We get some Soul..

This last weekend Troy & I went to Milpitas to film a live performance of Pacific Soul as a favor to a friend of a friend.  Wow!  This group is a nine-piece band that performs R&B classics and are a really well-rounded, amazing sounding group!  Pretty much everyone in the band sings and harmonizes together, Everyone's got a function in the band that plays well.

It was sort of last minute and a little under-communicated, but I think we've pulled it off with a decent look.  We shot with the Sony Z1u and the Canon T2i so the look between cameras is vastly different, and is a real pain to get a close match between them.  The area they were performing at was inside at a seafood marketplace, and was really dark (no lighting).

The Canon T2i fared well as we simply boosted the ISO to 3200 and the footage came out clean even at high ISO for video.  The Shutter speed pretty much sat at 60 and Troy walked around with the T2i getting various close-ups and shots with the shoulder rig we were lucky enough to have borrowed from a friend's production company!  Thanks Ian, we'll have it back to you ASAP.

I kept the Z1u stationary and just did simple panning and zooming as best I could while taking notes and monitoring audio.  I brought my XLR cables for just such an opportunity to get a direct feed from the Front-of-house (FOH) mixer. This was where I ran into a problem.  Once I started monitoring the audio coming into the camera with my headphones I noticed severe compression and limiting and I had already set the camera's gain settings for the XLR inputs to -18dB (the furthest down it would go).  I thought maybe it was the camera doing the limiting and maybe just maybe it would be decent.

Pulled frame from T2i footage

The next level to the audio problem was the mix itself.  The FOH mixer was only creating a mix for the PA system to pump out to the audience.  I know how live mixing goes and for a session of this size the PA really just needs to fill in the gaps for the lowest level performers: Keyboardist who has no amp on-stage but has a monitoring speaker by him, the vocalists who also have a couple of monitoring speakers in front of them on the ground.  The Bassist has a cab on stage but it's mic'd and instead he's also using a monitoring speaker on the floor.  There is a percussionist in the back, and to add to that an electric acoustic guitar being played by one of the singers as well who's got a direct out feeding the mixer.  The drummer has some mics on the kit but I couldn't see much as he was behind the stage. 

Pulled frame from T2i footage

The problem with getting a mix from the FOH is the mix is designed to fill in the mix around the drums which are naturally loud.  The keys had a prominent position at teh front of the mix, the vocals collectively sat just behind that, and the drums were barely audible in the mix at all feeding the PA system.  the Bass sat just under the Vocals as well and was primarily low-end.  However, the mix was either being heavily compressed in the mixer or as an artifact of the signal coming into the camera.

Pulled frame from T2i footage

We had no idea how it would turn out in post, but would have to make due with what we got.  Before the performance started we had time to set up and talk to the engineer at the FOH mixer.  I did notice he had a macbook with Pro Tools ready to rock and the idea was that he was to capture the multitrack performance from the mixer so that the whole session could be mixed properly in post later on.  After the performance was over we talked to the engineer again and that was when we were informed there was no capture into Pro Tools!  Sometimes these things happen and miscommunication can lead to issues that need troubleshooting later on.

Pulled frame from Z1u footage

So I'm at home dubbing the tape from the Z1u into Premier Pro and then importing all the captured video from the T2i.  Once we started dropping the video on the timeline I got really curious as to the sound of the audio from the T2i.  I was greatly surprised by how well it could fill in the mix once i started getting everything in line.  I knew I'd have to battle with sync issues as there was no way to lock the two cameras together so that frames and timing would be in sync.

Pulled frame from Z1u footage

You won't notice it by the video as the lip-sync between both cameras is not noticeably off, but where you will immediately hear it is in the audio tracks lining up.  It creates a slight delay affect that's a quick echo.  So, this can be simply remedied by bringing the audio into Sonar later on and aligning them so they are in-phase.  The natural top-end clarity due to the small diaphragm of the built-in mic in the T2i was able to lend clarity to the mix from the Z1u which was quite muddy, and the lost transients and the natural room tone (the live sound) came back making the drums present again.

Pulled frame from T2i footage

My final issue to tackle is creating a good blend between the two audio sources in mixing to get the sound to blend.  There is a couple spots where the main audio track (FOH mix) cuts out.  First in the very beginning something happens to the mix cutting out.

The timeline cursor (red bar) you can see the right channel cut out and then the left channel.

Then I had Troy run the T2i while I changed tapes because I was running off a previously used tape that still had 30 or so minutes unused.  Finally got the fresh tape in and it took a little bit to get to camera speed.

The timeline cursor is where you can see the gap in the main video and audio feed.

Other mix conditions have to do with Troy's camera position around the band and how it captured the sound of whichever instrument or vocalist is most present.  Some positions he took with the camera are directly out of phase with the direct mix as he's standing next to a speaker 180 degrees out of phase with it.

Just barely wrapping up final edit.  It's getting even more hectic as there are a couple jobs coming up, and i've been getting contacted about more job opportunities elsewhere..  The immediate agenda for now is to just finish this video and get back to my story-board and novel projects.

Cut Your Teeth on some Commercialism

The last few weeks have been pretty up and down with my back problems. However I've been extremely productive this weekend and this week with commercial production and networking for some jobs lining up soon!

First, take a look at the behind the scenes I put together:

Hope you enjoyed that, it was definitely fun working on these 3 shoots on 3 days, even despite the long odd hours!   Let's take a short trip back to Thursday the 17th.  Harry and Michael contact me to ask me to help out with some commercials they wanted to shoot and they had put together a couple scripts for their separate ideas.  I get the scripts in email and read through them roughly.  That night we went to the house where we were to shoot Hot Diggity Dawg and plan out lighting and camera angles.





The idea was pretty simple and according to how he wanted to shoot it pretty much a majority of the audio would be built in post.  So on production evening the next night: Friday, I brought my Rode NTG3 and my Audio Technica AT3035 and ran some creative mic placement with the AT3035 in different positions in the room for when we did voice takes for when Lori had to say her lines.

I should mention that Friday before the shoot, Michael and Courtney showed up here before to do some quick foley session for all the sound elements we would need.  We had just enough time to record all the material.  That night Mok came by after and we dubbed the tape and brought it into a project to start a rough build, as well as capturing a separate session for the Door and gargle noises.   I didn't get to start cutting and editing the sound recordings until Sunday.

The first Foley session with the chip and bag noises I set up out in my living room for a large open space.  I used my Audio Technica AT3035 running through a snake which fed into an RME Fireface 800, and an SE Electronics Reflexion Filter on a 2nd mic stand (those things are beastly and heavy).  Michael was more than happy to oblige eating Pork Rinds and Tostitos,  I actually had him stand almost a foot away from the mic even with a low gain. 

The 2nd half of the session I brought the mic down toward the floor, and the Reflexion Filter as well.  We have a huge area rug but I brought in a small thick carpet mat and laid it down and covered it with a coupe strips of plastic wrap.  We did a few takes with a pair of sandals crunching on Pork Rinds, and then the same with Tostitos.  Then, we removed the thick carpeted mat and just did it again on the area rug which a much harder surface.  Several passes of "pitter patter" in various configurations.  

Later that night for the 2nd session, I employed my AT3035 outside the bathroom door in the hallway with the reflexion filter on for more direct sound and less room interference, close proximity to the door.

The NTG3 was placed inside the bathroom aimed down toward the sink, and then after a couple takes aimed up toward Mok.  The room tone inside the bathroom is very prominent but the door sounds after the gargles used the NTG3 aimed directly toward the door handle. I decided I'd share these with everyone.

Notes about samples provided: All the samples provided below are recorded at 96k / 24-bit and are provided in mono microsoft .wav format.  These are the raw unprocessed cuts, no processing, noise reduction or manipulation have been applied (not even gain adjustment).

Copyright notice: These are provided free for use in any form private or commercial use and I don't even require credit for use or duplication.  Feel free to share, distribute, edit, mangle, destroy and make the sounds into whatever you like, for whatever you like. 

Bathroom Gargle & Door.zip

• Size: 4.28 mb
• 4 files

Footstep Crunches.zip

• Size: 7.84 mb
• 19 files

Bag Ruffles.zip

• Size: 9.45 mb
• 13 Files

Eating Chips.zip

• Size: 16.41 mb
• 12 files

Download all Assets (37.1 mb)

 
Saturday I spent most of my time processing and cleaning up audio making cuts to Hot Diggity Dawg and revising, all before production was supposed to start for It Takes A Lady.  We were to meet at Mok's location for shooting at 5pm.






When I got there everyone was setting up lighting and rehearsal.

The same two mics were used for all three commercials: Audio Technica AT3035 for room tone and ambience, and the Rode NTG3 on the boom for dialog and close-up.  We shot a ton of material that didn't make it into the 30 second spot, but perhaps later on we'll post up the 1 minute spot that the full commercial could have been.  

I placed the AT3035 right along the right wall just passed the cable hanging from the window sill to pick up a wide stereo effect for the scene where Troy Allen gets a kiss-assault on the couch.  I boomed the NTG3 slightly left overhead to pick up the left hand grabbing the couch and the AT3035 picked up the whole wall early reflections and movement ruffles Troy did when slamming himself into his seat for dramatic effect.  The Rode also helped for getting the close up of Arielle in her heels when she steps into frame as Troy Allen looks up at her in shock.  I blended the two mics to get just enough room tone and low-end to give some body to the heel sound but still have the prominent click for the impact on the hardwood floor that made it a definitive heel sound.  

It was difficult working in some tight spaces between the wall and the couches even with a long boom as trying to get the angles right for all the actor movements would tend to fall out of the scope of the mic or in the case of dialog with head rotation would cause severely noticeable off-axis sonic characteristics because of the narrow field of focus for the shotgun mic.   Luckily in the best takes that we used for the final cuts those issues weren't a problem.

One thing i tried to keep in mind as production sound mixer and boom operator is what the camera operator's position is dealing with.  During the productions we had 3 connections running to the camera (2 XLR's for phantom powered mics, and headphones so I could monitor sound).  

Both mics were run with 50 foot cables so there's a lot of  free cable all around the floor, and my heaphones (a pair of Sennhieser HD280 pros) are a much shorter length coiled cable.  One solution I tried was to use velcro cable wrap to attach to the operator and hang some of the cable up through his belt-loop.  However, Michael and Harry both were switching the camera between them fairly often so this became impractical.  

They were pretty good about it but I kept my eye on the cables for them and for complex shots where they needed the freedom to move I held the cables out of their way while operating the boom;  The Rode boom I have is extremely lightweight even with the mic attached which made it very easy to operate for longer periods of time and even one-handed.

The daytime on Sunday I spent an hour or so with Harry and his friend he had brought down from Sacramento to do the voice-over for Hot Diggity Dawg, and then that night I proceeded to post and sound design which was the most fun on this one as it called for a little "enhancement" and the use of sound design elements really helped sell what was happening on screen.  

The first shot where Troy slaps Daren's hand away I utilized several sounds layered in over the production sound track.  The swish sound of a whip through the air and a separate bullwhip crack together with the sound of Daren's hand being slapped and the ruffle of the Doritos bag sit well in the mix that really draw the attention to the fact that he's getting his hand slapped away.  

The biggest sound design elements I took my time with but still went really fast to make were the whooshes in and out of Troy's delusional dancing around in his head.  The first whoosh I used several layered elements including the noise of the water running in the sink I had recorded the other night, and some quick on-the-spot recordings I did with my mouth to mimic wind.  I processed these all heavily and mixed them together to get the final sound.  I used some parallel processing of dry and processed with some distortion, delay, and lots of reverb.  The result are some very crunchy and in your face whooshes that I pushed even further in the final mix for the comp.  The final element was an orchestral cue I had created just a sustained chord.  

The last element was the record scratch sound, and I re-used the whip noises for the butt-slap.  Doritos has a ton of assets they provide for the contest which includes music.  The rules are also extremely specific and limiting for the contest but I believe by sticking with the actual music from the contest assets they provide (which is what they specify) and venturing just a little bit outside of that for the orchestral cue just from my own sampler library and triggered with a midi keyboard, we were breaking the rules in just enough of the right ways. 

Another mixing decision that the rules were a bit vague on (they specify that you are not allowed to alter the music assets) was "Lo-fi" affecting the classical song that plays in the beginning to emulate the sound coming off a flat-panel TV,  Band-Passed EQ very heavily compressed and then a subtle distortion applied after compression.  All in all I edited audio late into the night (about 4 am) into Monday morning.

Monday morning however I had to be up at 7 AMto meet at Mok's location at 7:30 AM to shoot our final commercial he had thought up just the other day.  Running on just a few hours of sleep we were all a little tired and tried to get into it quickly.  Dewitt also had to be at work after 10 AM so we had to get as much as we could shot with him before he had to go.  

I had to operate the camera this time and got to cut my teeth some more on cinematography helping Michael get all the shots he wanted for this one, but even then the idea was so simple and quick there wasn't much to do.  A big factor in the difference between this one and the previous two is Natural light.  His open window with the blinds provided much of the light, but we still used some CFLS to help fill in, as well as Michaels new portable LED panel to accent key light.


I'd like to point out that shooting with the Sony Z1u I was happiest with the look of this video out of everything else we've shot on that camera.  It's an older one though it does HD well it's anamorphic (squeezed pixels at 1440x1080), and due to the age of the sensor even with a nice big lens it doesn't look very crisp especially when you starve the sensor of light.  The lighting on this commercial definitely came out the best, all the others just felt under-lit.  






Some thoughts on music scoring and comedy:

A few things I noticed when it came to this contest in particular is that working under constraints can be very rewarding in ways you weren't expecting.  Before we had finished editing we were still looking up all the rules for the contest and I was expecting to be able to write original score material.  And, while I noticed with a fair bit of examining competitive content on the crashthesuperbowl website had broken a few rules, all of them had some kind of score or use of music to it.  I don't think there was a single contest entry up that didn't utilize at least the music provided by the contest, some went so far as to make music the gimmick by having kids rap about Doritos or something to that effect, but very few if any featured any kind of scoring outside of the approved assets.  

While it would have been nice to create custom music to make our commercial stand out that much more, we were already under time constraints and to our surprise the music they provided actually proved to be very easy to get the mood we were looking for.

On a side note, congrats to Trials & Memories on their hard work and effort over the year working on their album.  The EP Hits local shelves and online Black Friday:





My first commercial work with orchestration is on all 4 tracks at over 30 minutes for the EP and the full length album will be 11 tracks which I will be working on starting next year.

Thanks for reading, and as always these are just my opinions.  Most importantly I like to hear others' opinions, suggestions, and commentary on these topics.  Feel free to leave comments, they're much appreciated!