Speaker 1: What's up, guys? I get into a lot of specifics about audio workflows on this channel, but it can be kind of overwhelming if you're not really dialed into the process, if you're just getting started out, or if your focus is on something more like directing, or cinematography, or film editing. So today, I want to break down the process that I approach every project I work on with, whether it's a feature film, or a television show, or an advertising campaign, or really anything in between. And by kind of understanding each of the components that go into post-production sound, how they all work together, and why, it's going to help you get a lot more out of your workflow, communicate with any sound people you might be working with more effectively, and just get better sound overall. Now, post-sound is one of the final parts of the workflow, so generally it doesn't get as much thought or attention to detail as it probably should. And I think it's really important to get involved from a post-sound standpoint as early on in the filmmaking or the content production process as possible. That'll really allow you to establish a lot of creative paradigms that maybe will inform how you shoot a scene by thinking about how it's going to sound later, or just understanding how a film or how a TV show is coming together from an editorial standpoint in picture. You can kind of work back and forth with sound to get tighter cuts, and get a lot better of a flow going when it comes to storytelling. That being said, the first thing that I do with any project is not a technical process at all, it's a creative one. And that is to sit down with the director or the editor, or really anybody who's going to be having kind of creative input at that level of the story, and understand what exactly is in their head so I can better support that story with sound. And you do that in a spotting session. The whole point of a spotting session for me is to make sure I'm on the same creative page with everybody else, make sure I know what I need to bring to the story sonically to better tell it. And that could be as simple as, hey, that line didn't sound very good on set, we might need to re-record it with ADR, all the way up to, you know, we want to have this scene taking place on a planet that's made of a particular material, and so we've got to really dial in how the footsteps sound on the ground to make it feel alien, or maybe not alien, and make sure it sounds a little bit more grounded in reality. And for me, it's a really good opportunity, especially when I'm working with somebody for the first time, to kind of get into their creative headspace, understand what they like, what they don't like, what they'll really focus in on, and what bothers them, versus what might not stand out to them at all, and they'll just ignore. Usually, we'll watch through a project two or three times, just to make sure we've got every detail down. Again, taking diligent notes of everything, just so that we, you know, can reference back to anything that might come up, we can address any questions later on. It's always really important to have some kind of written record of creative decision-making, because it's always going to change, it's always going to go in a different direction, but it's really helpful to have that foundation. From that point, usually I start taking deliverables from an editor and getting my sessions set up so that I can actually start working. That involves passing picture files back and forth, figuring out all the different specs that we need to establish between a picture editing program versus what I'm using, which is Pro Tools, and that's everything from what codecs to export video at, to what formats to send audio files over in, and everything else that might come up and cause some technical problems down the line. Generally, a picture editor isn't cutting with, you know, every single channel of audio that was recorded on set, they've got some kind of mixed-down track that they're using. So one of the first things that I'll do when I receive a session is to import all of the audio that was recorded, so I've got individual breakouts of a boom mic versus the, you know, four, five, six lav mics that were used, and anything else that might come up. That way, everything is in sync, and any time I need a good, isolated, clean take of something, I've got it all in the same session. That's also a good point to establish how I'm going to be organizing my session to some degree, whether it's just basics of, here's all my dialogue, here's my sound effects, here's my music, etc., all the way into, you know, really dialing into like a big feature film workflow of, here are all my car sound effects, here are my gun sound effects, those can be broken out into mechanisms versus gunshots, or, you know, tire skids versus engine sounds, and everything else that might be worth splitting out into its own food groups. That, again, at the starting point of a project is really helpful to just have a template lined out with everything you could possibly need from an organizational standpoint, so you don't have to think about it, you can spend the rest of the time focused on creative decision making. From that point, I'll take all the notes from the spotting sessions, whether it's as simple as, hey, we need a door closed there, or an explosion there, all the way into, you know, this scene needs to feel ethereal and tense, but not too over the top, and I'll go through the process of cueing everything. So, all the Foley notes that I might have taken, where we need some footsteps for a character, or we need, you know, a glass being picked up or put down, or a cigarette inhale or something like that, I'll put down markers or I'll put down region groups in Pro Tools that just notate exactly what it is. Hey, here we need a door closed, here we need a footstep, here we need something else. That generally falls into four categories of cues. There's ADR, where lines weren't recorded well enough on set, or maybe we needed some voiceover or something like that, being able to say, hey, here's a line that we need to retake, here's what the line is, here's the character or the actor that needed to repeat the line, all the way through Foley, which is all about saying, hey, this character needs footsteps from this time to this time. This character is, you know, got some cloth movement or is moving around on a particular type of material from this time to this time. I'll notate all those things in a session, so that when I go to record and edit my Foley, it's pretty clear what needs to be done, what has been done, what do I need to pay particular attention to, what's maybe covered in audio from on set, and more specifically, what's gonna be covered by sound effects editorial rather than Foley. And speaking of sound effects, it's also a good opportunity to note down, hey, this is going to be a sound effect that I need. The backgrounds in this scene need to feel like blustery wind on a mountaintop versus, you know, quiet interiors with clocks ticking in the background for, you know, an empty house scene or something like that. Now, at that point, the actual work can begin. And generally on larger scale projects that have larger sound teams, a lot of these pieces, a lot of these processes happen kind of at the same time as each other. So if you're working with a whole crew, then it can be done obviously a much faster amount of time because you've got different people paying attention to their own particular brand or particular skill set. Or if it's just a single person taking on the entire thing, it helps to stay a little bit organized in how the workflow is done so that you can kind of have an order of operations that makes sense. Generally speaking, dialogue is the primary storytelling device when it comes to sound. So I usually start by editing my dialogue. And that's everything from smoothing out break points when, you know, you've got a different perspective being used by the editor and you want to make sure that everything sounds like it was one single take. If a line isn't performed right, maybe finding an alternate from the dailies that I've got to just cut in and maybe cheat to make sure it sounds correct. All the way to finding the places that really don't work and saying, hey, I queued this for ADR in my spotting session. I know that I'm going to need something here. It's also a good opportunity to organize dialogue. Maybe it's by character, maybe it's by scene, maybe it's by microphone perspective. Some way to lay everything out so that I know exactly what I'm hearing and what needs to be done to it at all times across something that could be as short as 30 seconds all the way up to two and a half hours, depending on what it is. Once I've got that done, I can record and edit any ADR that I might need. And that way, the production audio that I've already cut kind of serves as a reference point for how lines need to be delivered and what timing they might need so that I can sync everything, I can keep everything in kind of the same range of performance. And again, just stay organized. That production audio is the backbone. The ADR just kind of sweetens it and completes the dialogue storytelling. Once I've got a good handle on dialogue, generally I'll start working on a music edit if there really needs to be one. And that can be as simple as just lining stems up to make sure they're all in sync to really changing the feel of the music by cutting things in a different way or by adding or removing elements to a song or stems or anything like that to emphasize or to kind of detract from certain feelings. So that's really a pretty big variable. And generally, I'll rely on a music mixer to make those kinds of creative decisions. But if it falls to me in the post-production process, it really, really helps to have stems split out so that I have drums separate from guitars, separate from strings, separate from synthesizers, etc., etc. Just having that amount of control and knowing that I can break things apart to feature or maybe not feature certain elements in certain places, it just gives me that much more creative freedom to make decisions in the process. From there, I'll start working on Foley. And Foley is really there to support production sound, fill in all the various gaps that got missed, like footsteps or cut pickups and movements or cloth or really anything else that wasn't captured because, again, on set, you're focused on capturing dialogue. Because I go through and cue all the Foley that I might need, it's really easy to stay organized and say, oh, I need to cover the footsteps for this main character or, you know, somebody's walking by in the background, but I think I need to hear that to maybe somebody's sitting in a leather chair and you need all the various different squeaks and creaks of actual leather. Having all that organized so that you can keep track of it is really, really helpful and you can also divvy up any recordings that you do by material or by props. So you can save some time by saying, hey, the footsteps that I'm going to need are hard-sold shoes on linoleum. And I know that I'm going to need that 150 different times throughout this whole feature, so I'm going to get those shoes, I'm going to point a microphone at the linoleum, I'm going to walk every single footstep that takes place on linoleum with those shoes all at once, and I can just do it in one pass. And I know that's kind of a specific example, but that's the level of organization that makes it really, really easy to be as efficient as possible, because Foley takes time and editing it takes time because everything's got to be frame-synced and really accurate so it'll sound right and it'll look right. And otherwise, you're really not going to have a realistic feel to a piece and an audience watching it is going to go, why is something wrong here? I don't understand why I don't like this. From there, I get into sound effects, and I do it in that order because there can be a little bit of crosstalk between Foley and sound effects editing. Maybe I want to cut that particular set of hand pats from a library because it's going to be faster than trying to perform them. Or maybe it's the other way around. I'm going to be able to perform them in Foley much better than I'm going to be able to match them from some library performance of hands. Having my dialogue and music and Foley also gives me a pretty good foundation on which to cut sound effects. So I kind of know what the palette, what the timbre of sounds might need to be. I kind of know how loud or how quiet they might need to be in relation, and I can make certain maybe mixing decisions in the editing process, even if it's just as simple as turning something up or turning something down. Also, when it comes to custom sound effects recording, which is something I try to do in every project I work on, it's really helpful to have that spotting session in the beginning that I can say, hey, that particular car there, I know I'm going to need to capture the ins and sounds of it because maybe it's the hero car. That particular gun I know sounds really unique if you record it right, so I want to capture that in a way that's going to really cover the full vocabulary of it throughout the entire film. It's super, super helpful to be able to actually go and capture that sort of stuff and then be able to cut it into a film or cut it into a television show from material that I already know and I'm really, really comfortable and familiar with because I was the one that generated it. Also, depending on a project, whether there's time, whether there's budget, it can give me the opportunity to go and actually listen to a place that maybe is very similar to the one that the scene takes place in and that can inform me on how things are supposed to sound. I get the opportunity to record something brand new and use it in a piece that, you know, those recordings have never actually been used before. They're really unique to whatever is being worked on. I think that's really, really important with every project if there's the ability to do it. And speaking of new sounds, that brings me to sound design and that's generally kind of the last thing that I'll do because it's much more time intensive and it really helps to have every other sound kind of dialed in to a degree so that I have a complete palette, I know what I'm going to be working against and I can fit all the sound design that I start making into all these pieces of the sort of sonic landscape and make it really come to life, make it fill in all those details and get a more full sound from a conceptual standpoint. So at that point, I've got my dialogue in ADR, I've got Foley, I've got music, I've got sound effects, I've got backgrounds, I've got sound design. They can all be married together into one single cohesive whole in a mix. Now remember, every single one of these pieces of the process on larger scale projects, generally they're performed by an individual. So there's a sound effects editor, there's a sound designer, there's a dialogue editor, there's an ADR recordist, etc., etc., etc. You get all the elements that they've generated and you marry them together in one session, whether it be a super session or on larger, larger projects like the Fast and Furious films, something that's going on to a major feature stage. Those sessions get divvied up over the course of maybe three or four different computers that are all synced together. But in smaller scale projects, maybe lower budget projects, you just have one single machine, so you get a super session going with all that material in it. At that point, that's when things can start getting pretty confusing if you haven't stayed organized through the entirety of this process. So I really make sure that I organize my templates, I organize my sessions, I keep track of everything really, really well so that there's no confusion going into the mix process. Now when it comes to mixing, again, I go in kind of the same order that I did with editorial. Dialogue is always going to be the primary storytelling device, so I make sure that I mix my dialogue first. That establishes not only kind of a baseline of levels and mixing my dialogue to a particular spec gives me that backbone of sound for the rest of my soundscape. I'm also now familiar with all the other sounds that I've got, so I have some context and I can revisit the dialogue and maybe certain things that stood out as problems before, they're going to get covered up by other things, so I don't really need to worry about them. You can kind of triage issues in sounds that way because you have that full picture of what you're actually going to be listening to. So I'll mix my dialogue first, get everything sounding clean and crisp and clear, make sure there are no clicks or pops or ticks or anything like that. And from there, I'll start marrying music in against dialogue so that I've got this really nice balance of, again, primary storytelling device and then music informing me how to feel about whatever is being said. Now again, in larger scale workflows, there are two mixers working at once. There's a dialogue and music mixer handling exclusively those two elements, and then there's a sound effects mixer who's tasked with getting the foley, the backgrounds, the sound effects, and the sound design all kind of in a cohesive place so that they can marry those elements together after the fact. The most common practice for that is the dialogue and music mixer will start getting through dialogue and every few minutes of content, they'll spit out kind of a rough guide track for the effects mixer and the effects mixer will be sitting there mixing on headphones. They'll receive the dialogue track and be able to just kind of ballpark things in while the dialogue mixer is mixing on the mains and again, effects mixer is mixing on cans. But of course, in single person workflows, it's going to be a little bit different. You're handling all that material by yourself. So I'll get a temp mix on my dialogue that I think sounds about right. I'll get a temp mix on my music and get that sounding about right. Then I'll start temping in foley and sound effects and sound design and really completing that soundscape, adding layers each time I kind of complete something so I get the full picture. Now obviously, you don't have to stick to that order of operations, but for me in my workflow, it makes more sense to start with the primary storytelling device, inform about how to feel about that storytelling device, and then kind of add layers in from there. So temp mixing everything just gets me more organized. It gets everything a little bit more dialed in and that way I can start the final mix process in a much better place than when I started the editorial process. Now generally what happens when you marry all these elements together is you find things that work really well and you find things that don't work so well. It happens on pretty much every stage out there on every project out there. So at some point you have to make on the stage fixes and it just comes down to editing out different sound effects, maybe raising or lowering certain things that didn't poke out enough or maybe poke out too much and getting everything, again, nice and cohesive and smooth sounding. You don't want sound effects detracting from music at a point where music is supposed to carry a scene. So finding sounds that complement music is really, really helpful so that you don't really have to, you know, mute things. You can actually let everything play and it'll all be nice and seamless and blend together. Ideally, those kinds of heavy lift creative decisions are made in the actual editorial process. When you start having to make them in the mixing process, it can fall apart in a hurry. So again, importance of the spotting session at the very, very beginning of everything. But once I get all those details ironed out in the final mix process, I can start generating deliverables and mastering all of the content for distribution. And that can be as simple as maybe making a two-track stereo print master for online distribution, all the way up to rendering out multiple different versions for foreign language and Dolby Atmos 7.1, 5.1 stereo for, you know, broadcast television versus theatrical levels versus online streaming levels and pretty much everything in between. So that's a whole process into itself. But the point is once you've got a mix done, you want it to translate to every possible medium out there. So it's really important to have a mastering process that sort of addresses all that from a level standpoint as well as retaining mix moves, retaining creative ideas that you make during mixing and during the rest of the editorial process. Real quick, I want to thank Skillshare for sponsoring today's video. Skillshare is an amazing online learning community where members can find thousands of inspiring classes to explore new skills, dive deeper into passions, really lose themselves in creativity. Whether you're a seasoned pro or you're just starting out, you'll be able to discover new ways to build and hone real-world skills that are taught by creative professionals who empower you to grow. Skillshare curates ad-free classes that are entirely dedicated to learning and they're constantly adding more premium classes so you can explore at your own pace and focus entirely on creativity. When I'm not out field recording or sitting in the studio, I love getting outside and taking photos. One of my favorite adventure photographers is Chris Burkhardt and he has a class called Outdoor Photography shooting at sunset, sunrise, and night. Chris breaks down the fundamentals of using light to create stunning visuals and for less than $10 a month, you can learn directly from him and thousands of other creative pros who are sharing their knowledge on Skillshare. So go check out the link in the description. The first thousand people to click on it will get a free trial of Skillshare Premium Membership so you can learn and grow as a creative. So that's the process I approach every project I work on with for post sound. And I know I said I was going to keep that general that got a little bit specific in spots but hopefully it answers a bunch of questions that maybe you didn't even know you had and gives you a much better insight into what goes into post sound rather than just having it be kind of an obscure yeah, you edit sounds and then you mix them and that's it, right? So anyway, if you enjoyed the video, don't forget to like, hit subscribe. I'm over on Instagram at AXK, so come follow me over there. And as always, thanks for watching.