On 9/1/13, Walt, discombobulated, unleashed: >That does make sense. I was thinking mostly about ambient sound, but I >can see why it would be less important in recording speech.
Jut an FYI: In broadcast TV, general atmos (ambient audio) recorded at the same time as the video is shot, is not recorded in stereo. In fact, in nearly 33 years of working in television, I have never worked on a production that was recorded in stereo. Of course, that's not to say they don't exist - feature films are routinely recorded in stereo. Music is, obviously. I have 2 sound tracks on my TV camera and receives a camera mounted top mic as default. The other takes a proper directional mic used for voice. I can change them, and have two people mic'd up separately so voice A is on track 1, and voice B on track 2 for a two-handed conversation. Most voice recording in TV or feature films is recorded mono. Perhaps just a few lines here about what you see and hear when watching say a drama or a documentary. For a drama, almost all sound you here is not recorded in sync with the action. The reason for this is because when a drama is sold for use in a foreign country, you must produce what is known as an 'M and E' version. That means music and effects. So, the whole programme is sent out to the receiving countries with all the sounds as they were edited together EXCEPT any actual speaking voices. When the receiving country gets the prog (or indeed before it gets there, at a domestic foreign voice dubbing facility maybe) the receiving country's language is dubbed in by actors. They add only their voices to all the sounds that are edited together on the programme, and any music. So imagine what you must shoot and how you must edit it together to produce that! If you've got lots of dialogue, well that's fine, just strip it out in the editing. But what happens when the actor is talking as he exits a car and shuts the door. There are several sounds present: his voice, the noise of his clothes rubbing and the leather seats, the shuffling noise as his shoes step onto the tarmac, the door slam, and then footsteps as he walks away (still talking!). If you take out his voice, you take out all the above sounds as well. So how do you go about replacing just those? Record the whole thing again with him speaking? That would be too easy ;-) The fact is that after location shooting, all the sync sound (recorded at the same time as shooting) is later stripped out by a dubbing editor, notes made of what sound will need to be created especially, and then the new sounds recorded at a foley session. Also known as a footsteps session, the foley artists actually create the new sounds while watching the video on a screen in a special theater with a myriad of articles and items and surfaces at their disposal. Literally, little pits of gravel for recording fresh footsteps in. Car doors, front doors, wooden gates, all stuck to the walls. Clothing, upholstery, surfaces, chairs, tables, you name it. All gets recorded as close as poss into sync in real time. Later, the dubbing editor fine-tunes and makes sure it all appears in sync. The prog is then dubbed (mixed down with all the levels at the right settings so the footsteps aren't overpowering, or the car door to quiet) and finished off ready to go. The domestic version is also produced here, except using recorded dialogue. Some sync sounds will be used, but as a rule the foley sessions will be used because they in effect become the 'master' sound effects for the programme. Some sounds are unique and get recorded on location at the time of shooting. For this, as well as recorded incidently during dialogue, the sound operator will later record a 'wild track' of a particular sound for inclusion by the editor. Mics placed for recording dialogue are not in the right place to capture the (say) unique sound of the character tripping over a Pentax 645D someone carelessly leaves on the sidewalk. So that sound is recorded after the dialog scenes are complete. Or if they forget, the dubbing editor might sort out a few spurious sounds he is missing later. And maybe commission a few new ones. The original star wars movies used sampled 'twangs' from telephone pole support wires as 'blaster' sounds. Fun! So care and attention to sound can REALLY enhance a video - and it doesn't take much effort. For documentary shooting (which is anything that's not like the above ;-) a good sound recordist will get some atmos as a wild track for use in editing. Consider this: you're filming at the seaside. Gathering lots of different shots on the beach of people having fun, children laughing etc. The actual camera placement from shot to shot can change frequently in terms of where it is in relation to the sea and to laughing voices etc. When you come to edit later and put two shots together, the two shots might look fab next to each other (one a close shot of kids in the surf - the next a shot of a family on the beach further away from the water) looking on. The sound of the outgoing shot of the surf will be much louder, perhaps, than the incoming shot of the family. A hard sound cut here might be abrupt and garish. Yes, you could plop an audio dissolve between the two, but the professionals would rather do this: film at will on the beach, and afterwards, record a minute or so of general atmos (ambient audio) so that you can basically cut the pictures mute and overlay the atmos to cover those shots. If there is some closer sync sound that obviously looks better with a particular shot rather than the wild track atmos, then by all means include that as well. It can all be smoothed out at the final sound mix (dub) later. I use some sound effects discs full of library sound, but most sound is better recorded at the actual location. Or I go record my own. In this video of GFM, in the opening sequence, the shutter sound was recorded later and added to the audio track in sync with the camera shutter being pressed. It was simply impractical to record it on location at the time it was shot. Similarly much later when Helen is bounding out onto the rocky outcrop to get into her own landscape shot, the lapel radio mic she was wearing was not able to pick up the sound of her footsteps. I could get away with not having them, but I felt the immediacy of the scene was enhanced by adding some. I recorded them weeks later in my own driveway and adding in one at a time. i think it works. <https://vimeo.com/user2607591/review/9087452/203d039142> If you enjoy shooting the video, you'll have twice as much fun editing it. What I would say is you may find Premiere a bit too much for what you want to do. It's like giving Photoshop to someone who's just picked up a pointnshoot and told them to edit their images on it. I use Final Cut Pro which is of the same standard as Premiere, as is Avid Media Composer. They can be a very steep learning curve. Heavily suggest something like iMovie on the Mac, and I'm sure there will be some PC suggestions here for something similar on Windows. Ranted on much longer here than intended - time to cook some sausages. Go have fun shooting, and let's see the results! -- Cheers, Cotty ___/\__ Broadcast, Corporate, || (O) | Web Video Producion ---------- <www.seeingeye.tv> _____________________________ -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
