One thought on “Show 226 – Audio Post Basics”

1. hey guys,

   cool topic. I know a lot of music guys get into post because musicians are notoriously broke. 🙂

   As a 14 year veteran of post work, I wanted to add a couple of things to Ryan’s segment:

   First off ADR doesn’t *have* to be a horrible experience. I love cutting ADR because its a huge technical challenge to get right, and when you do manage to sneak big chunks of ADR by an audience its a pretty great feeling. Some actors hate ADR because they’re not good at it, but if you find one that knows what he or she is doing, they can actually improve performances from the shoot. Tom Hanks is big on that. ADR is also huge for comedic ad libbing after the fact.

   Second – devlierables. If you’re delivering a mix to a client in stereo with expectation that a distributor will re-mix in surround and to spec later on, you’ll need to be ready to hand in very detailed stems for them to create this mix from. That means a separate stem for dialogue, foley, and spotted sfx (often in food groups – for example vehicles, weapons, wind, crowds, rain, footsteps, etc). This is so that a mixer has enough flexibility with the various tracks to actually do 5.1 panning moves with the elements. If your car by is baked into your wind track you aren’t going to get much of a 5.1 mix.

   You should deliver stems along with the final mix if that’s the plan, so you don’t have to dig them up later.

   Also be aware that distributors will often not pay for this remix, and will require the filmmaker to have appropriate deliverables already completed before purchasing the film.

   Last thing: loudness. TV and film mixes are WAY softer than modern pop music mixes. Even in stereo – calibrate your speakers and turn them UP. TV mixes require an LUFS meter and you need to hit -24db (plus or minus 1db) and peak at -2 in most cases. A big mistake beginning music mixers make when moving to post is leaving their speakers turned down and crushing the mixes to make them louder.

   giggity.

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