Plain room tone silence sound

I'm doing post for a movie and I'm looking for this sound effect. It's a generic airy sound that fills out the backgound when there's supposed to be silence and no real ambience. I hear this sound in almost every movie. Anyone have it?

It's called room tone. You can't just have any tone since different rooms have different acoustic properties. The best way is to find a long section of silence in your already pre-recorded sound, from the same scene, because even if you get room tone in a room from two different times of day, you could hear differences based on the number of people in the room, the number of microphones being used, the cables, the traffic situation outside, etc.

Two of the best places to look for tone is between the slate and the scene, and just before the director yells cut but after the actors have completed. If the piece you've found is too short, loop it and smooth out the transitions using cross fades. Make sure there's no tiny, identifiable sound on the piece you loop, or you'll hear a machine-like whirring, clicking, tapping sound etc.

If you can't find some in your footage you like Soundtrack Pro has some room tone in its library, several different sounds.

good luck!

Kevin

Remember, sound is all about transitions -- if you can't find the exact same piece of tone for a certain place, start mixing the new room tone in early (say one or two cuts before the clip in question) and slowly "sneak" it out a cut or two beyond the clip. This will help obscure mismatches in tone.

Generally on-set sound, when recorded properly, beats anything in a library, so I'd exhaust your options in field sound before messing with libraries. Tone, especially, is hard to match precisely.

And for future reference: next time you shoot ANYTHING, reserve a moment to record a minute of room tone where you're shooting. without anything happening. That means outside as well as inside. You'll find it invaluable.

Scott

Scott's right on that one. Gotta let your recordist do the homework.

I've discussed this plenty of times with students, recordists and producers: If you have a good sound department, give them the respect and time they deserve and they will speed up your process, not slow it down. I had a kickass sound recordist on my short-film shoot, and I told her she had carte blanche in terms of what I'll be needing for sound takes. She could speak up about a bad sound take any time she deemed necessary and I forced my crew to listen. It didn't slow down my work; it sped us up because I never had to worry about telling her what I needed to get in terms of wild sound, wild dialogue, and tone. And while I talked to actors and the AD and DP about the next setup, she was orchestrating the actors to get the sounds I needed. It didn't slow down the crew other than the two minutes or so when she was rolling, and contrary to popular opinion, good sound recordists do *not* abuse their position -- they only protest if the take truly was unusable, in which case no matter how good the acting performance was, you have no choice but to do another one, because acting cannot be recreated in ADR no matter what.

The time we spent on set came back in spades when I did the entire sound mix without a single line of ADR. Even an effect (a typewriter) I thought I would need to use canned FX on turned out to be a field recording. Why? It sounded better, and nobody in the world could point to the film and say "Ha ha, that sound's from the Britannica sound library".

Sound doesn't get the respect it deserves. And the amusing thing is that nobody I've ever spoken to, who has edited more than three projects, ever looks down on the sound department. Those that do have never had to deal firsthand with the penalties in post. When a shot is botched visually, everybody on set knows. When a sound take is botched, the only people who know are the boom operator (who gets even less respect) and the recordist. So if you don't trust the recordist, who're you gonna trust?

...agree with recording room tone onset for EACH SETUP (especially if they are in different acoustical locations). I can't believe your sound guy didn't even suggest it... pretty much standard for any professional shoot.

I would go back to your location (or a similar one) and record live room tone.

Sound is taken too much for granted.

- Joey



When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

> I would go back to your location (or a similar one) and record live room tone.

I would argue against that. The recording conditions are now different. If you're going to do that, you might as well go for canned ambience. There *is* a lot of room to use effects to manipulate tone by altering its pitch, applying EQ and reverb, etc. Also, I got a feeling you haven't yet looked through all of your sound takes for that sole purpose. In my view, it's not worth the expense of hiring a sound crew just to get room tone. All you need is 3-4 seconds of clean tone (and I mean spotless) and you can loop it. Here's another maxim: Run sound whenever possible, even on non-dialogue shots, because there are nuances to a live performance sound take (eg. breathing, touching, walking, rustling clothes) that make the performance come to life.