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Profession Audio/ sound quality for a commercial?
OK, I see these amazing national commercials where are a ton of natural sounds going on throughout the spot and the main talent sounds amazing. Or maybe the wind is blowing like mad and once again, the Talent is clear as a bell.
How do they do this. I HAVE TO KNOW. Right now, I’m at a point where this is the only thing that really limits some of the work I would like to do.
Is there a book, a video tutorial, something? Anything I can do to try and learn this trick of the trade? Every time I type in a google search, I just get a ton of movie SFX junk.
HELP HELP HELP
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4 Replies
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They use “foley” sound. They build the soundtrack layer by layer and “construct” what you hear. It is not done in a single pass. The audio alone can take days or weeks to build. (Sometimes, they do not record original foley sounds but use canned sound effects and other bits and pieces that they grab from sound libraries.)
Each element is placed just where they want the sound to happen and at the volume, presence, etc., that works for the piece.
They also use trickery like ADR audio, where they use the “live” audio as reference and re-record the voiceover parts using ADR — replacing the original voice with the new ADR track.
HTH.
Best regards,
Ronald Lindeboom
CEO, Creative COW LLC
Publisher, Creative COW Magazine
A 2011 FOLIO: 40 honoree as one of the 40 most influential publishers in America
http://www.creativecow.netCreativity is a process wherein the student and the teacher are located in the same individual.
“Incompetence has never prevented me from plunging in with enthusiasm.” – Woody Allen
“Be who you are and say what you feel because those that matter, don’t mind — and those that mind, don’t matter.” – Dr. Seuss
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So it’s safe to say they used ADR and a ton of Foley on this spot?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsuSTbrdlE8&feature=plcp -
Yes, that is likely the way it was done.
I know many productions that try to avoid the extra steps required to get great audio and the productions suffer for it.
The formula is this: you can have great video and mediocre audio and you end up with a mediocre production. But I have seen mediocre video with an exciting and A-rated audio track suddenly take on a life all its own. Another way of saying it is this: you have likely watched movies where the audio scares you even though the movie is not all that good. Audio cues are more core to the human experience than visual cues.
Best regards,
Ronald Lindeboom
CEO, Creative COW LLC
Publisher, Creative COW Magazine
A 2011 FOLIO: 40 honoree as one of the 40 most influential publishers in America
http://www.creativecow.netCreativity is a process wherein the student and the teacher are located in the same individual.
“Incompetence has never prevented me from plunging in with enthusiasm.” – Woody Allen
“Be who you are and say what you feel because those that matter, don’t mind — and those that mind, don’t matter.” – Dr. Seuss
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It’s definitely ADR’ed. You can see the lip sync drift in and out in several places. And the SFX were Foley’ed as Ron pointed out . They are very present and “up front” (too much for my taste) which is usually a giveaway that they are not Nat. Sound.
In your original post you asked for a book that can teach you these techniques.
Like most skills in this business you can learn a lot from books but ultimately you either have “it” or you don’t. Either way, audio is a craft that takes years to learn to do well.
So I suggest that you read Jay Rose’s “Producing Great Sound for Film and VIdeo ” but hire an audio pro in the meantime while you learn the craft.Jeff Beaumont
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