had to, ironically, dirty it up.  A nice warm crisp stereo signal had to be narrowed down a mono signal (thank you Dolby 5.1) that sounded like it'd been recorded in a grubby warehouse with concrete and brick reverb, rather a cosy bedroom.

[SM]

Audio editing is my least favorite part of post, and what I consider to be the most boring part.

Nah, rotoscoping a mask is WAY more boring.   

EDIT - Shit - hit reply instead of modify. 

[Henry Krinkle]

fixing badly recorded audio blows, but making a mix from scratch with adr, foley and score is one of my favorite things. when you get a good 5.1 mix the film just comes alive

as for rotoscoping - that's a hell of a task. it depends on context again though - if it's for something that will look utterly awesome, you have that drive of 'this is gonna be so cool', but if it's just for some corrective bullshit, it's infuriating.

[beckmen]

I guess I will be sticking with the computer mic for now. It's better than nothing, and I have cable extensions so I can hide the mic below frame or just out of frame for wider shots. Worked OK for Gun Safety in those exterior shots at the end.

Most mics are mono, but you're telling me it's normal for a mic to be 1-channel, as in you're wearing headphones and only getting sound in your right ear?

[SM]

I think it depends on what the mic signal is going through.  It may split the mono into a left and right signal.  Don't quote me though.

as for rotoscoping - that's a hell of a task. it depends on context again though - if it's for something that will look utterly awesome, you have that drive of 'this is gonna be so cool', but if it's just for some corrective bullshit, it's infuriating.

I find the "This is gunna be cool" stuff just as infuriating.

I've got one shot at the moment where three people in a field are running towards a CG starship.  No greenscreens.  So have to animate seperate masks for each person.  After a few hours on Saturday I got about halfway through the first one, before collapsing into a pool of tears and dribble.

[Henry Krinkle]

Most mics are mono, but you're telling me it's normal for a mic to be 1-channel, as in you're wearing headphones and only getting sound in your right ear?

Well, what you'd be doing if you had the gear is, you'd have two mics going to the camera - one in each ear, each focused on a different actor. When you're recording, don't think in terms of 'left' and 'right' - think in terms of channel one, channel two. Your mic is recorded on channel one (for example)

The whole idea of mixing your film's sound is to take a bunch of channels - for simplicity we'll say:

channel 1 = live sound from set
channel 2 = music (left)
channel 3 = music (right)

your goal when you're mixing the sound is to take these channels and choose where they go in your speakers. With a simple set-up like the one above, mixed for stereo, you'd put channel 1 in the middle (ie you'd send your live sound equally to the left and right speakers) you'd send channel 2 to the left and channel 3 to the right.

Short answer - yes it's normal. You can split the signal and record it to left and right with the correct connections, but it makes fuck all difference, because all you're doing is storing exactly the same information twice. If you can hook a separate mic into the other channel (side) - then you're in business.

Out of interest, what's the mic in on your camera? I assume it's a stereo mini-jack right? (like iPod headphones or whatever)

I've got one shot at the moment where three people in a field are running towards a CG starship.  No greenscreens.  So have to animate seperate masks for each person.  After a few hours on Saturday I got about halfway through the first one, before collapsing into a pool of tears and dribble.

Yeah, fair play. Sounds a pain - done equally tedious stuff my self. Is it a locked off shot, or roaming? 'cause if it's locked off you can cheat like a bastard. Makes for much quicker work.

[beckmen]

That makes a lot of sense, the channels thing. Never thought of it like that, but yeah...you'd want to be getting separate channels of sound from the different elements to make mixing easier.

Yeah, my mic jack is a 1/8" headphone jack. Pretty standard for consumer equipment.

[Henry Krinkle]

you'd want to be getting separate channels of sound from the different elements to make mixing easier.

Exactly - that's why they call it mixing. Your taking a bunch of separate elements on separate channels and mixing them together to make new channels, whether it's mono, stereo, 4.1, 5.1, 6.1, 10.2 or whatever.

Yeah, my mic jack is a 1/8" headphone jack. Pretty standard for consumer equipment.

Yeah, figured that was the case. that's good. Easily messed with. Should be a piece of cake to jerry-rig a splitter to jack two mics in on separate channels. I'll post a how to asap.

EDIT: Ok, that how to guide will have to wait for now. I need to find my computer mic so I can signal test it to check which way they're wired - otherwise I'd just be posting lies and conjecture It's in the post though.

[SM]

Not sure you could split it with lower end stuff.  My camera records in stereo.  Plugging two mono mics would still probably only record a single signal (mono or stereo - not sure). 

Is it a locked off shot, or roaming?

This one's locked off thank Christ, as are most of the shots I have to do.  A couple aren't though.  The rotoscoping's not so bad with non-static - it's getting the farking comped element to track with the background plate properly.

[Henry Krinkle]

Not sure you could split it with lower end stuff.  My camera records in stereo.  Plugging two mono mics would still probably only record a single signal (mono or stereo - not sure). 

A stereo signal is nothing more that two mono signals playing out of two different speakers. if you jack one mic into the left in and one into the right in, you can effectively record two sound sources separately and then pan them in the mix. It's very doable on any DV camera, as long as you wire it right.

This one's locked off thank Christ, as are most of the shots I have to do.  A couple aren't though.  The rotoscoping's not so bad with non-static - it's getting the farking comped element to track with the background plate properly.

ah, yeah. That's always a bugger.

[SM]

A stereo signal is nothing more that two mono signals playing out of two different speakers. if you jack one mic into the left in and one into the right in, you can effectively record two sound sources separately and then pan them in the mix. It's very doable on any DV camera, as long as you wire it right.

If I'm reading you right, you're going to get a problem with only having one MIC port on the camera.  Even if you plugged in a splitter to plug two mics in you're only going to record the one signal which combines the signals from both mics.

[Hunter Hunted]

Something I learned the hard way-
It helps to storyboard a scene. I had to make a scene based on a script alone and it came out like crud. Then I made a storyboard and it helped.

Also:
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

If you try to film something on a set that doesn't work in post, don't reshoot it there. Rewrite it so it's somewhere else.

[Hudson]

I'd say that it depends on "how it doesn't work." There are many basic aspects including sound, lighting, etc. that may not work but won't detract from the location.