Doing Sound for Films

 

For movies and television, the image is king and always will be. After all, they call them movies, not soundies. But since 1928 or thereabouts, most films have been made with live sound. Audiences usually want some degree of real-life to mingle with cinematic fantasy. Doing the show right from a technical standpoint is a key element in maintaining a viewer’s willing suspension of disbelief. Whatever you think of Hollywood, the polish and expertise of our technical crafts have led the world’s screens for more than a century, a good part of the gloss of an American success story.

Doing sound for the movies is a little different than doing camera. On a movie set, the camera is treated like a sacramental altar, with attendants performing guild rituals, a technical priesthood, and its own nearly incomprehensible jargon. Superficially, on the other hand, sound looks like an afterthought that seems easy to do — just stick a mike in someone’s face, wear earphones, and run a tape recorder. Simple, right? But it’s surprisingly hard to do it well, especially on the cramped confines of a noisy film set.

An example: Consider the sheer difficulty of finding or creating a truly quiet room on location. Maybe you’re in one right now. How quiet is it, really? There’s a laptop in front of you, with a cooling fan and probably a hard disc. If you’re in the kitchen, the refrigerator motor quietly cuts in and out. A clock is ticking in the next room. A plane passes overhead. Outside, in the distance, a dog barks. A truck rumbles by. A heating or ventilation system whispers in the background. Upstairs, someone is taking a shower and the faint sound of running water runs through the pipes in the walls. You don’t normally hear all this, but the microphone does.

That’s why at the end of a day in a new location, the sound crew will ask for silence so they can record “room tone,” just what it sounds like: the faint sound of a specific room.

The right microphones make a difference. Controversial TV talk show host Les Crane, sort of a 1964 cross between Phil Donahue and Glenn Beck, used a photo of himself pointing a so-called shotgun mike as his signature image. They were a new, faddish thing then. They aren’t really what they look like, sound telescopes that can focus in as exactly as telephoto lenses can.

Les Crane is forgotten now, but his pointing the shotgun mike into the crowd was meant to symbolize his willingness to go farther than mainstream hosts to seek out politically ignored populist voices in his audience.

At the other end of the microphone “closeness” spectrum, lavalieres—neck microphones—can be very useful, and in some situations like outdoor recording they are real lifesavers. In a film like Robert Altman’s Nashville, as many as a dozen actors were miked up with lavalieres, so Altman’s cameras could roam everywhere in the scene without fear of filming an intrusive microphone boom. Lavalieres don’t have absolute top sound quality, though. For dialog, there’s still nothing better than a good mike on a fiberglass pole overhead, pointed right at the actor.

On some filming days, a crew won’t have to bother with location sound. The film industry has a tradition that goes back ninety years: of referring to shots filmed without sound as being “MOS” in camera report forms — “Mit Out Sound” after Josef von Sternberg’s accent. Examples are brief shots of a car driving up a trick ramp and overturning, a safecracker turning a dial, checking his watch, or jumping in a cab, a nun crossing the street to a phone booth, or close-up smiles of delighted kids filmed among other seated actors in an otherwise empty stadium. You don’t always need a sound crew.

Another time-honored exception to the difficulties of recording live sound goes back nearly to the dawn of the talkies. “Filming to playback” is what we’ve come to know as “lip-syncing.” No sound is recorded on the set because everyone is pretending that they’re speaking or singing what’s coming out of the loudspeakers. This is how nearly all musicals have been made since the earliest days of sound, but not quite all of them.

In At Long Last Love, director Peter Bogdanovich set himself and his actors the challenge of doing outdoor musical numbers with a live band riding alongside them. I like an original approach and appreciated the tribute to a brief, obscure moment in early film history. It wasn’t a disaster, but it didn’t really work out either.

Outdoors, even a peaceful breeze that just ruffles leaves can make it hard to record acceptable sound, let alone crowds of spectators, car alarms, or aircraft. Period films have special problems with anachronistic sounds.

A film crew can work much faster if sound isn’t a consideration. In Europe, dubbing has always been much more popular than it is in the States. Many or most of their golden age films were filmed on the streets without live sound, to be dubbed later even in their own language. Of course, it means lengthy sessions in the dubbing studio later, something actors normally dislike. It’s harder than it looks to match your own speech rhythms and lip movements, and harder still to do it with anything like the dramatic effect it had on the set when it was filmed.

When you do have a strong, clear signal from the microphone, what you record it on has changed greatly over the years. In the beginning, it was phonograph records and then a separate “sound camera” flashing a fluttering signal onto a 35mm soundtrack. The great big camera and the great big sound recorder were linked with a mechanical cable, like the brakes of a bicycle. During the Thirties, selsyn motors or synchros started to replace the mechanical connection with a multiphase, high amps electrical one.

That’s the meaning of the zebra stripes on a classic era film slate; the “clacker” gives an exact moment of synchronization between the picture and soundtracks. Editors marked a grease pencil X on each spot and spliced away excess picture and sound film. That was called “syncing up the rushes.” From this point until the final stage of the film production process, they will be handled separately but in sync with each other.

A top-quality Swiss tape recorder called the Nagra became the industry standard of sound recording nearly everywhere in the non-Communist world. Virtually every movie or TV show you ever saw between about 1960 and 2000 was recorded on one. Today, many of the problems of isolating good location sound are the same as in the past, but the equipment used to record it has changed. The extreme mechanical precision that led to nearly perfect recording isn’t needed anymore. A modest lump of solid-state digital technology can do what a Kudelski Nagra could twenty to sixty years ago, and at a twentieth of the price.

Today’s digitized soundtracks are vastly easier to clean up, copy, and shift around. Many film industry procedures of the 21st century still echo those of the film era of analog sound and photochemical images.

Electronic filters can reduce extraneous noises, like faint hums or buzzes, and can reshape sounds to make them more top or bottom heavy. But they can’t accomplish the miracles that they can in fiction, eliminating specific people’s voices, or stripping away an orchestra so you can hear the singer, solo.

In post-production, once a particular section of the film is declared “locked,” picture and dialog editing are considered over and the timings unchangeable. That means the musical score can now be recorded with some confidence that it will match the picture. One whole subunit of music editors works with the composer, conductor, and film director, under the supervision of the chief editors, to determine, to a fraction of a second, where to place the music once it’s recorded.

While that goes on, a different set of small editing teams are working over the sound effects on those same “locked” reels. You’ve probably heard of “Foley artists,” a fancy name for people who make sound effects, often out of seemingly outlandish materials that sound terrific.

It all comes together in the sound mix. The goal is to leave with a fantastic soundtrack, but more specifically, for a feedstock mix that is as final as the one in theaters, but is separated into DME—Dialog, Music, and Effects. The foreign market can dub a version in their own language that will still have the complete multichannel wraparound music and sound experience.

For nearly fifty years mixing boards have shifted over to linear volume controls; sliders, rather than knobs. It’s easier to see at a glance and manipulate as groups of tracks. But plenty of us remember those big, solid RCA dials, and the flickering needles of analog gauges. On a mixing panel, each individual track can be steered along a left-right stereophonic sound field with “Pan Pots,” panoramic potentiometers.

It was noted in the recent post about editing Star Wars that in May 1977, George Lucas was still re-dubbing and re-mixing the film for later monophonic release even as the stereo version was premiering in theaters across the country. You might ask why mono required a separate mix.

Here’s an example: Suppose Ricochet member @Arahant is walking along a factory floor talking with someone. In stereo, you can toss the sounds of machinery all the way to the left and right, at maybe 20% of the total volume on each, with Arahant’s voice right down the middle at 60%, three times as loud as either extreme. He’s perfectly audible and every word is clear. Now take the same mix and play it all through one speaker: it’s muddled. His words are barely louder than the noisy machinery. In mono, you don’t have left-right position to differentiate sounds, so you simply have to give the dialog track priority, fading back the surroundings of the factory.

A final word on the value of doing sound. Young directors are able to attract free acting talent to their early films with the promise of showcasing them. They are also able, in many cases, to get ambitious young cinematographers to work for almost nothing, or for shares in the finished film, because a great camera job on a low budget independent film can launch a Hollywood career. But doing sound, vital as it is to the film, is merely down to Earth, hard, unpretentious work. As a result, soundmen always get paid, because there’s no dream of yours that you can fob off on them and yet you need them anyway. That’s pretty close to a bedrock capitalist proof of their necessity

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  1. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    Clavius (View Comment):

    Tremendous post!

    The room noise must be the equivalent of a flat field in astrophotography. It is an image of just plain light, no stars, passing through the optical train. You use it to remove vignetting and dust. Seems very similar.

    And wasn’t Singing in the Rain built around the advent of sound in film?

    As you no doubt know, Singing in the Rain was filmed about a hundred yards from your office! Yes, your analogy is a good one. However quiet the room tone is, if it suddenly disappears, it feels artificial and calls unwanted attention to the shot. 

    • #31
  2. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    Bartholomew Xerxes Ogilvie, Jr. (View Comment):

    In my opinion, one of the most impressive achievements in live (on-set) sound recording in a film was for Tom Hooper’s Les Miserables. All of the singing performances were recorded live, which is almost never done in musicals; it’s just too difficult to capture a good vocal recording with an actor who’s moving around, and it’s also difficult for an actor to act and sing well at the same time. (Stage actors do it all the time, of course, but film is a bit less forgiving.)

    It makes a difference, though. The performances come across as much more intimate and emotive, with every little intonation and inflection visible and audible at the same time. But it was incredibly difficult to do, which is why most musicals don’t bother.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulJXiB5i_q0

    It’s the same idea but a better example than At Long Last Love because it’s much more recent. Thanks, BXO! 

    My own nominee for lousiest job lipsyncing a film musical: Peter O’ Toole in Man of La Mancha. They shoulda gone with Richard Kiley, who did a brilliant job on Broadway. O’ Toole comes across like a drunken barfly who wants to sing along with the jukebox. 

    • #32
  3. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    Hartmann von Aue (View Comment):

    The Reticulator (View Comment):

    Thanks for an excellent article. It was informative from beginning to end.

    Regarding dubbing of foreign languages: I hate it. If I can’t have subtitles I’d much rather have voiceover. I don’t think voiceover was ever done much in the U.S., but is it dying out elsewhere, too?

    The Germans are amazingly good at it. You rarely notice it at all. However, like all professional arts, it took time to develop. The German dubbing of American and British movies from the 60s and early 70s is often almost as bad as the American dubbing for Asian films from the same era, but by the time you reach the 90s, my description in the first two sentences applies.

    It doesn’t seem to be dying out. Because of Europe’s relatively small domestic markets and multiplicity of languages, dubbing has always been popular. There have been a handful of foreign films dubbed into English for the US market–Costa-Gavras’ Z, Bertolucci’s The Conformist–but in the US subtitling is more accepted. 

    Hartmann’s right; the Germans do an exceptional job. When my son was 13, he came to Berlin with me to see the Wajda Prize ceremony during their film festival. One snowed-in day we watched Goldfinger on hotel TV and we were laughing at the German words effortlessly flowing as if the film had been made in that language. “Ahh, Fraulein Pussy! Wo ist der schlaufzimmer, bitte?”

    • #33
  4. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    KentForrester (View Comment):

    Very informative, Gary. You sound so knowledgeable that you must have some kind of intimate connection with sound work in movies. That is, your post sounds like it’s more than mere research through Google.

    Well…I seen a lot of action…

     

    • #34
  5. Suspira Member
    Suspira
    @Suspira

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    Suspira (View Comment):

    Such an interesting post. Thanks.

    But I wonder if I could start a movement to change “sync” to “synch”? “Syncing” just doesn’t work for me. And don’t get me started on “mic.”

    I’m afraid you’re swimming against the tide, Suspira! “Synch” is used less and less. I still call ’em “mikes”, because I don’t like to mice up the drum booth.

    Swimming against the tide is my exercise plan.

    • #35
  6. Clavius Thatcher
    Clavius
    @Clavius

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    Clavius (View Comment):

    Tremendous post!

    The room noise must be the equivalent of a flat field in astrophotography. It is an image of just plain light, no stars, passing through the optical train. You use it to remove vignetting and dust. Seems very similar.

    And wasn’t Singing in the Rain built around the advent of sound in film?

    As you no doubt know, Singing in the Rain was filmed about a hundred yards from your office! Yes, your analogy is a good one. However quiet the room tone is, if it suddenly disappears, it feels artificial and calls unwanted attention to the shot.

    Ah yes, filmed back when it was still the MGM lot.

    Which brings up another story about the MGM, now Sony Pictures lot.  The music scoring studio, The Barbra Streisand Scoring Stage, is apparently highly favored by the industry.  There is something about the acoustics that makes the music recording come out very well.  Hence, there has been no renovation of the facility for fear of ruining whatever that acoustic magic is.  According to the Studio website:

    The Barbra Streisand Scoring Stage is one of the largest motion picture scoring venues in the world. The main scoring area has remained unchanged since the 1930s to preserve the unmatched acoustics and unique ambiance that have impressed generations of filmmakers around the globe.

    • #36
  7. Duane Oyen Member
    Duane Oyen
    @DuaneOyen

    I always look forward to a Gary McVey show biz history post.

    • #37
  8. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    Suspira (View Comment):

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    Suspira (View Comment):

    Such an interesting post. Thanks.

    But I wonder if I could start a movement to change “sync” to “synch”? “Syncing” just doesn’t work for me. And don’t get me started on “mic.”

    I’m afraid you’re swimming against the tide, Suspira! “Synch” is used less and less. I still call ’em “mikes”, because I don’t like to mice up the drum booth.

    Swimming against the tide is my exercise plan.

    It’s “sync” darn it. The silent h is bad enough in “synchronize.” I’m not schlepping it along into an truncation “just because.”

    • #38
  9. SkipSul Inactive
    SkipSul
    @skipsul

    One of the boons of the last few years has been the massive proliferation of amateur video and audio production – podcasters and others who occasionally work with them have had to learn off these lessons on their own, and for their own environments.  One podcaster I know has, for instance, set up her recording “studio” in her clothes closet because it is the only quiet room in her apartment.  She’s shared photos of herself sitting on the floor, surrounded by sweaters, dresses, shirts, suits, and shoes – that way she has the cleanest voice track for later, when she’s editing and working in music for crossovers.  David Crowther, who does the History of England podcast series (sadly on hiatus as I believe he is going through chemo), does his recording in his garden shed because it’s free of the hums and hisses of his house – instead you hear birds all the time in his recordings (which is pleasant and fun).  

    All this demand has spurred a great deal of technical advancement in affordable equipment, be it cameras or microphones, gimbals, mixers, and so forth.  Sony, for instance, has continued to automate their cinematic cameras and lenses with better and better AI, so that one person with a camera can do what you called

    Gary McVey: attendants performing guild rituals, a technical priesthood, and its own nearly incomprehensible jargon

    all on their own, all without knowing the jargon or meaning of things like “focus pulling”.  And they’re putting those same smarts into microphones that can mount on their cameras too – making mics smart enough to do a lot of the hard work as you record.

    • #39
  10. DrewInWisconsin, Oaf Member
    DrewInWisconsin, Oaf
    @DrewInWisconsin

    As a fan of audio dramas, I am frequently impressed by the quality of the sound design on modern audio productions. Some stories require very attentive listening, because a plot point will get communicated by just a simple sound effect, and if you miss it — if the mix isn’t right or if it’s too subtle — one can lose the plot.

    Listening these days isn’t like it was when people gathered around a radio — most people I know who follow audio dramas listen on headphones. This makes the medium much more intimate because the action is right there in your head. In your personal space.

    I can recall one recent story I listened to involving a character who was buried alive, and with sound design that so perfectly captured a voice in a very enclosed space (that is, a coffin), I found myself feeling claustrophobic. Such is the power of good sound design. I recall another one that had people talking together in a car with rain falling outside, and it was very impressive. You don’t really think about the difference between the sound of people talking in a room and people talking in a car. But it sounds very different, and a good sound designer will make sure that the sound is accurate.

    And you’d think a sex scene in an audio drama wouldn’t be so bad because you wouldn’t be seeing it. But in my experience, it’s almost worse just hearing it, because you’re right there! There is one in my collection I don’t really want to listen to again because a sex scene in it made me so uncomfortable.

    Things have moved beyond the foley guy with his box of tricks or shaking a sheet of tin in live productions. Though I know that often the box of tricks is still employed. I love this guy’s pile of props:

    But what’s also impressive is when a sound designer will go to a particular location to record sound because it’s featured in a production. This scene is set on a specific subway train? Let’s go bring our recording equipment onto that specific train and record how it sounds.

    Hardly anyone would notice if it wasn’t accurate. But let’s do it anyway.

    • #40
  11. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    SkipSul (View Comment):

    One of the boons of the last few years has been the massive proliferation of amateur video and audio production – podcasters and others who occasionally work with them have had to learn off these lessons on their own, and for their own environments. One podcaster I know has, for instance, set up her recording “studio” in her clothes closet because it is the only quiet room in her apartment. She’s shared photos of herself sitting on the floor, surrounded by sweaters, dresses, shirts, suits, and shoes – that way she has the cleanest voice track for later, when she’s editing and working in music for crossovers. David Crowther, who does the History of England podcast series (sadly on hiatus as I believe he is going through chemo), does his recording in his garden shed because it’s free of the hums and hisses of his house – instead you hear birds all the time in his recordings (which is pleasant and fun).

    All this demand has spurred a great deal of technical advancement in affordable equipment, be it cameras or microphones, gimbals, mixers, and so forth. Sony, for instance, has continued to automate their cinematic cameras and lenses with better and better AI, so that one person with a camera can do what you called

    Gary McVey: attendants performing guild rituals, a technical priesthood, and its own nearly incomprehensible jargon

    all on their own, all without knowing the jargon or meaning of things like “focus pulling”. And they’re putting those same smarts into microphones that can mount on their cameras too – making mics smart enough to do a lot of the hard work as you record.

    Terrific information, SkipSul! Thanks.

    • #41
  12. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    DrewInWisconsin, Oaf (View Comment):

    As a fan of audio dramas, I am frequently impressed by the quality of the sound design on modern audio productions. Some stories require very attentive listening, because a plot point will get communicated by just a simple sound effect, and if you miss it — if the mix isn’t right or if it’s too subtle — one can lose the plot.

    Listening these days isn’t like it was when people gathered around a radio — most people I know who follow audio dramas listen on headphones. This makes the medium much more intimate because the action is right there in your head. In your personal space.

    I can recall one recent story I listened to involving a character who was buried alive, and with sound design that so perfectly captured a voice in a very enclosed space (that is, a coffin), I found myself feeling claustrophobic. Such is the power of good sound design.

    When we recorded our second Ricochet “Silent” Radio show in 2018, I had a similar sound situation. @therightnurse was looking after an injured man (@mattbalzer) in a hyperbaric chamber. They spoke (and fell in love) over an intercom. Every time we were supposedly on the outside, we heard hospital sounds–phones ring, people walk by, there’s a PA system, a call enunciator sounds. Every time we switched back to Matt’s point of view, the outside voices were muffled and the “room tone” was an air pump. 

    • #42
  13. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    Phillip Marlowe (View Comment):

    Excellent insight. Loved the post, as a former aspiring audio engineer, I found this quite interesting. I’m new to Ricochet and look forward to more from you.

    Thanks, PM! After all, as a fan of old time radio, what better R> message could I receive than-

    Philip Marlowe Is Now Following You

    • #43
  14. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    Low budget filmmakers who have to work fast know plenty of tricks. One of them is, if you’re out on location and need to get “wild sound” (unsynchronized with picture; just plain ol’ sound) of actors’ voices, you’re unlikely to have a soundproof booth available. But if you’ve got a garage, a car is a pretty decent soundproof booth. The actors could often dub themselves “blind”–that is, they come right off the set, hop in the car, and immediately give the line readings they just gave on camera. Surprisingly, often the timings are so close that a little judicious editing makes it match the lip movements well enough to fool an audience. 

    One thing that filmmakers are happy to have left behind in the twentieth century: camera noise. Even the very finest film cameras for shooting dialog had a faint whisper, which could be minimized or eliminated with proper mike placement, or sometimes by placing a sound reducing blanket on the camera. With digital, which is basically really snazzy video, the camera makes no noise at all. 

     

    • #44
  15. BastiatJunior Member
    BastiatJunior
    @BastiatJunior

    Great post describing the difficulty and expense of making a sound movie.

    In the Silent era, sets were built right next to other with no sound insulation at all and several movies would be filmed simultaneously.  When sound came along, they had to build sound stages, much further apart.  That, plus all the stuff Gary mentioned, substantially increased the cost of making a talkie.

    Hollywood decided it was worth every penny.

    As soon as sound technology became feasible, the transition was almost instant.  Everybody started making talkies, despite the much higher cost.  Sound greatly enhances the ability to tell a story.

    Color is a different story.  Color was available before sound (I think) though it wasn’t great quality.  Good color (Technicolor) was available in the late 30’s (“Gone with the Wind”), but wasn’t widely adopted until the mid to late sixties.

    Color was expensive too, but didn’t enhanced the story-telling the way sound did.

    • #45
  16. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    BastiatJunior (View Comment):

    Great post describing the difficulty and expense of making a sound movie.

    In the Silent era, sets were built right next to other with no sound insulation at all and several movies would be filmed simultaneously. When sound came along, they had to build sound stages, much further apart. That, plus all the stuff Gary mentioned, substantially increased the cost of making a talkie.

    Hollywood decided it was worth every penny.

    As soon as sound technology became feasible, the transition was almost instant. Everybody started making talkies, despite the much higher cost. Sound greatly enhances the ability to tell a story.

    Color is a different story. Color was available before sound (I think) though it wasn’t great quality. Good color (Technicolor) was available in the late 30’s (“Gone with the Wind”), but wasn’t widely adopted until the mid to late sixties.

    Color was expensive too, but didn’t enhanced the story-telling the way sound did.

    Thanks for your kind words, BastiatJunior! I agree, sound was a bigger leap than color, and you’re right, there were color scenes even in silent films, though usually of inferior quality. At the turn of the last century, French film studios used armies of women with paintbrushes to hand-color short films. Two-color photography was relatively simple: two film negatives ran through the camera back to back, one that was sensitive to blue-green, the other to red-orange. The subsequent film “prints” were just that–they weren’t color film exposed to the two negatives, they were literally printed onto a black and white copy of the film with a dye matrix. It looked better than you might think. Disney and others used the process.  But only three color Technicolor could reproduce a full spectrum, and that was a much, much more complicated camera, about the size and weight of a refrigerator.

    Before the Fifties, Technicolor had a near monopoly on all color films from every studio, making them an obscure but vitally strategic choke point for union organizing.

    http://ricochet.com/611894/archives/hollywood-communists-3-part-1-the-road-to-the-blacklist/

    • #46
  17. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    Postscript: TV was never silent (okay, maybe in John Logie Baird’s workshop in 1925) but TV reruns suggest strongly that for television, black and white is a barrier to seeing a program as “real life”. For the past half century, local TV stations, the ones who buy the repeats, shun black and white shows except for a few recognized cliche classics along the lines of Lucy or the Honeymooners. 

    • #47
  18. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    TV was never silent …

    Ernie Kovacs, when he was kickin’ it.

    • #48
  19. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    Percival (View Comment):

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    TV was never silent …

    Ernie Kovacs, when he was kickin’ it.

    Point, set, and match to the man in the iron suit!

    • #49
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