I used Ardour along with Reaper for the post-production of the short-film ( http://youtu.be/eNlxL-RtoG8 )… Please share your comments…
Regards,
Abhayadev S
Hi Abhayadev. I’ve been working in film & television post production for nearly 30 years so I hope my comments will be helpful. Firstly, a rider - I’m only listening on a Mac Mini so I’m not hearing great sound here. However, that’s not your fault. It just limits my judgement a bit!! It seems as if a lot of the scenes were shot mute so as a basic tracklay, you’ve done pretty well. Here are my comments from the first 8 minutes or so…
00:58 - Opening scene might have benefitted form a bit of aircon FX (maybe it’s there but I can’t hear it on my small speakers!)
01:40 - Traffic noise goes very quiet here, even though we can just about see traffic in the background
01:50 - The telephone dialog sounded cleaner than the sync dialog (on my crappy speakers). In sound dubbing it’s quite common to check things like this on two sets of speakers (some good reference monitors and then something cheap and crappy). The telephone dialog probably needs to be tinnier. (also, probably needs slightly more b/g traffic)
02:20 - 03:55 - This whole section would benefit from some music IMHO. You could even extend it to 04:48 to hide the fact that the foreground dialog is missing
06:59 - 07:19 - Nice motorbike FX. I don’t know if the bike effect is live sound or if you dubbed it but it sounded quite realistic to me. The engine starting could have been a bit louder though.
07:23 - We get no idea of why the woman went to answer the door. You should probably have dubbed a door knock a little earlier (approx. 07:19)
That’s probably enough to be going on with. A pretty good effort I thought.!
Thank you, really appreciate your effort and this is really encouraging…
00:58 - aircon FX - to be frank i didn’t understand this. is this a FX library? or Room tone?
01:40 - quiet traffic noise… I noticed that my FX bus needs a little more level… may be i was afraid of it getting boosted heavily so did a 3db pull on the fader in the final mix.
01:50 - both the dialogs are from ADR… there are some dialog mismatched for the male actor (at the end of the scene but the director was ok with it) and for the lady in the telephone i inserted an eq in her vox track and it was set like HPF@800Hz - LPF@1.8K both Q=2 and a 6db boost@1.35K… i think it needs more tweaks to minimise the over-all Q… right?
02:20 - 03:55 - 4:48 - i also felt like that but it was the directors call to not to doit and i just filled it with some room/ambient tones from the live clips
06:59 - 07:19 - the engine starting and from there its the live one (hence the level is low bcd the same 3db pull i made in the mix … my bad !) but the pulling of another vehicle aside, key insertion turning it on, and free riding of the bike to take it out of the parking are the sounds i recored at my studio 
07:23 - the bikes light shows that the husband is here and the father tells the lady to cheek it… so its the dialog actually coveys this sorry for not having the subtitle…
the video was screened live on a public event i and i noticed that the dynamic range is too high that some of the low levels are not heard to the audience but the dialogs were normal… i shouldn’t have did the 3db pull of fx bus in the final mix !
thanks for your review and comments and looking forward to hear form you more…
abhayadev
" 00:58 - aircon FX - to be frank i didn’t understand this. is this a FX library? or Room tone? "
Room tone. I was just pointing out that the room sounded very quiet for an office. You’d normally expect to hear a little outside traffic or some fan noise etc from the aircon system.
" 01:50 - i inserted an eq in her vox track and it was set like HPF@800Hz - LPF@1.8K both Q=2 and a 6db boost@1.35K… i think it needs more tweaks to minimise the over-all Q… right? "
You probably just needed to increase the HPF slightly (say, 1,100Hz) and lower the level of her voice slightly. The woman’s voice didn’t sound much different from the man’s voice (even though we’re supposed to be hearing her through a telephone).
" 07:23 - the bikes light shows that the husband is here and the father tells the lady to cheek it… so its the dialog actually coveys this sorry for not having the subtitle…"
No problem. I understand it now!
" the video was screened live on a public event i and i noticed that the dynamic range is too high that some of the low levels are not heard to the audience but the dialogs were normal… i shouldn’t have did the 3db pull of fx bus in the final mix ! "
Get into the habit of using limiters and compressors. A limiter pulls down the high level signals without affecting the low level ones. A compressor does the same thing but it usually adds something called “gain make up”. i.e. the high level signals become lower and the low level signals become higher. In both cases, the dynamic range of your final mix can be reduced very subtlely (which makes it much more listenable for an audience). All film & TV sound mixes use at least a limiter.
Yes the aircon (a noise) was present but the level was too low… but the traffic was avoided because fr the audience its clear that the location is a place where there is not traffic is present… its an industrial area with very little traffic…
Regarding the loudness, yes i need to start using the compressor…
thanks for the inputs and really appreciate for the feedback. i am getting into another mix by next week and i will surely incorporate your feedback. thanks once again.
If ok, could you please share your email / facebook / gearslutz id for keeping in touch.
abhayadev s
abhayadevs AT gmail
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