Cleaning Up Bouncing Dialog in FCP6?

Hello! I shot a short a few months ago using the HVX-200. We used a Sennheiser MK16 shotgun mic hooked up to the camera. It was a minimalist shoot, so the room is extremely bare, which is left plenty of room for sound to bounce. Now, in editing, we're trying to soften the sound. Are there any filters in FCP6 that can help mask it? We have ambiance and music, but the dialog still comes off sharp and bouncy. ADR is out of the question, so any and all help would be appreciated.

room echo is one of the few things that once youve got it - youve got it.

Echo is the actor's voice arriving at the microphone more than once. Once direct from the actor and then again several times reflected from the walls. In effect, you are asking a software package to remove the actor from himself.

The reflections are almost always lower volume than the main speech, so you would think you could use that in a noise gate application (Effects, Audio Filters, Final Cut Pro, Expander/Noise Gate) but it never works out that way. That tool also depends on the actor never changing his speech volume or moving around in front of the microphone.

--sound kills--

Koz

The echo is pretty much death, but you can alleviate the perception by taming the treble end of the sound. When you're distant-miking, the sound comes in much tinnier. So try adding some bass, possibly a Low Pass filter set to a high-ish frequency. You won't kill the echo, but you can at least make the overall sound a little less harsh.

Let me ask this: Why can't you ADR? It's a lot easier than you may think -- even a $40 USB mike can get you better results than the recording conditions you were talking about.


www.derekmok.com

<<<$40 USB mike>>>

Such as.......


<<<Why can't you ADR?>>>

Since the original performance is pretty much trash, you may have no choice. Find an actor with similar voice and vanish into a nice, quiet bedroom somewhere and keep playing back the original show and voice-over your brains out. It's drudge work, not rocket surgery.

Koz

Any suggestions on a cost effective way to avoid this thing again? My only though was a minidisc player w/ a boom attached, but it's not recognized in Macs.

> Any suggestions on a cost effective way to avoid this thing again? My only though was a
> minidisc player w/ a boom attached, but it's not recognized in Macs.

Mounting the microphone on top of the camera was a grievous mistake. What were you guys trying to get -- the cameraman pressing Record?

It's okay to mix right into the camera. But you gotta get the microphone close to the talent. Sound-recording savvy is only part of the equation -- you also have to know editing. For example, when you were setting up your shots, were you aware of whether you need the sound? How you're going to get it? Have you already considered whether you would need the dialogue in an ultra-wide? Whether you'd be able to substitute the dialogue from the close-ups, or whether you'd be seeing so much of the talent that you'd need to mike them even from afar? Or whether the performances are so complex that you can't afford not to wire them up for sound? These are editing questions, not sound-recording. The two work hand in hand when setting up your sound.

There are plenty of ways to record sound without the "proper" equipment. All you have to get is a recorder that can inferface with a computer. I have a Zoom H4 which can be hooked up directly into my G5 via USB. In your case, as long as you can hook up to any computer, even a PC, you can import the sound into the computer and then export into any format you want -- WAV, AIFF. Even an MP3 would have sounded better than what you had, because nothing can save a bad recording.

<<<$40 USB mike>>>
>Such as.......

[www.musiciansfriend.com]

Normally I wouldn't advocate using one of these cheapos, but given that he was using a camera-mounted microphone, even a $10 no-name dynamic microphone in an ADR environment would yield better results than what he had on set. A $10 dynamic running straight into the camera was precisely what I had to use for a last-minute documentary interview (for a "making-of" piece with literally no budget) a few months ago, and while the dynamic range and sound quality captured were flat and uninteresting, it was still the best sound in the whole doc just by virtue of having a microphone positioned close to the speaker. Because at least it was clean and close.


www.derekmok.com

if youre recording in a room with a ton of natural reverb, and MUST use nat sound, the best thing you can do is bring portable baffles - that is IF you have room and time. on the cheap end, mattress pads or packing blankets clamped to a backdrop stand can do wonders for a bouncy room...

<<<What were you guys trying to get -- the cameraman pressing Record? >>>

Did you get that OK? (just kidding)

<<<were you aware of whether you need the sound?>>>

This may be a good place to push the headphone idea. This particular shoot would have sounded like it was shot in a bowling alley on headphones during the shoot. There would have been no question of problems downstream.

<<<A $10 dynamic running straight into the camera>>>

And for $24, you can get that little 30-3013 Radio Shack lapel microphone I like.

[www.radioshack.com]

Your camera has to accept an external microphone, of course, and it's possible you will end up with only one sound track instead of stereo. This is easily solved in Final cut. Primary Dialog is almost never in stereo anyway.

<<<a ton of natural reverb>>>

If you can't do the furniture moving pads, then you're stuck with gluing the microphone onto the actor. You will never get the room echoes to go away (square law arithmetic problem), but you can make the talent voice so much louder that it doesn't make any difference.

Are you sorry you asked us? Are you bleeding yet?

Koz

derekmok Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Mounting the microphone on top of the camera was a
> grievous mistake. What were you guys trying to
> get -- the cameraman pressing Record?

We didn't mount the mic onto the camera. We used a Sennheiser MK16 on a boom pole.
>
> It's okay to mix right into the camera. But you
> gotta get the microphone close to the talent.

The mic was close to the talent, it was right in their faces, not in the shot of course, but as close as we could have possibly gotten.

> Sound-recording savvy is only part of the equation
> -- you also have to know editing. For example,
> when you were setting up your shots, were you
> aware of whether you need the sound?

Well, considering there was a script involved (which I co-wrote), I was very aware that sound would be needed. The large amount of dialog was a give away.

Did you read my original post? There was bouncing b/c of the shooting conditions: small room w/ sparce props/set (it was actually completely bare except for the actors.)

This was shot for peanuts and wiring up the actors for sound, unfortunately, wasn't an option.

Hi Marty...

A good lesson here.

It's been said that sound is 60 percent of the movie, but gets less than 10 percent of the budget and 5 percent of the effort. Most beginning filmmakers have the same problems you've had with sound - They'll scout locations, set lights, spend hours getting just the right camera angles, and never consider the subtle complexity of sound.

Getting quality sound isn't easy - it takes a certain amount of expertise in not only microphone and recording techniques, but also in understanding acoustics.

Since I work primarily with sound, I get to hear the results of the "get the picture now and we'll worry about the sound later" approach - and I'm occaisionally called in to replace someone's dialogue. I'm frequently amazed that someone didn't take a little more care to get the sound right the first time - so much time and money could be saved.

Anyway, Wayne's right about mattress pads. Also, wireless lavelier mikes, when used by someone with a bit of experience can work wonders. You can easily add room reverb to a recording, but it's nearly impossible to take it away.

-Travis (Voice-Over guy and Entertainment Technology Hobbyist.)

Travis
VoiceOver Guy and Entertainment Technology Enthusiast
[www.VOTalent.com]

<<<Sennheiser MK16>>>


Are you sure that's the part number? How about MHK416?


So it would have been much worse without the shotgun. Extreme directional microphones will only get you so far. They receive in a tight bundle in the front of the barrel and everything behind the actor.

Also, Hypercardoid microphones do have back patterns. Specifically, there is one little bulge directly behind the mic. Normally, that goes harmlessly up to the sky, but not this time.

So normally, you would have been OK with this setup, but you hit the perfect storm of bad, live room. Very few microphones can deal with that, and there's no way to fix it in post.


Koz

Ah, I misread "hooked up to the camera".

I worked with Skywalker Sound on a project and when we'd made the connection, my director and I had thought that they would have magic tricks that could fix some of our reverb issues. But as it turned out, they had to re-record 60 per cent of our dialogue as well. They were just so good at it that even though I had memorized the cadence of every line, even I had trouble spotting which lines were ADR and which weren't.

So even the best of the best sound people can't fix certain issues. If you don't have the budget for optimal recording conditions on set, then chances are that budget would spew right back out at the post stage.


www.derekmok.com

Thanks for all the feedback, everybody. I'm gonna tool around w/ it and hopefully it can be softened. Sound is admittadly, my weak spot. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Look into that Noise Gate thing. You set it so levels below a certain setting just don't go through--or are muted. You can tune the naked room out with that, but it's tricky to adjust.

Check out Audacity for the Mac. They have a free-form audio compression tool that you can adjust backwards. Instead of adjusting it to reduce loud portions of the performance (the usual problem), tune it to increase portions over a certain amount. The nice thing about that tool is that you can adjust it to be graceful and not have a hard threshold.

Koz