Head over to Sound Design for Pros for full details and to register for the course.

…And don’t forget to fill out that survey!

Symbolic Sound has published on their blog called “the eight nerve”, an interview with sound designer Sylvain Lasseur talking about his use of Kyma system and several aspects about his work.

Sound designer Sylvain Lasseur is not just bi-coastal; he’s bi-contintental, working part time in Paris and part time in Los Angeles!  We recently had a chance to ask him a few questions about how he uses Kyma for 5.1 sound design and to explore some of the differences between post production work in Paris and Los Angeles.  By the end of the interview, the discussion turns to food, wine, and the Marx Brothers.  Read on!

I decided to put these two tutorials together to share some simple tricks that I use in Izotope RX2. They’re nothing overly complex, but they are kind of unique….and handy to boot. I just thought I’d share them and hope you find them useful.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Rejoice! There is a recording available.

A huge round of thanks goes out to Ann for taking the time to chat with us, and thanks to everyone who participated in the chat. Note: If the webinar does not seem to be playing back correctly when you click on the link, try refreshing the page.

Update: Ann also sent along a few comments, post webinar, that she’d like me to share with you.

On dual shotgun microphones for recording ambiences:

“After thinking it over some more, and hunting down some examples to listen to, using two Sennheiser shotgun mics for a stereo pair is something I personally would probably NOT recommend. From what I was able to listen to, the Sennheiser’s still have that thin slightly strident sound that you get in many of their mics, and the crossed pair can sound like you’re recording in something of a tunnel. I’ve always felt that mic placement and what you record is more important than what gear you use. A really great cheaper mic that wasn’t discussed by the group is the Octava cardiod mic. The Octava doesn’t always have great qualilty control and not all are the same but if you listen to them before purchasing them you can find ones that sound quite good for the cost. (nope scratch that I just looked Guitar Center doesn’t carry them anymore…they were brilliant when you could get a good Russian one but..they outsourced to China and cut quality.”

On technique vs. gear:

“Several years ago I was on a nature recording panel at the AES. At the time I was supplying sounds to Ben Burtt for his upcoming Star Wars trilogy. I played a recording for him of a chair rolling around that sounded like a wounded animal and got him interested in my recordings. Afterwards a guy in the audience contacted me and said he wanted to intern with me. I put him off because I assumed he just wanted to find a way to get to work on Star Wars with Ben. He persisted for quite awhile and I finally agreed to meet him.

His name is Jon Meyer. Jon brought in a recording he wanted me to hear of his. Even I was shocked when he pulled out a Dictaphone recorder that he had used to make this recording. (I don’t even know if you know what a Dictaphone is?? it was a little recorder than men used to record letters they wanted their secretaries to type. The quality of the recordings was really pretty poor, it didn’t matter just as long as the secretary could understand what he was saying.  He had pushed the mic in when he recorded and got awesome squealing sounds that were simply ingenious. I instantly hired Jon. I realized he was the real deal. We worked together on the Hollywood Edge CD “Common Sounds Heard in Uncommon Ways.” We had a blast discovering music inside crazy simple objects around the home and office.”

The chat will take place at 11AM (U.S. Pacific Time) and is, like everything we organize on this site, completely free. It will be a moderated discussion that will give you the opportunity to interact directly with Ann. If you have a webcam and microphone, have them ready. If you have a particularly interesting question, we’ll give you the opportunity to come on cam for the rest of the group so you and Ann can discuss in real time (have your headphones ready to prevent feedback loops though). [note: Skype will not be required for this, AnyMeeting has updated their client, allowing us to have multiple video/audio streams simultaneously.]

You can register for the live chat here…so sign up now! ;)

The webinar will also be recorded and available for viewing afterwards if you are unable to attend.

For this discussion, we’ll be talking about some of the ways work-flow was influenced by the advent of digital technology. That’s going to be our starting point, and we’ll drift along in the wind from there.

The webinar will take place at 11AM (U.S. Pacific Time) on Saturday, October 29th.

The recording of this webinar is available here.

[Article by Ian Palmer]

Dreambase is the result of Alex and Mark’s (two ex-Dolby employees) desire to setup their own post-production sound facility and work in the more creative side of the film industry. Dreambase is located in the former GWR radio studios with two edit rooms and a VO Booth/ Foley Room between the two rooms.

I visited there last year simply to say hello and was surprised to learn that they were editing and mixing feature films using Logic. Inspired by the recent Mix article I thought I would write this article to find out why they are using the DAW instead of the industry standard Pro Tools.

Ian Palmer: You’re a relatively new studio. What made you choose the Apple/Logic platform?

Alex Hudd: Initially it was for cost reasons. I had used Pro Tools since 2000 for music recording but as a Mac user was aware of what Logic was capable of, and the extensive tools it possessed out of the box. The software is so intuitive and the audio library browser is well integrated with the package that track-lays for sound design and composition are very quick to rough out and start working on. Of course Logic’s strength is the ability to compose and this had also been very useful in some projects that I have composed music for. The recording take management in Logic is excellent for ADR sessions as it’s very easy to find the best lines from multiple takes, compare them and bounce out to a composite.

IP: What have been the advantages of such a decision?

AH: We saved money on the initial start-up costs which for a studio can be quite considerable, especially as we had overheads like rent to pay each month.

IP: Have there been any drawbacks?

AH: Lack of compatibility with studios running Pro Tools exclusively is a drawback but the projects we have worked on have been mostly ‘in-house’. At the end of the day we can bounce out any number of stems to take to another studio and import into their own systems but not being able to pass over automation or plug-ins is a disadvantage time- wise.

Editing is not as quick as with Pro Tools as Logic doesn’t posses the equivalent of a ‘Smart Tool’. Also the I/O setup is pretty basic so complex bus routing is not as easy as it is in Pro Tools. We use both Logic 9 and Pro Tools 9 at the studios depending on the project we are working on. And with OMF/AAF interchange it’s easy to exchange files between the two systems.

IP: What hardware are you using?

AH: We use an RME Fireface 800 as the main I/O which is used with Logic and Pro Tools, plus a Rosendahl Synchroniser. We use the Euphonix Artist Series as hardware controller with has excellent integration with both Logic and Pro Tools.

IP: Have you ever worked with another studio and used OMF exchange files?

AH: Yes, we have had OMFs from other facilities and been able to import into Logic with no problems. We have also exchanged Logic projects with other studios running the same software. For example, they might have track-layed and premixed in Logic and then passed the project to us for a final surround mix. It makes for a very quick turnaround.

IP: Pro Tools has AudioSuite to apply changes to audio files quickly without having to setup channels routing and re-recording in real time. How does Bounce-in-Place compare?

AH: Bounce In Place is fine but you have to be organised to make sure you keep track of the tracks! I would love to see an AudioSuite equivalent in Logic (a bit like Soundtrack Pro), however you can do a lot of basic processing such as gain and pitch shift by using the Sample Editor in Logic and applying the processing from there. But beware, you canʼt apply processing to multitrack sound files from within the Logic Sample Editor. Soundtrack Pro has this one covered but it would be nice to see this in Logic now.

IP: You run a Mac Pro without any additional processing hardware. How has the software/ hardware combination performed? This is especially interesting for your feature film work. How does the system hold up running so many tracks and plugins?

AH: We run an 8-core Mac Pro and the performance has been excellent so far. Occasionally you get unexpected crashes, much like you do with Pro Tools but it’s incredibly rare. On a recent feature film we used Logic for Dialogue Edit, ADR, Foley, Sound Design and Final mix, and it handled everything beautifully whilst maintaining good sync between the video and audio. In the final mix we had Dynamics and EQ on most channels along with bus sends to several different Space Designer 5.1 reverbs and it worked very well. Merging separate dialogue, music and effects projects for the premix and final is very straightforward too.

IP: How much in depth automation control do you get with Logic and the MC Artist control surfaces? It uses the EuCon protocol, how does that compare to ProTools?

AH: You can automate pretty much everything in Logic from plug-in and surround panning parameters to mute and bypass. The usual Write, Latch and Touch and Read modes are all available. It doesn’t have a Touch/Latch combo mode as Pro Tools, which can be especially useful for small setups where you want certain parameters to latch such as plug-in automation where it might not be easy to keep your hand on the controls and others to touch such as the fader level. Manual editing of automation parameters is also very easy, which is incredibly useful for very complex sound moves in action and animation projects.

IP: How useful is Audio Quantizing for dialogue and ADR editing?

AH: The Audio Quantization Engine in Logic is excellent, especially for syncing alternative dialogue takes on scenes. In the last film we did with Logic one of the scenes had some prop noise during the shoot so it was decided to wild-track the dialogue from the scene whilst it was still fresh in the actors mind. The scene was probably around 3-4 minutes I think, which is a long time! Using the Flex Time tools in Logic, syncing the dialogue syllables and nuances was much quicker and ultimately more accurate than cutting and cross-fading. For ADR it means that even a close-up can be re-voiced with great accuracy.

IP: Do you use any other 3rd party audio software such as SoundMiner or izotopeRX? If so how well do they interface into Logic and your workflow?

AH: I have the PPMulator meters for the broadcast work we’ve done, but apart from that I tend to use the stock plug-ins. I work in quite a traditional way I guess, so rather than purchasing the latest ‘do-all-analogue-warmth-celebrity-mixer-transformation’ plugins, I tend to use multiple processing to get the effect that I’m after, understanding the physics of sound more than just pushing a magic button. In Logic you can easily save channel strip settings so I have a whole variety of channel strip setups to get rid of Red Camera noise, telephone a voice or bus compress the dialogue, for example.

IP: I’ve heard good things about Space Designer as a convolution reverb, how does it perform for film mixing and the requirement of realism?

AH: Space Designer is excellent and has plenty of surround-ready presets out of the box which you can EQ and process as necessary to get the environment you’re after. You can also record impulse responses from locations and to put those into SD for the ultimate in realism! As we all know though what you hear on location and what you hear in the studio can be different so I would expect a little tweaking to take place before we arrive at the realism (or non-realism!) that we are after.

IP: How well do the plugins that come with Logic perform in relation to post sound? Have you bought any additional 3rd party plugins?

AH: the standard plug-ins in Logic are very comprehensive. My favorites are the Match EQ which will take a reference response of a piece of dialogue for example, then apply that EQ characteristic to another piece of dialogue in order to match the overall spectral response of the original. This is great for matching boom and radio mics or for matching ‘boom-over’ and ‘boom- under’ recordings in a film. The Expander is also great for reducing background noise, and this, coupled with the narrow notches on the standard EQ are very effective at removing unwanted interference from cameras or lighting, whilst maintaining the quality of the dialogue.

Mix Online has published an article with sound editor Kelly Pieklo, who shares his thoughts about using Nuendo as his main workstation for sound post-production:

Minneapolis-based post-production company Splice Here® (www.splice.tv) and Sound Editor Kelly Pieklo are enjoying some recent successes, thanks in large part to Steinberg’s Nuendo platform. Director Eric Howell’s “Ana’s Playground,” on which Pieklo filled Sound Editor and Sound Designer roles, recently made the Academy’s Short List for the 2011 Live-Action Short Film Oscar. Additionally, Director Brady Kiernan brought his feature, “Stuck Between Stations,” to Splice and Pieklo for all sound post-production services. The film premiered with four sold-out screenings at New York’s Tribeca Film Festival in April 2011.

“Both of these projects were an absolute joy to be a part of, and each brought different creative sound editing challenges to the table,” says Pieklo. “The choice to work in Nuendo gave me the ability to speed up my editing and clean-up process, which in turn allowed me to spend more time creating and fine-tuning the soundtrack per the directors’ requests.”

Continue reading…

The recording for the discussion with Coll about Catfish is now available. I just want to give you a heads up that we had some technical issues. There were a few functionality ideas that, while they worked in our initial tests, didn’t pan out for the discussion. We stumble our way through, and get things kind of sorted out about 6-7 minutes in.

When you load in to the recording, look for a button labelled “Restore.” This will pop the text chat window back up, so you can follow the flow of the discussion. Enjoy.

Access the recording here.

Practical Art of Motion Picture Sound, 4th edition relies on the professional experience of the author and other top sound craftspeople to provide a comprehensive explanation of film sound, including mixing, dubbing, workflow, budgeting, and digital audio techniques. Practically grounded with real-world stories from the trenches throughout, the book also provides relevant technical data, as well as an appreciation of all the processes involved in creating optimal motion picture sound. New to this edition are exclusive sound artist lessons from the field (including 2 new production cases studies), including insight from craftspeople who have worked on the latest Harry Potter and Batman films. All technological changes have been updated to reflect the most current systems.

• Detailed step-by-step explanation of the craft as well as professional insight from the various people working in the industry provide readers with both practical knowledge and inspiration
• Author provides a complete overview of creating effective sound for film, including motion picture protocol, budgeting info, dealing with onset politics, and technical information about recording
• Includes a DVD with video demos of techniques, sound clips, examples from the author’s films, effects, and more!

The book is available at several stores and costs $49,95. There’s also a Kindle version available for $29,47.