What a Difference a Day Makes!

Would that it were only a day! In fact, I'm back in the lounge scene in Elan Vital and I haven't been there in a while. It has probably been over a month. I made a decision early on in this process to go through the entire story in order, laying down each shot in each sequence and moving on before the über-perfectionist in me took over. In other words, I just wanted to get the stuff organized before I worried about all the details. I stuck to this plan rigidly - and I am very happy that I did. Because I had scarcely looked back at anything I had just finished, my mind was allowed a break from the busy, obsessive machine that gets started in the midst of creation. Now that I am back in the lounge, smoothing it out - cutting and trimming and tightening, I can look at it with a fresh perspective. I am not bogged down by ideas and notions left over from the writing process or from production. Ironically, this being the case, the film is smoother and actually closer to what I had initially conceived than it would have been if I had not taken this approach. Problems from the rough cut are far more easily solved because, free of the vortex, I am able to see new solutions that simplify and improve the flow and begin to complete the picture.

It really is a beautiful thing that happens when you create something that wasn't there before. You know there is a certain potential there - from the very beginning but you can't get too excited by it just yet. You have to get organized. This is what I have been doing. I knew during production that I got the stuff because everyone worked very very hard to help me achieve my vision. I think that everyone felt at one time or another that something great was happening. I certainly did and it was one of the smoothest film shoots that I've ever been on. Now the difference between that feeling and the actual great thing happening is what I've been writing about in this blog. My approach is not a favorite in this fast paced digital world because I need to get all the stuff out in front of me before I start to organize it - and I have to organize all of it before I start to finesse it. You can think of it like a tri-athalon participant. You would not ask the athlete to bike and swim or run and bike at the same time, right? That would be fantastically absurd but it wouldn't help the person win - and would put him or her at risk of drowning or a brutal bicycle chain injury.

So if you consider logging to be stage 1 (which it should be considering the amount of footage), I am currently on stage 3 of the editing process. So far, it is my favorite stage - until the next one I suppose when we marry the sound to the picture. As of today, the process this time around has been smooth as silk and very satisfying. I could go on, comparing this process to painting but I'm sure I passed the average attention span a while ago. So now - let's have some comments!

Rough Cut Complete

The rough cut of the film (not including the end credit sequence) is finished. Hooray. Now it's back to the beginning and we'll start all over. Anyone want to start placing bets on how many rounds this will go? Or how about who will be more reclusive until this thing is done - Ryan, Katy, or I? That may end in a draw. Either way, it's good news on this end - we're making progress on a great film and everyone involved should be proud.

Dialogue Editing

Today's magic words are elbow grease.


As you can see, I've ironically unmade what the editor has made, so I can isolate the audio from various takes to use BIAS Soundsoap Pro for noise reduction, as well as to apply varying degrees of panning and volume for the individual characters in the movie.

I'm pretty sure there are some easier ways to go about the digital video editing bay/digital audio workstation (DAW) divide, such as:

1. Presumably - but don't quote me on this - using Apple Final Cut Pro for video and Apple Logic Pro for audio.
2. Avid Media Composer for video and Digidesign Pro Tools for audio - Digidesign being a subsidiary of Avid.
3. Adobe Premiere for video and Adobe Audition for audio.

I might just be blowing smoke, but chances are if you're using the same company's products for postproduction, your workflow process will be simpler and more efficient.

We are doing no such thing for Elan Vital. Jason's cutting picture with Final Cut, and I'm cutting and adding sound with Pro Tools. But again, think elbow grease.

And you can tell from the screenshot, I'm running Pro Tools M-Powered 7.3.1 on an otherwise outdated system running Windows XP. Again, elbow grease. Well, okay - elbow grease - as well as decent computer brain power (RAM and processor), and a decent USB/Firewire/PCI Card audio interface, namely something cool made by M-Audio or Digidesign. But the rest is all will and determination.

So I've chopped the entire dialogue track into manageable pieces to SoundSoap and pan and change levels. It's also a good idea to fill in the gaps caused by the jigsaw puzzle that I've created with some relatively clean-sounding room tone, that is, room tone that'll match the SoundSoaped files. That probably means somewhat SoundSoaping the room tone too.

When that's all done - and we're not even close to tell you the truth - we'll finally know which parts of dialogue can be saved, and which parts we'll need to get in ADR. Yes, ADR...automated dialogue replacement or additional dialogue recording...same thing. I can tell you right off the bat, distorted audio - where the boom was too close to a louder-than-usual actor - will have to be replaced. Unfortunately, we have a handful of spots where that was the case...the boom and actor(s), wrong place, wrong time. ADR, which we'll save for another exciting blog entry, here we come!

(Of course, the proper way around the distortion problem is to record the audio separate from video - not on the same DV tape - with a production sound mixer always on guard and in perfect synchronization with the boom operator. And speaking of sync, you'd also need an extra machine to burn timecode on both the audio recorder and the video/film recorder. We had no such luxury for Elan Vital. And if you are reading this blog for information to help your project, chances are that you won't have a large enough budget either. Again, elbow grease.)

The big lesson I'm trying to stress here is if you aren't granted the luxury of expensive equipment, in grand quantities thereof, or the luxury of extra crew positions, also in grand quantities thereof, you'll need to put in (1) some harder-than-hard, hard work and (2) some creativity that goes beyond the creativity of the creative process. Just remember the old adage: Necessity is the mother of invention. Also remember the Mothers of Invention's album Freak Out!, which is what not to do when faced against seemingly insurmountable odds.

Anyhow, this is BIAS SoundSoap Pro:


But if you want something simpler and less expensive for noise reduction, I suggest BIAS SoundSoap 2:


SoundSoap Pro is only a plug-in, and a pricey one at that, so you'll need a host program, like Pro Tools or another DAW that accepts RTAS or VST plugins. SoundSoap 2, on the other hand, is both a plug-in and a stand-alone program. For best results with SoundSoap 2, you'll have to find a happy medium between noisy and that flanged, audio in the bathroom sound if you go overboard.

And here are the pairs that might help with workflow issues:

Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro. Actually Final Cut Studio contains Final Cut Pro and Soundtrack, which might be a sufficient audio program, depending on your needs:


In lieu of Media Composer, here are Avid Liquid and Pro Tools M:


If you want something more robust from Avid, here are Xpress Pro and Pro Tools HD, you big spender:


Premiere Pro and Audition:


Until next time...elbow grease.

Sound Effects

There's only so much I can do with sound-wise with the rough cut of Elan Vital. Do I begin dialogue editing? Do I layer in the sound design? Do I continue the music work that I've begun in preproduction?

The answer should be yes to all three. However, since I'm my own personal sound triumvirate (or audio trinity, if you like) - and if you, the reader, find yourself in the same predicament - it would be best to do the entire process, as well as you can, one step at a time.

Anyway, the director (Jason) and I agreed that compiling sounds for the effects track would benefit the postproduction process most at the rough cut stage. And so here I am working on the effects track (which deceptively will contain a plethora of tracks).

For a movie like Elan Vital, sound effects will take the following forms:

1. Foley work. I'm essentially going to be the unquiet mime of the movie. It's going to equally be the obvious sounds (the bartender cleaning glasses, footsteps, etc.) and the subtle (clothing that rubs together while the bartender cleans glasses, for instance).

I only have the ability to use two microphones simultaneously, but that still gives us some good opportunities. Two microphones can either create true stereo on the spot (the difference between panning a mono track in a digital audio workstation [DAW] versus having the sound actually travel in stereo), or variety of mic placement (one mic close to the sound and one far away to incorporate the sound of the room). Alternatively, one mic can be placed close to the main sound (a towel cleaning a glass, for instance) and another can be placed on the secondary sound (clothes rubbing due to bodily movement), and the appropriate proportion of the two can be mixed within the DAW.

Of course, I'm not recording at the most ideal of Foley stages, and it is a hot summer during the daytime. Needless to say, most of the microphone recording currently takes place during cooler, vampiric hours. If it didn't occur to you already, innovation is a definite requirement in the creation of independent cinema.

2. Heavily-processed effects library samples. Of course, this will be a last resort for the un-Foley-able sounds. If and when I have to incorporate previously made sounds, as a rule of thumb, the sounds will never be left as-is. You need to tweak them with whatever DAW you're using. In my case, I'm thankfully using Pro Tools. If all goes well, it'll be like photoshopping for the ears (since Pro Tools does share a similar infamy as Photoshop).

3. Harmonic (and dissonant) ambience (or ambiance, as both spellings seem to be correct). Generally it's not the most ideal situation when the sound designer is also the music composer, for obvious reasons. However, one advantage to have the two-in-one is that the music and the the music-like effects will seemlessly come together without much argument. (That is, if said sound designer/musician doesn't suffer from a mental disorder.) Anyway, I'm creating some of the ambience using both organic and virtual instruments (just like the soundtrack).

As far as virtual instruments go, there are several free VSTi plugins on the web, which will require a lot of work searching and researching. If you're using Pro Tools, you'll need a VST to RTAS wrapper to use those plugins. FXpansion is the only company that I know of that creates such a product. There are also several commercial VST and RTAS plugins (and other types), but they can be extremely expensive and cost prohibitive, especially when you are your own film investor. Digidesign (the company behind Pro Tools) offers a free RTAS instrument plugin called Xpand!, which I'm excited to use for Elan Vital. Not only does Xpand! have simulated traditional instruments (which sound really great, I might add), there's a library of ethereal-ness that may work for this movie.

Here's the VST-RTAS wrapper I'm talking about:


And here are several levels of Pro Tools you can choose from (depending on your budget):


Also be aware that you'll need a qualified M-Audio interface to run Pro Tools M-Powered. Pro Tools LE comes with the Mbox and Digi interfaces, and if you're going to use Pro Tools HD, I salute you.