The Sound Collectors’ Club: Last Theme of 2011
So we’re finishing the year with what will hopefully be a variety of cafe atmoses from around the world. Full details at: http://thesoundcollectorsclub.wordpress.com/2011/12/01/last-new-theme-of-2011/
Sound Collectors’ Club News
The latest theme: ’Protest’ is in progress over at The Sound Collectors’ Club. For full info, head over to: http://thesoundcollectorsclub.wordpress.com/2011/11/01/new-theme-protest/
Also, the Night and Day collection is now back online – but not in the usual way; The Sound Collectors’ Club may well move it’s stock from Soundcloud over to Sugarsync. Check out the full details at: http://thesoundcollectorsclub.wordpress.com/2011/11/22/night-and-day-reopens-right-on-your-desktop/
Dialogue Editing Videos by John Purcell
A few months back, I started off my series (all 2 of them! One more to come soon….) of videos about dialogue editing techniques by saying that I didn’t think that dialogue editing was discussed much online – certainly not in comparison to sound design.
Consequently, when I do stumble across such information, as I did just the other day, I feel it’s only right that I do my bit to spread the word.
Apologies if most of you already know about these, but the other day I came across these videos of the man himself, whose book we all constantly refer to – John Purcell – talking a bit about dialogue editing. I’ve only had a quick look but I thought I’d share them anyway; see what you think of them.
The Sound Collectors’ Club: September’s Theme
The companion collection to June’s theme is in progress over at The Sound Collectors’ Club! For full info, head over to http://thesoundcollectorsclub.wordpress.com/2011/08/31/septembers-theme/
The Sound Collectors’ Club: August’s Theme
Quite a simple theme in progress this month over at The Sound Collectors’ Club, after quite a tricky one in July. For full info, head over to http://thesoundcollectorsclub.wordpress.com/2011/08/02/augusts-theme/
X-Men: First Class – Dialogue Editing Techniques Part 2
Once again, please feel free to leave thoughts, comments and feedback below.
NB. Still lo-fi I’m afraid: A long overdue computer update is imminent over the next week or so at which point I’m hoping I’ll be able to improve capture size and resolution and avoid all of the image stuttering and audio glitching that you’ll notice in these vids. Secondly, I tried to not say ‘er’ during the video but at Take 34 that went out of the window – man, it is hard!
X-Men: First Class – Dialogue Editing Techniques Part 1
I have to apologize for the quality of this screencast; it’s been rather rushed to market while I’m simultaneously deadline chasing on my current project. I’ve only just bought the screencasting app, iShowU HD, this evening so I’m not at all au fait with it yet. I’ll probably re-do this screencast when I’ve got my head round it better.
However, enough with the excuses – here it is, warts and all, my first post in a short series outlining a few of the techniques that I used editing dialogues on X-Men: First Class earlier in the year.
Please feel free to leave comments below or tweet me….however you prefer to discuss; it’d be great to hear how other people tackle these processes too. That’s the whole point of why I’ve done this.
Part Two to follow in the coming week or so.
X-Men: First Class – Dialogue Editing
(Poster via Empire)
To mark the recent release of X-Men: First Class in cinemas I thought I would put together a series of posts over the next few weeks outlining some of the various techniques, tricks and tools (alliteration FTW!) that I used as dialogue editor on the film.
Many of these may be well known, others perhaps less so but I want to put these ideas out there anyway – to create discussion if not to provide enlightenment. The inspiring thing about the internet is that there is always someone out there who knows more about something than you do (not just on the internet for some of us!) Consequently, by partaking in this flow of online information, it is nearly always possible to fine tune and hone even your most well-established work practices. In that spirit, I invite others to leave comments if they would like to share any alternative means – better or simply different – of achieving some of the results I’ll be describing over the next few posts on this blog.
One of the reasons I want to talk a bit about dialogue editing techniques is that, unless I’m just looking in all the wrong places, it’s one aspect of post sound that doesn’t seem to get touched upon too often.
Nearly everyone interested in dialogue editing must have read (or should!) Dialogue Editing for Motion Pictures: A Guide to the Invisible Art by John Purcell. This is simply because it is a great book. However, this is also because (and correct me if I’m wrong) it is pretty much the only book of it’s type out there today.
I won’t attempt to give an authoritative explanation of why this is so because, to be honest, I don’t know. Sound design is obviously seen as the more exciting aspect of post sound, but nevertheless I feel that dialogue editing is going through a really interesting evolution at the moment, brought about by the constant improvements in new technologies.
Some of my posts will be quite detailed explanations of processes I use (perhaps using video if I get time to get it organized) and others will simply be software recommendations. Keep an eye out for them over the next couple of weeks and, as I’ve mentioned, feel free to join in the discussion.
The Sound Collector’s Club: May’s Theme
Back to basics this month as I choose the theme for the first time since Rain back in November. ’Car passes’ may not be the most exotic theme we’ve ever had but it’ll be a very useful one if it provides us all with a greater variety of this type of recording to reach for.
As the club’s sound collection develops, I’d really like it to become useful to people for specific jobs they work on. In other words, if any members have a project approaching in the coming months for which they could really do with a fresh bunch of specific sounds (which are not location-specific) then give me a shout and I’ll try my best to make it a theme in time to deliver the goods for you.
With this in mind, I’ve chosen this theme for myself because it may be useful to me over the coming months. I’ve got a couple of relatively quick turnaround FX jobs coming up soon which are highly likely to contain many scenes which need background traffic passes covered. When you don’t have much time to pick out these individual passes, it’s really handy to have a good selection of recordings of a series of vehicles passing by, otherwise you have to compile the passes from an amalgamation of different recordings which is much more time-consuming and sounds less consistent.
Two particularly important attributes that a useful car passes recording must have are:
- Enough spacing between passes to give you full depiction of each vehicle’s approach and drive away. Two cars passing by together while another car passes by on the other side of the carriageway is of no use for this purpose (if at all).
- As with most types of recording, low background noise is important to avoid hearing a surge of noise as you fade the car pass in and out. What’s more, it muddies the definition of the sound of the vehicle itself.
Apart from that, though, there are very few conditions to adhere to. The vehicles must predominantly be cars but your recording may also contain bus / truck / motorbike, etc. passes too. The car passes can be as close or as wide as you like – although don’t go so wide that the individual car passes lose their definition and become a more general traffic atmos.
Think about definition: If you monitor at a low level but can still hear interesting detail from the engines, the road or simply from the acoustics of the street then the track is likely to work nicely when ducked down low in a mix around dialogue. If not, you’ll end up adding little more than surges of white noise to the mix.
A good selection of orthodox street / main road recordings at different speeds would be great, but I’m also hoping to hear some more unusual contributions too: eg. Cobbled streets, flyovers, speed bumps and manhole covers to name but a few variants.
Other than that, and as usual, I don’t want to tell you all too precisely what to record, but please feel free to comment below if you have any questions or if you think I’ve been unclear in any way; if so, I’ll provide more detail where necessary.
New MM-BSM-8 Binaural Microphones Design: Some Pictures
One bit of information I should have added to my post about my binaural walk through Waterloo was some pictures of the new MM-BSM-8 design; last time I checked Microphone Madness still hadn’t updated the image from the old design. I’ve also included a pic of the battery module and minijack-to-XLR adaptor (all from Microphone Madness) that I use to plug the mics into a 744T with the phantom power turned off.
(Wispy Ear Rycotes are the model's own)
