Sound Mixing with Bart and Geo
Recently I’ve been working with Bart Kean on sound mixing for G.H.O.S.T.(was another period supposed to go at the end?) Everything has been going great with it but one thing I’ve learned that I got a little slack on while filming was “room tone.” What is room tone you may ask? It’s exactly what it sounds like… Every location for filming has a certain sound. There may be a slight hum of an air conditioner outside or a slight wind, etc… Obviously you try to cut out as much of these noises as possible, but the mic still picks up a kind of “air” sound. Sometime when mixing you may need to go in and take this sound out with a denoiser or something to bring up some levels to the normal (we’ve been using -6db) without having a lot of noise going on. This is one place where room tone can help. Another place is when editing different cuts together and having little bits of silence. The lack of room tone is also evident when you watch R rated movies edited for TV. I’m pretty sure Clint Eastwood didn’t really call someone a “two ton maggot farmer.” These usually stick out because the room tone is way different…not to mention they’re usually pretty ridiculous things that they say.
Read on to learn more about room tone and watch a short video!
This is where room tone comes in. You’re on location. You have all the lights set, everything is ready to go. You get the boom mic where it will be and you tell everyone, “quiet on the set…we’re getting room tone.” Then you record 30 seconds to 60 seconds. When the editor pulls footage they can save this audio clip as room tone for that particular scene. That way once the sound mixer is working throw every scene, setting levels, applying compression when needed, etc… They can add room tone on his own track and loop it so that it covers any quiet spots or places where the noise was removed from one piece of dialog that may have been too low, etc…
Tips for Room Tone:
– Get 30 to 60 seconds on average. If you have a place with odd sounds(air planes landing, lots of traffic, crowds, etc…) you can get more in case the entire scene needs ADR (Automated Dialogue Replacement or Additional Dialogue Recording or dubbing voice over basically).
– Listen for noise culprits…Refrigerator, air conditioning or heating (be sure to turn these back on when lighting and not rolling so everyone doesn’t come kill you), turn off cell phones, send people out to stop traffic…ok this one we’ve only been able to do once or twice…but it worked! One thing I always do when scouting locations is to carry a sound recorder and record a little room tone to tell what the noises are. You can also just go in and close your eyes and listen.
– Use sound dampeners like blankets, mats sheets etc… to deaden some ambient sound and or reduce volume of footsteps you may not want to hear like crew.
– With the use of Digital SLRs many people don’t record sound in camera anymore and need something portable like the Zoom H4n Portable Recorder
So…the take away? Always get room tone!
